--- title: "Relationship Therapy Influencers Are a Scam" date: 2026-10-27T10:25 author: Julien Reszka description: "Attachment style coaches sell you a label, then the cure. Research says attachment is a scale, not a box, and security grows in relationships, not courses." keywords: ["relationships", "mental health", "social media", "decision-making"] canonical: https://julienreszka.com/blog/relationship-therapy-influencers-are-a-scam/ --- # Relationship Therapy Influencers Are a Scam Attachment style coaches sell you a label, then the cure. Research says attachment is a scale, not a box, and security grows in relationships, not courses. You took a free quiz, found out you are anxiously attached, and within a week your feed was full of people explaining your whole love life with that one word. Then came the offer: a course, a membership, a coaching call, a program to become secure. Relationship influencers, and attachment style coaches in particular, sell you a diagnosis and then sell you the cure. Most of it does not hold up. Start with the diagnosis. The three boxes, secure, anxious and avoidant, trace back to a 1980s love quiz that Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver printed in a Colorado newspaper. It was a useful start, and the field moved on. When R. Chris Fraley and colleagues [tested the question directly in 2015](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25559192/), attachment fit continuous dimensions better than categories. You are not "an anxious." You sit somewhere on a scale of anxiety and a scale of avoidance, like everyone else, and your scores shift with who you are with. Then the cure. In a [study that followed 628 people across up to 59 years](https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/first-study-investigate-how-attachment-style-changes-through-multiple-decades-life), anxiety and avoidance both declined on average with age, and being in a close relationship went with lower scores at every stage of life. [Arriaga and colleagues](https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/20477) describe security growing inside relationships: a partner who responds well, confidence built over time, good experiences of depending on someone. Neither a relationship nor time is for sale. Then the credentials. Coach is not a protected title. [Life coaching is unregulated](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/coaching) in the US and most other countries: no license, no required training, no board to complain to. The format distorts even well meaning creators: when mental health professionals [reviewed the top 100 TikTok videos under #mentalhealthtips](https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-ripe-with-mental-health-misinformation-new-study-reports-150359735.html) for The Guardian in 2025, 52 contained misinformation, most often ordinary feelings presented as signs of a disorder. Look at what the business model rewards: - A label you identify with keeps you watching, so the label has to feel permanent - A partner cast as avoidant or narcissistic makes a better story than two people having a bad month - Insecurity that fades on its own ends the subscription, so progress becomes a lifelong healing journey That is what turns bad advice into a scam: the seller earns more the longer your problem lasts. Not every creator in this space is a grifter, but the incentives point one way, and most of the feed follows them. You do not need anyone, paid or licensed, to read your relationship for you. People are far better at working things out than this industry assumes, and some of the best evidence comes from what they do alone, in private. In a [2006 University of Texas study](https://phys.org/news/2006-08-romantic-relationship-longer.html), one partner from each of 86 dating couples wrote for 20 minutes on three days. Of those who wrote their deepest thoughts and feelings about the relationship, 77 percent were still dating three months later, against 52 percent of those who wrote about daily activities. In a [2013 study of 120 married couples](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130205123702.htm), spouses who spent seven minutes, three times a year, writing about their latest disagreement as a neutral observer who wants the best for both would see it avoided the drop in satisfaction the other couples went through. Twenty one minutes a year, with nobody else in the room. Time does more work than people expect, too. In [research led by Linda Waite](https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0310/features/index.shtml), adults who were unhappily married in the late 1980s were interviewed again five years later, and those who had stayed together had, on average, moved past the bad times. So, before you buy a program: - Write privately about what is really going on for twenty minutes, a few days in a row - After a fight, replay it as a neutral observer who wants the best for both of you - Talk to your partner about the specific thing that hurt, not the category it supposedly proves - Give a bad stretch time before deciding it defines the relationship A word is not a diagnosis, a stranger online cannot assess your partner, and nobody can sell you security. If someone says they can, ask what they earn on the day you stop needing them. --- **Actionable insight:** Before paying a relationship coach, try what research supports for free: write privately about your relationship for 20 minutes on three days, and replay your last fight as a neutral observer who wants the best for you both. ## Key figure **52/100** — Top TikTok videos under #mentalhealthtips that a team of mental health professionals found contained misinformation *Source: The Guardian investigation, May 2025* ## Myth vs reality **Myth:** You have one attachment style, anxious, avoidant or secure, and you need a program to fix it. **Reality:** Attachment fits a scale better than a box. On average it grows more secure with age and in close relationships, no course required. *Source: Fraley et al., JPSP, 2015; Chopik et al., JPSP, 2019* ## Quote > "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" > > — Upton Sinclair, American novelist, on why arguments fail against people paid to ignore them *Source: I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, 1935* ## Products I recommend Free to try, no login needed. Takes about 3 minutes. Results saved locally in your browser. - [Get your briefing free](https://reloadium.com/difficult-conversations/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fjulienreszka.com%2Fblog%2Frelationship-therapy-influencers-are-a-scam%2F)