I love love.
I genuinely do. I know how hard it is to find someone real. Someone genuine. It’s tough out there! When Married at First Sight first aired, I was intrigued. Could this actually work? Could strangers, matched thoughtfully, find something lasting?
I wanted it to work.
I think a lot of those early participants did too.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted.
And what I was watching stopped being about love. It became about cruelty dressed up as entertainment. Bullying. Public humiliation. People being systematically torn apart, and then rewarded for it with followers, fame and brand deals.
The loudest. The cruellest. The most cutting.
They’re the ones who leave with a platform.
And we give it to them.
And here’s the part that’s hard to sit with.
We’ve come to expect it. The nastiness has become the baseline. But then someone goes a step too far and suddenly we’re outraged – clutching our pearls, flooding social media with hot takes.
As if we didn’t create the environment that made it inevitable.
That’s the uncomfortable truth.
Here’s what I know about leadership.
Every behaviour I was watching on that screen would be unacceptable in any workplace I’ve ever led.
Targeted gossip. Public takedowns. Exclusion. Humiliation in front of others.
We’d name it. Address it. Act immediately.
So I had to ask myself the uncomfortable question: If I wouldn’t tolerate this in my team, why am I comfortable watching it for entertainment?
The part that hit hardest.
Some of these participants are parents.
Because behaviour doesn’t exist in isolation. Children watch what adults normalise. They absorb what gets celebrated. They learn what earns attention and reward.
We worry constantly about what social media is doing to young people. And then we hand them a front-row seat to exactly the behaviour that delivers followers, visibility and influence.
That one I couldn’t shake. We say we want to banish bullying in schoolyards and online. That will never happen while adults are on prime-time TV demonstrating exactly the behaviour we claim to condemn.
Culture is shaped by what we tolerate. Not just by what we condemn.
So I turned it off.
Not from my high horse. But because self-leadership asks one question above everything else:
What am I choosing to normalise?
I couldn’t keep watching something I would never tolerate in any room I was responsible for. That felt like the only honest answer.
Culture isn’t shaped just in boardrooms and classrooms. It’s shaped in living rooms too.
In what we watch. What we share. What we laugh at. What we let slide.
We can’t control what gets made or what gets ratings. But we can control what we’re willing to call normal.
That choice is always ours.
And that’s where leadership starts.