“I don’t believe loving someone is ever a waste,” says writer and cartoonist Lily O’Farrell, 28, “but when I finally got out of my first big relationship just before I turned 26, after being what I now realise was a rehab girlfriend for 3 years, my batteries were completely empty.”

Two and a half years earlier, O’Farrell met her former boyfriend and they hit it off. “He was into politics and had a degree from a really good university,” she says. “I was impressed that he could talk about big topics so intelligently. But as time went on, I realised there were other things he was lacking. He didn’t know how to wash his face, for example. I had to ask him to wipe the toilet seat after he’d been to the toilet. He didn’t know how to make a meal as simple as scrambled eggs on toast. And more than that, it was clear he didn’t know how to communicate his emotions.”

This, O’Farrell explains, was the beginning of her almost three-year stint as a ‘rehab girlfriend’. A term that’s bubbled up on TikTok, often used in the same breath as ‘foster girlfriend’, it explains the phenomenon in which women put time and energy into teaching their partner everything they know about navigating adulthood and healthy relationships, only for them to dip out and woo someone else with their newly learned skills. Whether it’s being responsible for improving their partner’s emotional intelligence and communication style or teaching them how to complete domestic tasks, it’s women who tend to bear the brunt of this particular kind of relationship labour. And it’s understandably galling when someone else gets to enjoy the results.

“I spent nearly 3 years teaching my partner to be the perfect man. Here’s why I’ll never be a ‘rehab girlfriend’ again”