The Normalisation of Toxic Relationships
Nowadays, it’s hard to find a movie or a book without some element of a relationship in it- be that a romantic relationship or a friendship. Sometimes, when we take the time to really think about what it is these characters are doing, it raises red flags but everyone in the piece of media just seems to breeze past it or romanticise it. From glamorising obsessive co-dependency to glorifying possessiveness and extreme jealousy to romanticising grooming, media (especially that aimed mainly at young people) is brimming with problematic tropes.
One key example is Edward Cullen from Twilight: he says and does so many disturbing things to Bella that the readers are meant to interpret as manifestations of his love for her. In one scene, he openly admits that he breaks into Bella’s house when she is unconscious to watch her sleep. Although the books probably aren’t trying to encourage this sort of behaviour, by having Edward act this way and Bella embrace it without questions, they promote the message that obsessive love is the ideal. Bella and Edward are unhealthily co-dependent on each other and instead of showing that this sort of relationship is dangerous and toxic, it’s seen as the pinnacle of romance.
This trend of promoting toxic behaviours doesn’t stop just at romantic relationships but can also be seen in the portrayal of friendships. For example, in Pretty Little Liars, Alison and Hannah are seen to have had an extremely toxic friendship before Alison disappeared and that is never addressed properly. It is revealed early on that Hannah used to struggle with a binge-eating disorder and instead of Alison being supportive and understanding of her friend, she shames her and makes her feel disgusting, teaching Hannah to make herself throw up to “make it better”. This is absolutely not the way to support someone with an eating disorder and Alison’s insensitive treatment of Hannah should have been addressed. Besides this friendship, Pretty Little Liars is rife with examples of toxic relationships.
One particularly disturbing trend is the normalisation of damaging behaviour in gay relationships. One of the main characters - Emily Fields- is gay and most of her partners have in some way exhibited some serious red flags. Like one character, Paige McCullers; she tries to drown Emily, makes homophobic remarks at her, breaks into Emily’s car, and stands her up but somehow all of this is ok because deep down she really loves Emily. Another example is Alison. At the end of the show, she and Emily end up together and as the viewers, we’re supposed to support this and just ignore everything that Alison did to Emily. If anything, we’re meant to be happy that Emily got to end up with the Alison despite how it’s shown throughout the first seasons that Alison cruelly leads Emily on in a way that was completely inconsiderate of her feeling for her own selfish gain.
By treating the gay character like this, it basically tells young gay people that they should just ignore all sorts of homophobic comments and actions along with toxic behaviours from their partners because that’s the best it gets. This is completely false of course. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and gay people are no exception to that. Teaching gay teens that these unhealthy actions are normal might go on to have extreme consequences like violence and bullying that are seen as somehow justified because that person was just struggling with internalised homophobia. As someone who was involved in an unhealthy relationship with someone dealing with internalised homophobia, I think it’s crucial to acknowledge that none of the hurt my partner caused me (be that physical or emotional) is erased or minimised in any way because she couldn’t come to terms with her feelings for me or her sexuality and I don’t have to forgive her if she were to ask.
Let’s move away from TV now and focus more on something else: Wattpad. When asked about the characteristics of a Wattpad boy, people would say that he’s a bad boy with a mysterious past who has a secret soft spot. All this is fine but what’s not okay is how these characters tend to be overly controlling, possessive and manipulative. Sure it can be nice to watch your partner get a little jealous or a tiny bit possessive, but it becomes a problem when this jealousy becomes something that stops you from being able to go about living your life.
It feels restrictive and typically the person is left having to overthink all their interactions to make sure that nothing that could’ve upset their partner. What happens is that through this possessive behaviour, someone is slowly isolated from everyone, which makes them more dependent on the other person and so it’s harder to recognise what is happening and leave. Basically, this sort of behaviour can be extremely damaging and should not under any circumstances be idealised – especially to an audience of younger people. Through other means, like TikTok, this toxicity has again become popular and the result of that is people trying to imitate that behaviour because they think other people find it attractive. It really isn’t attractive and if anything is off-putting. Why woud it be attractive to pretend to be a manipulative person who enjoys hurting people?
In conclusion, very few positive healthy relationships are shown in media and instead people are exposed to unhealthy relationships which masquerade about as though they were the epitomes of romance. Showing these to young people can have dire consequences because they normalise abuse. It needs to stop.
