Why I’m Done With Romanticizing Toxic Relationships

I had been raised on the belief that love is to be storm-like, wild, unpredictable, and all-consuming. I was not aware that what made me develop a butterfly in my stomach every time was not a passion but a kind of anxiety. The nights reading lines, the rollercoaster break-ups, water fall make ups, the fluttering of my heart when my cell phone would ring or beep, this was how I was under the impression that being in love would be.

I remember that there was one of the relationships. These screaming matches where people would spit out something as vile as a knife, then there would be reconciliation, and this would follow in some big drama-like fashion, it was just like the plot of a movie. I added this intensity to signal that we were caring.

My friends would stop me, but I would blow them off. You have no idea of what our connections are, I would say. Meanwhile, I was gradually fading into oblivion — I was skipping plans not to put him into a tizzy, I was gritting my teeth not to cause a fuss, and I was sitting at night contemplating whether this was my fault or not.

The turning point came during the event, which had to be a joyful one. It was the wedding of one of our friends, and somehow later in the night, I was engaged in dancing with one of my old college friends, and I was owning up to all that I was flirting.

When it got into my head, this is not love, when I was in the bathroom applying my cat eye mascara. Love has no reason to make you feel guilty for living. You are not supposed to turn out a darker person so that your other half will feel comfortable.

People must be getting the idea that bad relationships are romantic, and to some extent, pop culture is peddling this implication. Movies that are more about stalker types, where the guy turns up out of nowhere, are marketed as cute.

The pop song regarding the obsessive love that we are simply singing and dancing. Even our habit of gossiping about celebrity couples whose relationships we can see is unhealthy, and we call them the so-called relationship goals.

That is why I began to reconnect my notion of love. I was informed about the fact that:

Healthy love feels secure, not suffocating
Arguments should be about solving problems, not winning battles
Your partner should add to your life, not become your entire life
Real love doesn’t require you to sacrifice your peace

The concept of positive relations was… dull in the beginning. Where were the histrionics? The spectacular conflicts? Then it occurred to me that what I had been thinking of as boredom was, in truth, quiet. This kind of peace enables you to have a long breath with a big sigh after many years of holding your breath. The one in which you are not compelled to do something and to prove your worthiness every once in a while.

In my case, today, when I see my friends who are still stuck in that kind of a relationship, I would like to hit them gently and tell them: I know you can do better. You do, why? We all do. Love cannot be boring. Love should not make you begin to question your sense of sanity. One must not leave and forget love, but the love must be a love that returns home to itself.

It has been three years since I stopped confusing toxicity and passion. Three years of instilling in me the idea of how real love is quiet, steady, and constant. And you just know? I would rather have that instead of some cheap, tear-jerking romance that Hollywood can do.

The thing is that towards the end of the day, I would like to have a love that does not make me stay up at night thinking about the places where I am lacking, but one that could make me sleep soundly.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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