You may see a pattern of consistently going for the “bad guys” and you find yourself saying you’re “done with them” more often than not. For then to ghost the one “good guy” in your messages.
The consistent gravitation towards drama when it comes to a relationship is no new phenomenon but it’s interesting looking into the glamourisation of toxic relationships as a potential reason why, and its impact on real life.
For instance, I am a big fan of Sex and the City but I have always found it strange how Carrie ended up ditching one of the few good guys in the series, Aidan, for the one and only Mr Big.
Their relationship, throughout the six seasons, was filled with toxicities but the producers seem to have succeeded in winning the viewers over by carefully tickling their romantic side in the process of flaunting their relationship’s very obvious flaws.
Same goes for the relationship plots in films. It is particularly prevalent in Grease – maybe the toxicity was completely accidental, but it does frame the mismatch between Danny and Sandy as a heartwarming love story.
I am no saint when it comes to glamourising some fictional on-screen toxic relationships either. How to lose a guy in 10 Days is one of, if not my favourite rom coms from the Nineties-Noughties. Yet it is problematic, with the characters of Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey both acting manipulating and deceiving towards each other.
What these films and TV series communicate in terms of relationships and love, is that we’re told that you need to have pain for it to be true love and a worthy love story.
However, you can’t blame producers for wanting a relationship with a “little bit” of toxicity on the side rather than a healthy, romantic one. Because the truth is, the toxic ones are more intense and they create more engagement.
Yet, people are easily influenced and the danger of normalising toxic relationships is that they will be used as a template for our own relationships. Toxic relationships are intense, which is more often than not a word wrongly mistaken for intimacy.
If you always find yourself ending up with the “bad guy”, the issue may not lie in there being too many potential love interests in your life, and it may not simply be bad luck. It could be attributed to the quality of those individuals, or more specifically, the lack of qualities you may unintentionally or intentionally seek.