People in toxic relationships don’t love each other
Most of us have been so inundated by these messages throughout our entire lives that we have come to mistake the excitement and drama of romance for the whole relationship itself. When we’re swept up by romance, we can’t imagine that anything could possibly go wrong between us and our partner. We can’t see their faults or failures, all we see is their limitless potential and possibility.
It’s possible to fall in love with somebody who doesn’t treat us well, who makes us feel worse about ourselves, who doesn’t hold the same respect for us as we do for them, or who has such a dysfunctional life themselves that they threaten to pull us underwater until we drown in their loving arms.
It’s possible to fall in love with somebody who has different ambitions or life goals that are contradictory to our own, who holds different philosophical beliefs or worldviews or whose life path merely weaves in the opposite direction at an inopportune time.
This is why throughout most of human history, marriage was arranged by the parents. Because they were the ones with some objective perspective on whether their kid was marrying a fuckface or not.
But in the past few centuries, since young people were able to choose their partners themselves (which is a good thing), they instinctively overestimated love’s ability to overcome whatever issues or problems were present in their relationships (which is a bad thing).
This is the definition of a toxic or unhealthy relationship: people who don’t love each other for the person they are, but rather love each other in hopes that their feelings for each other will fill some horribly empty hole in their soul
Ninth Fact: With greater personal freedom comes a greater requirement for personal responsibility and understanding. And it’s 100 years later and we’re just now gaining the ability to grapple with the responsibilities love brings with it.
They’re in love with the fantasy that is constantly playing out in their head. And instead of ditching the fantasy and getting with the person in front of them, they spend all of their will and energy interpreting and conforming the person in front of them to fit the fantasy they keep spinning for themselves.
A few centuries ago, people hated romantic love. They were afraid of it, skeptical of its power and weary of its ability to tilt everyone it touched into making bad choices.
A couple centuries ago, free from the confines of the farm and mom and dad’s approving or disapproving hand, people then overestimated love. They idealized it and willed it to wash away all of their problems and pain forever.
But people are just now starting to figure out that while love is great, that by itself, love is not enough.
That love should not be the cause of your relationships but rather their effect. That love should not define our lives but rather be a by-product of it. That just because someone makes you feel more alive doesn’t mean that you should necessarily live for them.
They love the idea of each other
Nobody talks about the fact that greater personal freedom grants greater opportunities to fuck things up. And it creates greater opportunities to hurt other people. The great liberation of romantic love has brought incredible life experiences into the world. But it’s also brought the necessity for a realistic, honest approach to relationships that accommodates the painful realities of spending a life together.
Some people say in this age of ghosting and swipe-right, that romance is dead. Romance is not dead. It’s merely being postponed-relegated to a safe space where both people need to build a certain degree of comfort and trust before they go bleeding-heart bonkers for one another.
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