Is your love toxic?

Is your love toxic?

What is a romantic relationship supposed to be?

We get so caught up in appearances as a society and this gets applied to our relationships. We look to society to tell us what ours should look like. Unfortunately, our current society´s ideas of relationships are warped. Controlling jealousy gets marked up as passion and caring. Neediness seems to signify that you’ll get used. There are so many rules and games played that in the end your partner resembles your adversary. It’s become about what we get for ourselves and how much we can get the other to love us. Or the reverse, one throws themselves into the other. The selfish and the selfless.

This just shows that there is a lack of balance and true caring in relationships. Love is about LOVING. The people in a relationship should be a team, not players in a game where no one really wins. Instead of playing each other we could be nurturing one another. We should want to see our partners do well, thriving and happy in life. Just as they should do in return. Not at the expense of either one but with a loving and healthy balance. Most of us will be inclined to enter into a romantic relationship of some kind at some point in our lives and it’s important not to enter into or stay in an unhealthy one. Relationships throw two people together and it’s vital for both to come from a healthy place. No relationship will fix you, only you can make you happy. You can’t expect someone to do that for you.

Relationships should be viewed as partnerships. I realize that this doesn’t sound like the passion filled romance of your dreams but steam doesn’t have to come from unhealthy ideas! Passion doesn’t mean controlling or dominance. Define passion yourself, you get to decide what it means to you. Create you ow
n steam. As Edward puts it, “Don’t love me with passion, for your passion will rip me from the soil, confine me to a vase to wither away and die, But rather, love me with care, delicately admire and watch me grow, grow and grow…”.

We get caught up in how it should look rather than how it should feel. Relationships require care and work, just like a plant. Mutual caring will help you and your partner to grow together. It’s time for us to reconstruct relationships. They do not need to resemble cookie cutter stereotypes or the ‘relationship goals’ pictures inundating our Facebook feeds. What they do require is love, by which I mean caring, respect, communication and trust. This can be achieved in any relationship and it really is the key to any relationship. Whether yours is monogamous or open, whether it’s heterosexual, homosexual or anything in-between, and even if it’s romantic or not. That’s what must be strived for. Settle for no less. Conquer life together but never at the expense of another.