When I asked my boyfriend what he thought the craziest thing I’d ever done to him is, he recounted the time after a fight where he’d woken up in the middle of the night to see me sitting at the foot of bed, completely dissociated, talking about how I was going to kill us both with the knife he kept in his room. I couldn’t argue with that. 

My relationships have always been subject to the scrutiny and judgment of my friends and the people around me. I’ve reflected much on the opinions of my loved ones, but also on the ideas peddled through social media about situations like mine, and people like me. Scrolling through videos on Instagram and Tik Tok, I’ve recognized myself again and again in descriptions of “toxic” behavior, a word that resounds heavily even when said by a stranger through a screen. 

My unhealthy tendencies were something I was aware of even before Instagram told me so. I didn’t need a mental health expert to know I was better off unattached. In fact, I fought long and hard to honor the prescriptions of my rationality, to stay out of emotionally compromising situations. When I arrived at college, in a new country, almost one year ago, my first love had fizzled out, drained by the pressure and urgency that had sustained it thus far. Throughout our entire relationship, we were both going through extremely tumultuous circumstances in our home lives. I had an inkling that there was something abnormal about the way I felt and related to my partner, but those concerns were drowned out by more pressing happenings, and I attributed my unstable and consuming emotions to dramatic events unfolding around me. 

In September, finally far from my home, I realized I needed to be alone. Despite all the hostility and callousness I could muster, a few months later I was in love again. I was forced to reckon with the fact that I had a problem (with a name apparently, whatever Borderline Personality Disorder even means) through daily to hourly cycles of devastation and euphoria, inextricably linked to my boyfriend’s presence. I react to late texts with the rage of someone who’s just been cheated on, and sorrow that reached physically debilitating proportions. At my worst, I’m a nightmare. But I match the intensity of my flaws with as much passion and adoration. My love and presence in my boyfriends’ lives has always been, for better or for worse, life changing. Despite the turbulence, these loves are something I’ve always viewed as a blessing. But the sharp contrast between my lived experience and the collective opinion is drastic. When applying ideals of “healthiness” to my life, I can’t help but consider the narrow-minded view presented of love as a whole in mainstream media.

Social media is filled with endless advice and insights from people of virtually every profession. An influx of relationship therapists, coaches, and otherwise labeled relationship professionals have landed across all of my social media feeds; (perhaps more telling of a highly invasive algorithm -- my phone has been around for many an argument). These “professionals” offer up their two cents on how to navigate dating and partnership. The content revolves around the same ideas, morals, and catchy therapy lingo to convey redundant precognitions according to a clear-cut ideal. Relationships, like every other topic discussed in a 10-second clip format, offer very little nuance. You hear the same buzzwords over and over – the narcissist, the anxiously attached, the avoidant, gaslighting, love bombing, red flags, boundaries, communication and many more categorizations of personality and behavior, all ultimately classified as “healthy” or “toxic”. Again and again I was urged to scrutinize my way of being, intellectualizing my most base impulses for the goal of communicating them in a polished way, emulating the more likable archetypes. “Health” was the ultimate criteria of worthiness in relationships.

The problem with a black-and-white view on behavior is its exclusionary outcome (I’ll leave my qualms with psychiatry aside for the sake of this point). In an ironic twist, health-forward discussions around relationships villainize non-typical ways of thinking, which are bound to occur. Well-intentioned attempts at modeling the “ideal” partner offer little respite for the multitude of people who, through circumstance or genetic predisposition, function in any less of a palatable way. Advice for betterment often falls flat, being either unrealistic or irrelevant to more complex situations. 

After many breakdowns, I bitterly recalled infographics suggesting things like journaling, meditation, or even scripts for more effective communication. But no amount of goodwill can keep me from reverting to desperate and obsessive behaviors. I experience the slightest rejection as world-ending. Memories and rational thoughts do nothing against the paralyzing amounts of pain my brain produces, and in a situation that feels like life or death I can’t help myself from sending the 30 texts and making the 20 calls. At times I’ve ended up stranded, stuck in parking lots and stairwells by crippling desperation that only fades with the adrenaline of harm or my partner’s presence. It’s a damaging situation for everyone involved. While I’ve been able to lessen this burden overtime, I know it’s something I’ll never let go completely.

According to Instagram relationship experts, I certainly am not deserving of love. But what does deserving matter? I am loved! Intensely, despite the unsavory aspects of my personality. What was first an attack on my character becomes a judgment of my partner’s choices. Relationship coaches would make him either a fool, or a victim, failing to account not only for all the good in the relationship, but for the appeal of “unhealthy” behavior. This haughty attitude is not only irritating and repetitive, but hypocritical, given the mass appeal that unhealthy relationships have always had on the collective. I’ve always found it curious how people judge other people’s relationships, while reveling in it as entertainment through gossip or on television. Media especially reveals how health is generally the last prerogative of an appealing romance.

In contrast to depictions of love and relationships I’ve been exposed to through art and media, the safe, tranquil love advised online feels mediocre, uninspiring, and insipidly boring. Love has forever been described in grandiose, tantalizing ways, almost always saturated with pain and abandonment. Growing up, I watched people on screen make terrible decisions for love. I aspired to be written about like Dante’s Beatrice, or live the 24 hours of a Stephan Zweig novella. From Eros and Psyche to Edward and Bella, couples worth writing are the same couples Instagram would deem “toxic”. Sure, communication might have saved Romeo and Juliet, but at the expense of the entire point of their story. Who would be entertained by the platitudes of two people who relate through disclaimers and boundaries, on screen or in life? Fiction is and should stay fiction, but the love that inspires it is real, and I would even say aspirational.

Interestingly enough, conversations around relationships on social media often tend to bypass the idea of love entirely, focusing rather on the feeling of happiness, which I find to be an unreliable guide. It’s too fleeting, too subtle, and even when doing everything right it somehow evades me. More tangible is the euphoria provoked by love, in the moments where the desires it elicits are fulfilled. 

My own desires don’t always fall under the acceptable realm. While suppressing the destructive ones is necessary as an adult, the hard lines of what is good and bad peddled on social media lead to excessive conformance, trapping individuals into boxes of shame. The obsession with policing relationships is a direct result of a society fixated on optimization and productivity. This type of policing is more capitalist than anything. 

This framework advocating for a rational, pleasant, socially-acceptable love is nearly impossible to apply and highly condescending. Denying natural impulses for the sake of optimization is reminiscent of religious moralism that has traditionally dictated the conduct of people within relationships, or in this case marriages, adapted to 21st century standards of political correctness. While I don’t deny that betterment and cooperation is a worthy aspiration, the one-track method presented on social media is reductive and high-handed. 

It is with my partner that I’ve reached the deepest levels of intimacy, forming a bubble in which to explore the most personal aspects of myself in a comfortable space of total vulnerability, in a bond that cannot be breached by the input of others. Alone with my boyfriend is where the worst comes out, where I can reveal the ugliest and be loved nonetheless, something I would never allow myself to do with anyone else around me. And it is in this space where I can shed decorum and restraint that I am faced with the most complete version of myself. 

After fighting it for months, I decided I would no longer deny myself love, the good and the absolutely crazy. And this radical confrontation, although turbulent and exhausting, is ultimately a blessing. The standard of “health” upheld on social media is so far from the reality of my own as well as many other young people’s experiences of love and attachment. It is the product of a push for efficiency and discipline, in perhaps the one area of life that should remain free of those values. 

Ultimately the most maddening feeling that comes up through repeated exposure to the advice, and guidelines, and judgment, is profound boredom. 

My rejection of this standard does not however mean I give up on growth or that I don’t believe in some level of objective morality. In fact, the generalized characterization of toxicity and health in conversations about relationships is also inappropriate to describe the gravity of certain situations, where actions cross over from strenuous and messy to seriously abusive. Self-acceptance must come with serious discernment. I’ve felt the consequences of my own behavior heavily over the last year, in ways that weren’t always fair. But I’ve tried to meet them with the same acceptance that I grant myself, with love again as a fuel to deal with them. It takes balancing selfish and impulsive cravings for reciprocation with the genuine selfless love I feel for my boyfriend, that goes beyond my own needs, history and faults. Our relationship may not be endorsed by Instagram love experts, but as long as we are in love and content, I won’t wait on societal approval.