This week: On Toxic (Fictional) Relationships Edited by: Kit  
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Who is your favourite fictional couple? What do you like best about their relationship? Some fictional relationships are highly toxic. So why are they so popular?
This week's Drama Newsletter is all about healthy and unhealthy relationships and how we, as writers, can help change the narrative.
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Love is strange, isn’t it? Or, what we want from love can be more complicated than it needs to be. We want those butterflies, and that excitement, but also safety and reliability; on the one hand a Khal Drogo, on the other… well, maybe not quite a Ned Flanders, but someone not too far off. I am not certain which women would make good examples, so please feel free to fill in the blanks.
Fiction is not always helpful in forming expectations of how romance ought to be. As a teenager, with only books, TV and movies to guide me, I knew that what I needed was a guy with a hint of danger and mystery. Someone who was a bit of a bad boy but, of course, he’d be different with me. My high school friends and I swapped those romance novels our mothers read of the tall, handsome knights and what not who would relentlessly pursue the heroine of the story and I got the impression that if a man really wanted you, he would never give up. It may not surprise you that this did not work out well.
See, I did get my bad boy and reality sunk in quickly – if someone doesn’t treat people well, he’s not going to treat their girlfriend any better. I was terrible at setting boundaries. Everyone kept telling me that if I wanted to get and keep a boyfriend I should do this and that, regardless of how I actually felt. It’s not healthy. In fact, it’s toxic.
Yet, toxic love stories are extremely popular. Stories like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. Edward isn’t a romantic hero. Neither is Christian. They are obsessive, manipulative, abusive creeps. Why, then, are they not seen as such?
It is not okay for someone to enter your bedroom to watch you sleep. Not without your knowledge and consent. This is especially the case when the person in question wants to drink your blood. It is not okay for someone to stalk you. Not okay to enter a relationship with you, only to abandon you and when they return, to turn around and blame you for believing that they did not want to be with you. Nor is it okay, at all, to waltz into someone’s life and try to take control of it. To coax someone into a lifestyle they have no idea about and, therefore, cannot possibly consent to. To buy up the company someone works for so that you can oversee and control even that aspect of their existence. How is any of that romantic?
We need to teach people to set boundaries. To let them know that a boundary is not a negotiation. That if someone says that they do not want to be with you, the healthy response is to respect that and leave them be. That no does indeed mean no.
Writing about healthy relationships and non-toxic heroes and heroines need not be boring. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice tells the well-known story of a leading man and woman who are flawed, yes, but they respect the other’s boundaries. When Elizabeth rejects Mr Darcy’s proposal he does not attempt to wear her down until she changes her mind. He writes her a letter in response to some of her accusations, but then he leaves her be. It is only when he has legitimate reasons to believe that her feelings might have changed that he asks her again – it is a point in time when both have experienced personal growth.
If Jane Austen could produce characters such as these two hundred years ago, we contemporary writers have no excuse not to bring to life characters with healthy boundaries, who know a toxic relationship when they see one. And some do, of course. A good example is the novel Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade. A must for those who love to read or write fan fiction, especially if they were not keen on the final season of Game of Thrones!
I am glad that, these days, I’m in a drama-free relationship. Life is dramatic enough without me adding to it. I’ve become better at those boundaries, too. I hope that you feel confident setting yours.
Kit
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Drama: September 22, 2021 Issue [#10994]
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