Loving the Idea of Love: Don't You Know That I'm Toxic?

Gen Z’s dating habits are vastly different from those of previous generations, with modern media being partly to blame. For instance, accidentally falling in love with the target of a friendly bet, sneaking around with your best friend’s estranged brother, and getting noticed by a brooding boy band member among the crowd are not your everyday, real-life love stories. At most, the cheekiest origins you’ll hear is that a couple met while they were dating other people. Yet the modern love stories of our generation have conditioned us to associate our attraction and expectations with love that is defined by a deep duality of both idealization and angst. 

From rom-coms to television dramas to fanfiction and celebrity relationships, these fabricated relationships feature the perfect concoction of romanticized agony with sporadic moments of idealized romance. As a relationship ingenue, my romantic knowledge consists greatly of these unrealistic examples brought to me by a lifetime of media engagement and prompts me to question whether or not an ordinary relationship will ever measure up to what we have been taught to crave. 

These unhealthy relationships have garnered so much attention and time in the spotlight, that mass audiences have been primed to perceive them as ideal and will go to bat to validate their yearning for a similar love. For instance, ‘Kimye’, alias for ex-couple Kim Kardashian-West and Kanye West, has thousands of TikToks under their hashtag romanticizing the couple and claiming that their breakup ‘proves love doesn’t exist’, while the ex-couple had a vast history of public scuffles due to untreated mental illness, parenting differences, etc. 

“The media warps your perception of things so much,” Anna Bacal Peterson ‘25 said. “It is so romanticized [because they’re sensationalized celebrities], but when you really think about [them as a couple], you realize it’s so f*cked up. That really messes with young people's perception of love and what relationships should look like.”

Art by Kate Rispoli

This expectation of easily accepting someone back into a relationship, and them being easily redeemed, is reinforced not only in celebrity relationships, but in film and fanfiction as well. We watch as fictional characters argue with one another in fits of jealousy mistaken for passion and commit actions older couples would never withstand (shoutout to Hardin of the After series). Then, after the unforgivable is done, a seemingly perfect gesture grants instant gratification. We begin to crave these situations as exciting or adding ‘spice’ to a relationship because of how they are being presented to us—acted out by attractive actors with perfect makeup, clothing, and hair, with no real consequences, and an invigorating score in the background. 

Now, when it comes to dating, we love to overcomplicate the process or put ourselves in unnecessary positions because we are accustomed to believing we need an entire heart-wrenching storyline to prove someone’s actually interested in us and that love shouldn’t be easy. It has taught our generation, specifically the women, to accept these fatal flaws and mishaps in relationships, as it makes you appreciate the good times even more. 

Moreover, using platforms such as Wattpad and Tumblr at such a young age imposed certain expectations in my mind of how exciting a relationship should be, and how that excitement can be found in hardship and unresolved trauma. Reading these stories where a complex, hurting character meets someone that heals all their wounds conditioned me into thinking that a relationship should be about healing and fixing someone instead of being mutually respected and loved. 

“I’ve been reading Wattpad for three years now, and it is so hard to not let these false ideas of what a relationship should be—like all he wants to do is protect you; he will die for you; it’s toxic, but all the good parts of toxic; it’ll be the best sex you’ll ever have, and you’d orgasm everytime. A lot of it is misogynistic, but it is so good you can’t help but want it,” Brooke Harrison ‘25 said.

That idealization of having someone who says exactly all the right words and knows what to pull out of their repertoire to cater to your physical and emotional needs is a disconnect between a carefully crafted character and real-life people who can’t read minds. Most often, in these stories, the love interest knows exactly what to say and do in a sexual context, which isn’t very realistic with young people with little experience. 

All this to say, our generation’s reputation of seeking out love in toxicity is secured, as we continue to be left yearning for our real-life grand love story.