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In Defense of Toxic Love
Love isn’t just niceties and good feelings; it’s time somebody stood up for the darker side of love.
As a society we seem to be in agreement that things like co-dependency, or the anxious attachment that underlies it, and vicious arguments, infidelity, and jealousy are all inherently bad. However, love itself heightens the sensitivity of all the emotions, not just the happy ones. Just as a person can be filled with joy by their beloved; they can just easily be made terrified, despondent, or angry by them. All we’re ever told of the negative emotions is that they’re something we should avoid, at least in prose. Our songs and poems are filled with odes to this pain.
Mental health
The argument against “toxic relationships” is fundamentally an argument in favor of mental health. Toxicity riles up all those unhappy emotions, namely sadness, fear, and anger. The argument seems prima facie; the value of mental health is self-evident. Yet, throughout life, there is a constant trade-off between risk and reward, specifically risking health for something enjoyable. For example, sweets, alcohol, drugs, smoking, extreme sports, or overexertion (in any domain), should all be avoided for the sake of health, but most of us take part in at least a few of these because they’re pleasurable or…
