Ginny Wong

Opinion | End your toxic relationship with romance – love doesn’t have to be a roller-coaster ride like in The Notebook or a Disney film

We’ve been conditioned to believe that true love involves overcoming great trials, a fantasy that has long been perpetuated by the media

There are signs we’re waking up – in South Korean dramas, ‘second lead syndrome’ denotes when viewers fall for the nice, supportive guy who doesn’t get the girl

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Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in a scene from The Notebook (2004). The relationship between the two main characters, portrayed as some kind of epic romance, can easily be viewed as a toxic one.

Ginny Wong

Published: 11:15am, 5 Jan 2022

Let 2022 be the year you end your toxic relationship with romance.

The media has, for years, sold the fantasy that the path to true love treads inevitably bumpy grounds. We’re addicted to the drama and if there isn’t any, it’s boring and dull.

Nothing can ever be easy or pain-free – is it truly an epic romance film if there isn’t a scene where two people passionately declare their feelings for one another, or have a raging argument in the rain followed by a passionate make up kiss?

The Notebook (2004), we’re looking at you. The iconic 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s did it. Even in Cast Away (2000), there was a rain-sodden moment – “You’re the love of my life,” Helen Hunt proclaims to Tom Hanks – and we all swooned. (Maybe that was just me?)

Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt in Cast Away (2000).

We can’t get away from it in songs, either. US pop princess Taylor Swift’s 2008 track The Way I Loved You is a great example of how we tend to seek the exciting over the reliable. Rather than the guy she is dating, who is “incredible” and tells her she’s beautiful, she says she misses “screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain” and being “so in love that you act insane” with her ex.