8 Novels About Toxic Relationships

Screenshot from Blue Valentine There is a reason we consume content about love, and it’s not only because of its relatability. No, I’d argue that love makes us selfish. We are all trying to decipher lovers lost and found, past and present, hoping that someone else’s experience might shed light on our own. We hope that the question of, “What went wrong?” will finally be addressed, or the overdue epiphany might at last descend, like a delayed plane on the runway. See every Taylor Swift album, including her most recent, The Tortured Poets Department, which has me admittedly nostalgic for the series of heartbreaks that punctuated my twenties. It is no wonder that my debut novel, The Art of Pretend , memorializes this turbulent decade in all its glorious uncertainty and chaos, self-sabotage and desperation. But it wasn’t until the final drafts that I recognized one of its most important themes: toxic relationships. What, exactly, makes a romantic relationship “toxic?” The qualifications that come to mind range from empty promises, love-bombing, obsession and projection, gaslighting, and, of course, the grand finale of many toxic tête-à-têtes: ghosting. Fun, right? What is perhaps even more fun are the range of emotions following the storm: Crushing disappointment. Grief. Occasionally, rage. I recall a relationship many summers ago when the object of my own affection played me like a puppet. He would go weeks at a time without contact, only to reach out the exact moment I made peace with his absence, and there I’d go again, following the breadcrumbs he laid out for me to his neatly-laid trap. I remember the fleeting peacefulness when I woke each morning, the few seconds of bliss before all the emotions flooded back and I was forced to pretend I was fine. Work helped, a temporary numbing agent that wore off at six, when I would find myself lurching toward the subway, again joined by the terrible company that was my thoughts. When would the pain subside? And why had I refused to recognize the signs when all my friends already spotted the red flags waving […]

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