The Allure of Toxic Relationships (as a Voyeur and a Writer)
By Heather Webb | April 27, 2023 |
The past month, I’ve been in the throes of promoting my new novel, Strangers in the Night. The book is about Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, their wild and rocky relationship, the glamour and the underbelly of Old Hollywood, and the cost of celebrity. There’s so much more to it, too, but one aspect of writing this story really stood out to me as I waded deeply through my pile of research: the very real draw of toxic relationships. As things became more unwieldy between Frank and Ava, the more entranced I became. I simply couldn’t look away.
Recently I devoured Rachel Hawkin’s The Villa, set in a gorgeous Italian villa that has a past. It’s a story about two friends who are writers; one is world-famous and wealthy, the other is a stronger writer in her craft, but she can barely pay the rent. They go on a vacation together and each become inspired to write something new when they discover the story of a murder that took place in the villa where they’re staying. One friend steals pages from the other, and things begin to unravel from there. Toxic friendships at its finest. I also recently finished Andrea Bartz’s We Were Never Here, featuring a friendship maligned by jealousy and murder. More toxic friendships. The fantastic show, “Bad Sisters,” on Apple TV is about an Irish family of four sisters, three out of four whom despise their brother-in-law. He’s abusive and twisted and invades each member of the family’s lives in various ways to manipulate them—and winds up dead. (This isn’t a spoiler. At the beginning, you know someone has killed him and the show is about who did it told with loads of dark humor.) So many toxic relationships, familial, on the friend level, and also within a marriage.
What is it about toxic relationships that we find so appealing to read, or watch from the sidelines? (Certainly, no one wants to be in one!) They’re addictive, and this revelation made me think about what draws me in personally. I boiled it down to a few points.
1.) Fascination. I found the way Frank and Ava interacted on such an unhealthy level truly fascinating. How long would someone put up with fights, cheating, jealousy, and scandal before they called it quits? Would they grow from their failures? What would they learn about themselves in the process? These are a few of the questions that fascinated me. In “Bad Sisters,” I was riveted by the way the brother-in-law that the sisters hated would find ways to manipulate each of the family members, based on their weaknesses or the things they loved. This guy was really a sick individual and I couldn’t help but watch in fascination as he carefully took down each of the sisters in different ways.
2.) Sympathy. I felt for both Frank and Ava, as they struggled to do their best—and their worst—to corral their passions and achieve that intangible goal of loyalty and lasting love. Love may make everything better, but it also makes everything harder. This is a universal truth, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with them as they struggled to arrive at some comfortable happy medium. Plus, I could sympathize since I’ve had my own toxic relationship. In Hawkins’s book, I sympathized with how things went off the rails as soon as a boy was put in the middle of the friendship. And in Bartz’s book, I sympathized with the MC who kept trying to make good decisions but was manipulated over and over again until she was forced to go in the direction the negative force wanted her to.
3.) Trappings of Control and the struggle for balance. Toxic relationships thrive on an imbalance of power, even if that imbalance is imagined. This is the crux of a book or show that centers on a toxic relationship—the MC is at a serious disadvantage and is trying to regain their power, their voice, their footing. Don’t we all love watching an underdog come into their own? To see them best the one on top or the oppressor? I admire those who can restore the balance to their lives, and I absolutely root for these characters to come into their own. In the end, being a voyeur to a toxic relationship means we can explore that “coming to power” in a safe way and revel in a justice being done as a balance of power is restored.
As writers, the draw to a toxic relationship is a bit different. Writing uncomfortable, difficult situations for our characters is fun. Maybe it’s a weird choice of words, but who doesn’t like backing their main character into a corner and then forcing them to climb out? It makes for great tension. It makes for a great story. And it automatically puts the reader on the side of the MC. Readers desperately want to see the protagonist break free of that which is unhealthy and to become the best version of themselves. Don’t they? Unless, maybe if it’s a murdery thriller-suspense when we really just want to see things go to absolute shit and ruminate on how dark life can be. Maybe we should talk about that another day…
What about you? Why are you drawn to watching or reading about toxic relationships? Or do you avoid them altogether?
Heather Webb is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction. As a freelance editor and an adjunct in a MFA in Creative Writing program, Heather has helped many writers sign with agents and go on to sell at market. When not writing, she feeds her cookbook addiction, geeks out on history and pop culture, and looks for excuses to head to the other side of the world. To date, her books have been translated to seventeen languages.
I loved writing about a narcissistic dilettante in my book, “Brilliant Charming Bastard.” Three women scientists in their sixties discover they are dating the same man, who is stealing their ideas for his invention. The women join forces to create their own startup to try and beat him at his own game. The tagline is “Getting Rich is the Best Revenge” — almost as satisfying as a revenge novel. Available at your favorite insidious online site.
A lot to think about, Heather — thank you for this.
One of the keys to a toxic story may be that it’s so immersed in the characters’ lives, with layer on layer of the tiniest points of characterization in play and all working to push the drama along. That makes it the opposite of the risks of literally “starting with an explosion,” putting characters in a high-stakes situation that drives out most chances for their uniqueness to really show. Toxic relationships are the ultimate trouble-centric study in character.
Readers and viewers love watching people be awful. “I can’t believe he just did that!” That is said not with revulsion but with glee. Is the delight because someone got to do or say what we only wish that we ourselves could do and say? Are awful people in stories a safe way to indulge the meanness we suppress in ourselves?
Should awful characters always get their comeuppance? A necessary part of stories about awful people are their outcomes. Can we be satisfied if horrible humans get away with their behavior? I suspect not. Don’t we mostly feel that they should ultimately be punished?
Perhaps the difference in your novel Strangers, Heather, is that the two people in a toxic relationship have good intentions? They’re trying? They deserve our sympathy for that?
Fascinating topic.
Heather, fun post/food for thought.
I’ve always preferred stories about toxic relationships and toxic people (which is why I’m no fan of the Hallmark formula or other books built around a perfect, plucky character who is never selfish or jealous or any other human trait we all confront in ourselves from time to time). Toxic characters are simply more interesting because they do go to those dark places most of us try to avoid. Most of us have a reasonable moral code (despite faltering from time to time). Perhaps part of the appeal of toxic relationships/people is that peek at what life would become if we give in to unhealthy urges (lest we end up like these characters). Second, I think many readers have encountered/been party to some form of a toxic relationship with a boss, friend, parent, sibling, or lover (or still need to find a way out), and these books either reassure us that we did the right thing by cutting them out (or give us courage to make that break). And you are right, that balance/power dynamic is the crux of the matter–which raises all kinds of psyche questions about human’s innate desire for power/adulation and the rest.
Toxic relationships are part of life. What drives people to hurt one another? What seed in their past is working overtime, telling them…it’s okay, you deserve this behavior. As long as these situations are tempered by something uplifting, a resolve so to speak, creating such characters is necessary…it’s reality.
Two words: Jerry Springer
Your great post helped me better understand the loving/toxic relationships in Bath Haus, by PJ Vernon, whose passive MC and manipulative secondary characters instilled love/dislike in my book club discussion. Now that you’ve explained it, I see it deserves higher praise for getting this reader reaction.
I think part of the appeal in toxic relationships is that they are so . . . relatable. That kid in the neighborhood who manipulates other kids to go along with her plans grows into the high school student who exerts influence by shaming peers and rises to president of her company by threatening to fire people who aren’t “team players.”
On the flip side, there are characters who allow themselves to be victimized, and their own, equally fascinating motives and psychology that put them in that role.
Without humans jockeying for relative position, we would have no conflict – and no fiction.
Misunderstandings are the barest minimum form of conflict; it is not enough for most fiction. I know who my toxic characters are, which are principled and trying to stay that way, and which need to grow up and not enable the toxic ones. Making a story from them helps do what stories have always done: help readers live vicariously, so they preferably don’t need to go through it all in real life.