(Alternately: how to identify problematic YA romances.)
Written by yours truly, contributions from @jltillary, @theinkrepository, @time-to-write-and-suffer, and @sakrebleu.
Non-consensual physical intimacy, especially in situations where it’s portrayed as being done for the benefit of the victim or situations where the victim forgives the forced intimacy because they decide they like it after it’s already been forced on them. Examples:
- Forcing a partner to accept physical comfort when they don’t want it.
- Kissing a partner in the middle of an argument.
- Framing consent as unnecessary simply because one person is attracted to the other.
- Stalking the other person, even for their own safety.
- Forcing the other person into some form of physical intimacy because they “liked it last time.”
- Implying that it’s normal for a certain physically intimate act to hurt and/or their partner should grin and bear it.
- Skipping over their partner’s preferred forms of intimacy in favor of what they want to do with/to their partner.
When in doubt: Consent should be explicitly given!!
Non-consensual communication. Examples:
- Physically stopping a partner from leaving in order to continue talking with them.
- Bringing up a topic the other person has made clear they don’t wish to discuss yet.
- Forcing the other person into conversations with people they previously showed they did not wish to talk with.
- Manipulating the conversation so that the other person shares a secret, especially one that doesn’t affect their partner.
Emotional manipulation. Examples:
- Telling the other person to do something (i.e. ‘go away’) as a test, where the person is at fault if they follow through and do as their partner asked.
- Blaming the other person for things beyond their control, especially “I wouldn’t be like this if not for you/your interests/your goals.”
- Claiming they’ll die (or kill themselves) if the other person leaves.
- Not wanting the other person to have friends of the same gender as their partner (i.e. a man not wanting his girlfriend to have any male friends).
- “If you really loved me you would do x, y, and z.”
- Demanding to be the most important part of their partner’s life, above and beyond their partner’s other responsibilities.
- Cheating on their partner as a form of punishment.
- Acting as though physical intimacy (or any other sort of intimacy) isn’t important, but then blaming the other person for not supplying it.
- Acting distant or cruel until the other person does what they want, or because the other person didn’t do what they wanted.
Demeaning actions and words, especially in instances where they blame the actions and words on internalized sexism, racism, etc as a shield, in instances outside of high-stress arguments, and whenever the character isn’t sincerely sorry for what they did or makes no point to change. Examples:
- Stating the other person’s interests or hobbies are inferior or a waste of time.
- Telling them they were look better if they did x, y and z.
- Demanding they stop doing something or start doing something else based on their gender, race, etc.
- Placing the other person in a subordinate role without their partner’s explicit consent.
- Not sharing certain pieces of information because they believe they know what’s best for their partner and don’t need the other person’s consent to act upon it.
- Bonus: Glorification of a partner simply for not demeaning the other person, (i.e. for acting like an average, decent human being,) especially when the partner in question boasts how amazing they are for loving their “curvy”/non-white/bisexual/not-like-other-girls/etc partner.
Please add more, if you feel so inclined!
Thank you!!! It makes me sick when a couple in a story act like this and it’s portrayed as “romantic”. Also I might add: Territorial behavior (such as overprotectiveness, taking care of the other when the other don’t want it, acting like they knows better what is good for their partner and doing something potentially illegal for “their safety” like locking them up) that is seen as romantic and sexy. And for some reason this is popular in YA??!
Tag: unhealthy relationships
the most fucked up thing about married straight couples in paranormal reality shows is that the husband is almost always the skeptic and the wife will be like terrified to exist in her own home and she’ll beg her husband to believe her and she’ll be crying every night and he’ll straight up look at the camera and be like “I don’t know I guess I just thought she was imagining things.”
like this is beyond belief in ghosts what it comes down to is one member of these couples was so distressed they were in tears nightly or at least weekly, BEGGING their partner to listen to them, and their partner was like “whatever this’ll blow over.”
how does your relationship survive that?? how are these people still together?? if my wife came into the room crying and told me she’d seen bill watterson, author of acclaimed comic calvin and hobbes, manifest in our kitchen and tell her he didn’t like our wallpaper, I’d like. obviously have some questions. but I’d fucking address her distress and take steps to make her feel better lmao???
these husbands are all garbage and they feel justified bc they weren’t the “crazy one” who believed in ghosts.
they were the good, logical, “sane” spouse who did rational and good things like, completely and purposefully ignore their partners’ growing and life-altering distress for months.
I know this seems like such a niche topic to get into but I grew up in an old town where everyone has one or two ghost stories, and it’s almost always wives telling them while their husbands chuckle and shake their heads throughout the entire story.
It doesn’t matter whether they believe in ghosts or not. What it is is one adult recounting experiences they not only firmly believe to have happened one way, but which have profoundly affected their lives, and the other adult literally publicly laughing at them “hahaha, women and their imaginations, you know?”
Both possibilities shock me but don’t really come as a surprise: the husband literally thinks his wife is such a child that she “imagined” these experiences like a backyard game for elementary schoolers, or the husband believes his wife apparently idk?? hallucinated but it’s not a big deal and we don’t need to have a discussion about her health and whether she feels safe and happy in her home because again. silly women and their apparent hallucinations you know???
Question of Smoke 