Raised on Drama: Unlearning the Love We Learned from TV

I come from a family of strong women. I was raised by a single mother and a single grandmother. I was blessed to have my great-grandmother in my life until I was twenty years old, but by the time I was born, she was already a widow. These women held it down and were and are forces to be reckoned with. But when it came to love, my lessons didn’t come from them. They came from TV and radio.

I was born in the 80s and made in the 90s. TV shows like Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Living Single, and Girlfriends gave me a glimpse of what love was. TV shows and movies showed us dramatic pairings of couples who fought, broke up, and made up. The goal would be to make it down the aisle no matter what – to not die alone. Many of us grew up watching dysfunctional narratives play out, believing that these were relationship goals.

Recently, I’ve been on a Sex and the City binge. The fashions, the art, the parties, and the jet setting make the show a total vibe. Watching Carrie grow from a struggling newspaper columnist to successful writer with a thriving career is admittedly inspiring to me. However, I couldn’t help but find myself cringing at the relationships on this show – the most dysfunctional of all being Carrie and Big.

From season 1 to Big’s death on the reboot, And Just Like That, these two characters play a dangerous game of “maybe I want to be with you today, but maybe I don’t.” Big is the unavailable emotional abuser and Carrie is the habitual victim who continues chasing after him. Charlotte spends the earlier seasons chasing a wedding ring and the later seasons lashing out at her husbands because having a ring isn’t enough. Miranda spends the entire series complaining about how nobody wants her while simultaneously chasing away the one man who would move heaven and earth for her – and this doesn’t even factor in the number she did on poor Skipper at the beginning of the series.

Sex and the City is only one example of the toxic relationship tropes we’ve been fed through media. Another show that comes to mind is Girlfriends. Joan spent the show chasing a wedding while Toni chased a man with money. Maya was the only married woman in the bunch, and she imploded that marriage trying to keep up with her friends.

 I often find myself looking back at some of these older shows and realizing just how toxic those relationships were. Behind the pretty dresses and fancy parties, the drama that kept us tuning in week after week had in a way, become my example of what love was. Love was supposed to be complicated. It was supposed to hurt, either physically or emotionally. There were supposed to be fights and silent treatment, but it was okay as long as at the end of the episode, both parties kissed and made up. 

Looking back on some of the songs I listened to growing up didn’t help much either. Today, on social media, there are many content creators that make reaction videos to love songs that came out in the 90s and 2000s. The reactions are hilarious. When I break down some of these lyrics – lyrics I have sometimes sang at the top of my lungs – I can understand how I could have been reinforcing a toxic understanding of relationships in my young mind.

“He may be doing you, but he’s thinking about me. So, baby, think about another lover and go find another brother.” - Mokenstef, He’s Mine.

“I wanna tell y’all about my old lady. Sometimes, I think she’s really crazy. She blacks out at the drop of a dime, but she’s still my baby. She likes to get into confrontations with me. Testing my patience to see how far she can go before I lose my head.” Jimmy Cozier – She's All I Got.

Through pop culture, breakups, betrayal, emotional unavailability and jealousy were framed as signs of passion. Anything less than this was boring and undesirable.

My grandfather and great-grandfather both passed away before I was born. My father moved out of state before I was born, and I’ve only seen him in person one time in my life.  The little glimpses of love and relationships that I saw in real time were just as toxic if not more so. I knew they didn’t look fun, and I didn’t feel comfortable around them. I knew that I wanted something different for myself, and what was on TV looked fun. I wanted the fairy tales. I wanted the glass slipper, the horse and carriage and the happily ever after. Looking back on these “relationship goals” that I looked up to, I now realize that those weren’t the blueprints either. The more I knew, the more I realized I didn’t know. Does love require pain? Does it mean surviving chaos? Is longing for love considered to be romantic or is it just exhausting?

I’ve seen people become broken and battered from what they believed was love, only to swear from it and resign themselves to a life of being lonely. While I’ve acquired my own battle scars in the name of what I believed was love, there has always been a big part of my being screaming to me that real romantic love exists, and to not allow the experiences of my past and the messaging I formerly used as a masterclass to dictate what love is supposed to be. Years of therapy helped me to understand that what I thought was love wasn’t love. Just as success is defined differently from person to person, the same goes for what love is and what I want from it. It was freeing to realize that I’m allowed to define what love means for me, and I’m allowed to have it.

So, is healthy love real? I still believe it is. I still believe in date nights, late night snuggle conversations, cheering each other on, and wiping each other’s tears. But perhaps healthy love doesn’t have to be loud, flashy, or chaotic. It can be consistent, kind, and boring in the best of ways. Healthy love is safe, not dull. It’s soft, not weak. I’m still learning what this is, but I still believe in healthy romantic love. And I believe that the scars that I’ve acquired only helps me to appreciate it more.

Maybe we weren’t all raised on healthy love, but the important thing is that we get to choose what we believe now. We get to write the new scripts. And maybe now, love doesn’t have to be war. 

What are you unlearning when it comes to love?