Deconstructing The Myth Of Struggle Love

If you speak open and honestly to anyone in a relationship about the ups and downs they’ve been through as a couple you’ll find a array of problems they’ve had to overcome together. This is all part of life—things don’t always run smoothly or as we’d always like. 

However, in popular culture the narrative arc of many romantic relationships would have us believe that to love is to suffer—is to experience heartache and trauma; that true love is the love that survives no matter what. Writer Lateefah Jean-Baptiste believes that we all deserve better; that’s it time to stop buying into the myth of struggle love we so often see played out on our screens. Here she deconstructs this myth looking at what it is, where it came from and how we can move beyond this narrow and destructive understanding of what love can look and feel like. 

Struggle love is a term that has been popularlised in the last ten years to describe a relationship where one partner endures multiple hardships, unhealthy and toxic behaviour at the hands of another—in the hope that they’ll be “rewarded” with the love and affection of their partner once their loyalty has ben tested.

For some, putting up with toxic and unhealthy behaviour from a partner feels like a rite of passage that has to be endured in order to strengthen the relationship. The term struggle love is usually referrs to incidents of women putting up with numerous infidelities and disrespect from their partners. Psychotherapist Counsellor Deone Payne-James explains more, “Judging by definition, struggle love is a colloquial term referring to dysfunctional relationships. In these types of relationships one partner may feel as though they need to accept toxic behaviours in order to be loved and through fear of abandonment.”

Understanding attachment styles

In order to deconstruct the concept of struggle love we need to understand that all adult relationships are based around the attachment styles we develop as children in reaction to the relationships we witness among our parents or caregivers. Deone outlines how this can sometimes play out in adulthood, “Women who engage with these types of dysfunctional relationships usually display characteristics of someone who has an anxious or even anxious/avoidant attachment style.” 

A blog written by best-selling author Mark Manson explains this idea further: “Anxious attachment types are often nervous and stressed about their relationships. They’ll often succumb to unhealthy or abusive relationships. Whereas, Anxious-avoidants are not only afraid of intimacy and commitment, but they distrust and lash out emotionally at anyone who tries to get close to them. Anxious-avoidants often spend much of their time alone and miserable, or in abusive or dysfunctional relationships.”

Gaining an understanding of these attachment types is crucial in being able to identify how we can avoid these potentially destructive relationships and work towards developing a healthier approach to accepting and nurturing love in our lives. For me personally, therapy has allowed me unpick the unhealthy perspectives I had on romantic love and men in relationships as a whole. It was by doing this work on myself that I was able to move forward creating healthy boundaries in my future relationships—which meant no longer functioning from an anxious attachment state of mind.

‘’Your attachment style can change through the work of therapy, which can result in you having healthier relationships and boundaries.” Deone continues to explain. “Work needs to be done on the self to explore, unpick and relearn what it means to be part of a healthy, loving relationship, whilst developing yourself. Settling for struggle love is an issue that can reflect one’s sense of self, patterns of relating and self-worth/confidence.” 

Being a Ride or Die

I couldn’t write an article about struggle love without mentioning the concept of a Ride or Die—a narrative that I believe underpins the very essence of struggle love. The Ride or Die relationship, made popular in hip-hop culture, shares similar characteristics to that of struggle love. As a colloquial expression it’s one of extreme loyalty to someone or something—similar to the dynamic of Bonnie and Clyde. Both the concept of struggle love and being a Ride or Die see women as having to endure hardships in order to almost prove themselves worthy of experiencing romantic love. For an example of how detrimental this narrative can be on the lives of women you only have to look at the US docu-series For My Man. This series tells the stories of women who have committed crimes for their man. One of the common threads throughout many of the women’s stories is that they wanted to prove themselves as a Ride or Die and were prepared to do anything, inlcuding committing crime, to prove their love and loyalty in the hope they would receive it back in return. 

 It’s not about sticking in there and waiting for someone to change

When we think about struggle love, there is a notion that some women endure unhealthy behaviour in a relationship, because they believe they can change their partner. But Deone challenges this idea, “It's not about sticking in there and waiting for the person to change, because in doing this your boundaries will continue to be violated.” Although I now understand the idea of struggle love, when I was younger there were instance where I allowed men to treat me disrespectfully due to my insecurities. As I began to work on those insecurities, I became a lot more disciplined with my relationship boundaries.

I spoke to Anne*, who also shared these feelings and beliefs of being able to change someone who wasn’t worthy of her attention. “I always thought I could change my ex. I think a lot of women feel like they can change men, but we can’t. It took me a long time to realize that I couldn’t hang around forever being treated like crap in the hope he would change. I was surrounded by toxic relationships. A lot of the women in my life had similar situations with their boyfriends at the time, so I just assumed it was normal. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized how wrong I was.”

But these messages and examples of unhealthy relationships aren’t just in our own lives, they’re on our screens and in the news. From reality shows such as Love and Hip-Hop to films and real life celebrity cheating scandals, the concept of the struggle love is perpetually glamorized in pop culture. In an article on the subject, Jenna Ryu  referred to a 2021 birthday post by Khloe Kardashian relating to her ex boyfriend Tristian Thompson who had been found cheating on numerous occasions. The post read: “The ones that are meant to be are the ones who go through everything that is designed to tear them apart and they came out even stronger than they were before.” 

As we established at the beginning, all relationships are tested at times and can be difficult however it feel dangerous to romanticise the idea that love at any cost and any struggle is worth it.

The woman I am today does not subscribe to the concept of struggle love or being a Ride or Die. I refuse to believe that I need to suffer disrespect or be put through a “test” in order to prove myself worthy of love. The late bell hooks said it best: “All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.” I couldn’t agree more. 

*Name changed to protect identity

Deone Payne-James is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

 
Read the other stories in our LOVE edition.