Love, but at what cost? When romantic relationships start affecting your mental health

Toxicity, emotional, physical abuse and chronic dysfunction in intimate relationships can be devastating and extracts a huge emotional and psychological price because love is supposed to be a safe harbour.

Today thankfully, we are acquiring the language to identify such behaviours early and learning to decode unhelpful behaviours. Modern therapy-speak is now defining concepts like boundaries, trauma bonding and attachment styles in everyday communication to explain feelings and behaviours. However, we must be careful about overusing such terms without nuance and context so that they are not weaponised to avoid genuine vulnerability, intimacy or conflict resolution. The gendered depiction of love in cinema and OTT content often romanticises masculine control, obsession, sexual and emotional violence while the women remain devoid of equal agency. Love and respect can never thrive amid power imbalance and insecurity. Lack of mutual respect and emotional safety can cause hypervigilance, chronic stress, anxiety, and depression. Manipulation and control need not always be overly aggressive.

Subtle guilt-tripping, stonewalling, withholding affection, emotional neglect, sarcasm, going from the "love bombing" stage to devaluation and using trigger words to cause irritation are also strategies to gain power. While counselling women, I often tell them to disassociate from the idealised notion of love to see a partner's behaviour through the lens of reality and to then gauge the health of the relationship.

The neurobiology of addiction explains that it is often difficult to disentangle from intensely dysfunctional relationships because both addiction and toxic relationships manipulate the same brain reward and attachment circuits.

Chronic substance use reconfigures the brain to prioritise the drug and this closely mirrors the biochemical and psychological processes of intense, dysfunctional attachments. Relational well-being and safe, stable, and nurturing relationships are the foundation of physical and mental health and a connection that contributes to anxiety, burnout, and emotional distress is unhealthy in more ways than one. Couple therapy and individual counselling can help in developing an understanding of relational dynamics, navigating communication blocks and learning/unlearning ways of relating.

Modern relationships are unique because today couples have less time than the previous generation to address relationship faultlines. They are dealing with work stress, digital overload, and image related concerns in the age of social media. If in such an environment, an intimate relationship feels inauthentic, unpredictable or draining, it can significantly impact other aspects of their life. Thankfully, today therapy is not a stigmatised word and I see many young couples unwilling to normalise distress or endure discomfort silently.

They are eager to honestly examine their compatibility issues, discuss boundaries and work through relational problems not just for the sake of the relationship but for individual and personal growth as well.. They no longer want to 'adjust’ at any cost without doing the groundwork first.

Focusing on relational health before dysfunction grows too deep, is a healthier way to approach love because this prevents the steep emotional, physical, and financial costs of toxic, broken, or stagnant relationships.Dr. Devanshi Desai, Counselling Psychologist & Couples Therapist