Why we need to end blame culture around toxic relationships

If you looked at Ariana Grande’s Twitter mentions and Instagram comments in the days following the suspected overdose of ex-boyfriend Mac Miller, you would have seen the slew of aggressive comments blaming the singer for his death.

Ariana ended her relationship of almost two years with the rapper and producer in May and was forced to open up about the toxic nature of the relationship only a short while later, after she received abuse online following Miller’s arrest for drink driving in LA.

She responded with a note which began “how absurd that you minimize female self-respect and self-worth by saying someone should stay in a toxic relationship”.

It continued: “I am not a babysitter or a mother and no woman should feel that they need to be. I have cared for him and tried to support his sobriety & prayed for his balances for years but shaming/blaming women for a man’s inability to keep his s**t together is a very major problem.”

After his death from suspected overdose on 7th September, Ariana was forced to disable her Instagram interactions after it became littered with comments like ‘it’s crazy because you really did kill him’ and ‘this is your fault’.

I shuddered as I scrolled through the comments because the ‘blame and shame’ culture attached to those, particularly women, who choose to leave toxic relationships isn’t isolated to celebrities.

I started a new relationship just a few weeks into university. We would separate only for lectures and then lock ourselves away again in my bedroom, our phones facedown; an unconscious signal that for the pair of us, nothing else mattered but each other.

So when, after six months together, he was diagnosed with depression I felt it was my job to save him... I just didn’t know how.

What helped one day would anger him the next, he’d go from wanting to lie in my arms until the early hours to refusing my calls. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear from him for days, resorting to frantically checking Facebook messenger to see when he was last online and reassure myself he was alive.

My own mood was dictated by his, and his constant fretting about things that scared or saddened him began to perpetuate my own anxiety. I would lie awake at night trying to process the emotions that he had offloaded onto me that day.

I loved him, but I was suffocating in a depression that was not my own. My university work was suffering, I barely spoke to friends and I lived off a diet of Chinese takeaways because I didn’t have the energy or care for myself properly.  

I struggled with the decision to breakup for five months, undertaking endless research and even started seeing a counsellor. Finally, I ended it over a call because he wouldn’t see me, and felt a surge of relief as I hung up the phone, and with it my role as supporter.

‘Oh really? But doesn’t he have depression,’ my friend responded when I told her of my new single status, while another asked me how I felt that would impact his mental state – though tellingly didn’t inquire about my own.

Those that knew us as a couple at university also had their own judgements to make on my decision and he himself made it clear he felt it was selfish.

I felt pretty low: was I wrong for ending a relationship that had become toxic because the other person was struggling with their mental health?

Though it wasn’t clear to me at the time, it is clear to me now: Yes, I was. I could never have saved him from what he was going through, just like Ariana Grande could not have single-handedly cured Mac Miller’s drug addiction.

Making the decision to end a relationship that has become toxic is often one riddled with guilt and so it’s incredibly dangerous to have society reflect the view that we are somehow responsible for the mental health of our partner, at the expense of our own.

‘It is never good to stay in a relationship because you feel it’s not safe to leave them,’ says Rachel Davies, Senior Consultant at relationship support charity Relate. ‘We frequently work with couples where one person has begun to feel like a carer.  Relationships can of course be a great support when you have a mental health problem but if this issue starts to dominate the relationship then even the most caring partner may decide if staying in the relationship is right for them.’

However, instead of supporting women brave enough to hold their hands up and say ‘I can’t drown with you’, there seems to be a temptation to berate them for it. The stigma of mental health might be changing but I’m not sure we can say the same about the stigma connected to those on the rollercoaster with them.

Perhaps it’s our empathetic side trying to understand the pain of those suffering from depression, addiction or anxiety and so looking for someone to blame or a misunderstanding about how these mental conditions work; maybe it’s a mixture of both?

However in our quest to empathise with the ‘victim’ we fail to realise that there are two victims in every toxic relationship like this; the sufferer and their partner.

‘If you do decide to leave then it’s important to try to do this in the right way and if possible to think about other sources of support that are available,’ Davies continues. ‘Remember that you can’t support your ex through a breakup and you need to look after yourself. This can be hard if you have been their emotional crutch for some time. You may need to be a bit selfish for a while because your needs may well have got left behind in the relationship.’

We need to leave behind the assumptions that a woman walking away from her ill partner is the easiest option, that leaving is the weak, lazy option and that events post-breakup should forever be the albatross around the neck of the one who left. Let’s stop blaming the women who choose to leave toxic relationships and mentally ill partners and instead think about how to support both parties both before and after that ending.