A good TV show has drama — and few things are more dramatic than an unhealthy relationship.
Whether because of cheating, secrecy, or power struggles, plenty of dramatic TV relationships are in fact, very unhealthy. While it's easy to idealize these relationships, it's important to not mistake toxicity for passion and to acknowledge that these relationships should not be romanticized.
Here are 10 relationships on TV that aren't healthy.
Piper and Alex from "Orange Is the New Black" are so toxic to each other, they end up going to jail.
Alex and Piper continuously lead each other down paths of toxicity. For starters, their relationship began with Alex bringing Piper into the drug ring she works for. Throughout three seasons the two continue to manipulate each other and go behind each other's backs while claiming it's in the name of love. It seems whenever the two are together, trouble follows.
"Alex—at the end of the day, yes, she's a drug dealer, but you see that she's a vulnerable person and she has really intense feelings and love for this woman," Laura Prepon, who plays Alex, told TV Guide. "And you start to see that Piper is actually a very manipulative person, and she's not this cookie-cutter homemaker that everyone thinks she is. … Piper is just as toxic as Alex."
Walter White's shady business forced Skyler to compromise her values in "Breaking Bad."
Walter White might be in survival mode throughout "Breaking Bad," but he puts his wife in an impossible position by becoming a drug dealer. This leads to an emotionally charged, unstable relationship that consistently asks Skylar to ignore her moral integrity for the sake of her husband.
As Complex put it,"It's hard as hell for people who are more on the morally 'right' side to sit by as their cancer-ridden husband is becoming a literal meth kingpin."
In many ways, White is asking his wife to compromise her moral integrity by accepting him as a drug dealer.
Carrie and Big of "Sex and the City" don't seem to make each other happy.
Much of the dramatic action in "Sex and the City" is spurred forward by Carrie and Mr. Big's toxic relationship.
Big refuses to commit, Carrie later cheats on her fiancé with a married Big, and they generally make each other unhappy in every possible way. Yet they still end up getting married in the "Sex and the City" movie — even after Big leaves Carrie waiting at the altar.
In fact, "Sex and the City" creator Darren Starr didn't want Carrie and Big to end up together.
In a Kindles Single Interview, he said of the relationship, "I think the show ultimately betrayed what it was about, which was that women don't ultimately find happiness from marriage," he continued. "Not that they can't. But the show initially was going off script from the romantic comedies that had come before it. That’s what had made women so attached."
Further, Carrie is rarely happy as a result of the relationship.
Relationship psychotherapist Ginnie Love Thompson, Ph.D., told Women's Health about being unhappy as a result of you're your relationship that, "If you feel uneasy, you need to stop yourself and ask what the cause is. We look at how the other person affects us but we also need to look at how we're affecting our partner."
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