{"id":956,"date":"2016-06-21T17:18:25","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T17:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=956"},"modified":"2016-06-21T17:18:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T17:18:25","slug":"toxic-men-relationships-dating-twilight-sex-and-the-city-edward-cullen-carrie-mr-big-pride-and-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=956","title":{"rendered":"The Bewitching Charm of Toxic Men"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">A<\/span><\/p><\/div><p>s I watched <em>Kaatru Veliyidai<\/em>, Mani Ratnam\u2019s grand romance between VC, an Indian military pilot, and Leela, a doctor, set against the backdrop of the Kargil War, I was reminded of <em>The Twilight Saga<\/em>. The teen vampire romance couldn\u2019t offer a more remote comparison, save for the fact that their main protagonists are entirely similar \u2013 and entirely toxic for the women they are with. Of course, VC is not a bloodsucking vampire like Edward Cullen, but both men\u2019s love is certain to kill their sweethearts (in Edward\u2019s case, quite literally).\n\nIn a scene in <em>Kaatru Veliyidai<\/em>, VC drags Leela to the registrar\u2019s office and asks her point blank to marry him. When Leela hesitates \u2013 perturbed by his routine hot and cold behaviour toward her, and confused over the emotional manipulation followed by the endless cycle of apologies \u2013 he tells her to meet him at the same spot the next afternoon if her answer is yes.\n\nThe following day, two witnesses in tow, Leela waits outside the registrar\u2019s office for VC\u2026 who never shows up. Dejected, she rushes off to find him, and once she does, he greets her as if nothing\u2019s amiss. Seething with anger, she demands to know why he stood her up.\n\nHe forgot, he tells her. As simple as that.\n\nWatching this scene unfold on screen a couple of weeks back, I caught myself smirking, only too certain of how their story would pan out in real life. I\u2019d met the toxic man before. In friends, lovers, and every blighted romance story. Humbert Humbert in <em>Lolita<\/em>. Fitzwilliam Darcy in <em>Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. Edward Rochester in <em>Jane Eyre<\/em>. Leela was the ever-optimistic Carrie Bradshaw and VC was the commitment-phobic Mr Big. <em>Sex and the City<\/em>, all six seasons of it, is an ode to toxic men and why women as strong as Carrie and Leela continue to love them.\n\nEdward Cullen, Mr Big, and VC epitomise this quiet flourishing of toxic men that every girl must navigate to find her happily-ever-after. Fluent in the language of mindfuck and mixed signals, these dudes are usually adept at camouflaging their true colours behind the failsafe mysterious-boy aesthetic. They are, almost always, smoother than Justin Trudeau\u2019s PR skills, and list leaving their baes dazed and confused on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s.\n\nAnd yet, we keep falling for them.\n\n<em>Pride and Prejudice\u2019s <\/em>Elizabeth Bennett was no different. Mr Darcy is proud, aloof, and never leaves any opportunity to show her how superior he is. To her credit, Lizzie tries to show him his place and refuses to give in until he is worthy of her. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=Mr.+Darcy\" target=\"_blank\">Urban Dictionary<\/a> fittingly summarises the irony of the situation with its definition of Mr Darcy: \u201cPrincipal character from <em>Pride and Prejudice<\/em> who is very proud yet is the ideal man. Also, any guy who, although he sends mixed signals, is worth getting.\u201d\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>Before you know it, you\u2019re dependent on the impulsiveness of not knowing when the relationship will reward you with romance or with a cold punishment.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nWhy do we continue turning to these emotional vampires? In her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Toxic-Men-Ways-Identify-Miserable-ebook\/dp\/B0049P1YWK\" target=\"_blank\">book<\/a>, <em>Toxic Men: 10 Ways To Identify, Deal With and Heal From The Men Who Make You Miserable<\/em>, Dr Lillian Glass <a href=\"the%20one%20underlying%20reason%20why%20some%20women%20become%20\u2018toxic%20dude%20magnets\u2019%20is%20because%20they%20convince%20themselves%20that%20they%20can%20\u2018tame%20the%20bad%20boys\u2019%20except%20that%20they%20don\u2019t%20get%20the%20memo%20that%20their%20maladjusted%20lover%20probably%20sings%20Bruno%20Mars\u2019%20\u2018Just%20the%20way%20you%20are\u2019%20to%20himself%20five%20times%20a%20day.\" target=\"_blank\">argues<\/a> that the underlying reason why women become \u201ctoxic dude magnets\u201d is because they are convinced that they can \u201ctame the bad boys\u201d. Except, this maladjusted lover has no intentions of changing. According to her, the toxic man is available in several variants that include: the <a href=\"http:\/\/toxicpeople1.blogspot.in\/2013\/09\/the-emotional-refrigerator.html\" target=\"_blank\">emotional refrigerator<\/a> (John Mayer), the bully control-freak (Mel Gibson), and the manipulative narcissist (Kanye West).\n\nI was no exception to this pattern. Two years into college, I met a boy who I thought the world of. He was smart, incredibly attractive, and made me laugh. I thought we had a love like no other, and was convinced that no one apart from him would understand me the way he did. It took almost a year to register that I was actually dating a guy who used his feelings as ransom to get me to toe the line: Whether it was something as trivial as meeting someone he didn\u2019t approve of or shutting me down anytime my opinion didn\u2019t match his.\n\nDespite it all, I continued going back to him, dependent on the periodic reinforcement I was subject to. Dating toxic men is like the thrill of skydiving combined with the confusion of deciphering the ending of <em>Inception<\/em>. It\u2019s all consuming, in a way that no love has ever been, and simultaneously heartbreaking, in a way you want no love to ever be. The unpredictability, the disappearances, and the attempts at controlling keep you swinging from crazy lows to manic highs. But you\u2019re so occupied pining for the highs associated with rare flashes of affection, that you end up disregarding the lows.\n\nBefore you know it, you\u2019re dependent on the impulsiveness of not knowing when the relationship will reward you with romance or with a cold punishment. Until you think you\u2019ve had enough, and decide to break your filthy habit and shock your brain with a detox. But then, another \u201cI love you\u201d floats into your inbox and you\u2019re back\u2026 more addicted than ever.\n\nYou understand that it\u2019s not love. It\u2019s a drug that has as much to do with love as Chetan Bhagat has to do with literature. We go back not for love but for redemption. We go back because we want to be their Chris Martins and fix them into the men we need them to be. But, most importantly, we go back because we\u2019re made to believe that happily-ever-afters await us \u2013 just like Leela, Carrie, and Elizabeth had theirs.\n\nWhat we haven\u2019t been told is that we will find our happily-ever-afters only if we flush these men from our system. Because, dear friend, you and that guy are like the single red wall in the house. It\u2019s a good idea in theory, but somehow, it just won\u2019t work.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fluent in the language of mindfuck and mixed signals, the toxic dude is adept at camouflaging as the failsafe mysterious boy. Why do we continue to seek them out?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1727,505,1728,1729,1730,1731,22,1556,1732],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-carrie","tag-dating","tag-edward-cullen","tag-mr-big","tag-mr-darcy","tag-pride-and-prejudice","tag-relationships","tag-sex-and-the-city","tag-twilight"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Bewitching Charm of Toxic Men<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fluent in the language of mindfuck and mixed signals, the toxic dude is adept at camouflaging as the failsafe mysterious boy. 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