This Valentine’s Day, romance won’t be so sweet. Toxic romance is all the rage in pop culture.
A hot new Wuthering Heights movie starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi will be released on February 13th. The relationship between Cathy (Robbie) and Heathcliff (Elordi) dates back to the 1847 novel, and despite being notoriously destructive, the film touts it as a love story.
On the small screen, the Hulu series “Tell Me Rise,” currently in its third season, about the troubled relationship between Lucy (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen (Jackson White), continues to be popular.
Ryan Murphy’s latest show, Love Story, premieres February 12 (9 p.m. on FX/Hulu) and also dramatizes the famously tumultuous relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (Sarah Pidgeon).
“There’s nothing wrong with looking at fiction, as long as you understand and recognize that it’s not wishful thinking,” Dr. Laura Berman, a relationship therapist and host of the Language of Love podcast, told Page Six.
The appeal of seeing toxic romances on screen comes down to “we all love train wrecks,” she explained.
She says this has been cultivated through reality TV.
“Therapists call it repetition compulsion. It’s the part of us that longs for the love we never got, the love that got away, the love that’s unrequited, and we identify with the characters who get it.”
There’s a reason this metaphor is popular in 2026.
“I think we’re in a time of massive emotional burnout,” says Berman, author of “The Magic of Sex: Taking Your Body, Mind, and Relationships to the Next Level with Spectacular Intimacy.” She noted that these days people are either “looking for big distractions” or “feeling numb.”
“Toxic love stories really thrive when people are craving to feel something. People equate intensity with liveliness. I also think they’re enjoying the moment because we live in a time where life feels really uncertain. Intensity can feel like intimacy.”
Dr. Jackie Del Rosario, a relationship expert and dating coach, told Page Six that the prevalence of toxic relationships in TV shows and movies is not a cause for concern.
“I think if we can make the conversation productive, that’s a good thing,” she said. “If we can talk about it, it helps people become aware of what constitutes a toxic relationship. And if we can give some people some additional tips, they can apply it to their own lives and have that awareness.”
She added that she thinks the theme is timeless. Because “people are so interested in the human need to connect, to be loved, to give love. So, naturally, people will always be interested in toxic relationships, because so many of them don’t work out.”
But Berman said it becomes “dangerous” if audiences “confuse what they see in the movie and what they should expect in relation to reality.”
Del Rosario said he hopes that when audiences watch a film like Wuthering Heights, it will serve as a “mirror” for some of them, prompting them to ask themselves, “What do I want, need, and want from my relationships?”
Toxic romance persists in pop culture, Berman said, in part because it “stimulates dopamine addiction,” a reward center in the brain that is also activated by drugs and social media likes.
She explained that the culture is now “pretty dopamine-addicted.”
“Dopamine and dopamine centers are also activated when you’re doing something adventurous, not just when you’re doing something scary, but when you’re doing something emotionally scary.”
In toxic relationships, “your brain becomes addicted to a dopamine high that elicits love and returns it, and elicits love and returns it,” she explained.
