We tell ourselves stories about love, about what it should look like and what it might save us from. But there are other stories too, the ones we don’t write down, the ones we wish we didn’t have to live. These are the stories of love turned toxic, where the line between affection and manipulation blurs so subtly you barely notice until it’s too late.

It begins, as it always does, with a promise. Not spoken but felt, in the way they make you believe you are singular, extraordinary. They see you, really see you, in a way that no one else ever has. They are attentive, charming, almost too good to be true. And maybe you sense that, in the quiet corners of your mind. But you tell yourself this is love. You tell yourself you deserve this pedestal, even if you don’t know why you were placed there.

This is the deification phase. The beginning. The bait. It feels like the closest thing to magic, and maybe that’s why you don’t question it. Not yet.

Then something shifts. The pedestal doesn’t disappear—it tilts. They start to see cracks where there were none before. A comment here, a look there. A quiet correction masked as care. You think they’re right; you think maybe you’re too sensitive, too demanding, too much. They tell you they’re just being honest, but their honesty feels sharp, like something meant to wound.
This is the degradation phase. It’s slow and insidious, designed not to shatter you but to erode you, piece by piece. By the time you notice what’s happening, you’ve already started blaming yourself.

And then comes the end, though it won’t feel like an end at first. It will feel like unraveling, like losing track of where you start and they stop. By now, they’re not pretending anymore. Their words are weapons, their love a leash. They isolate you, twist the truth, dismantle the parts of you that felt whole. This is destruction, pure and deliberate.

We like to think we’d see it coming. That we’d recognise the signs, that we’d leave before it got this far. But toxic love doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t announce itself; it seeps in, quiet and disarming.

This is why we need mirrors, people who can reflect what we can’t yet see. A matchmaker, a friend, anyone who can recognise the warning signs when we’re too close to notice. Someone to remind us that love is not supposed to feel like losing yourself.
The truth is, real love doesn’t demand destruction. It doesn’t isolate or diminish. Real love builds. And when you find it—when you hold onto it—you’ll wonder how you ever believed otherwise.