36 Things That Are Romanticized To A Point That It’s Become Toxic, As Listed By Folks In This Online Group

While it’s OK to fail to see the bigger picture, to not have enough perspective sometimes, cause we’re all human, it’s not OK to let it stay that way.

Needless to say, this can lead people through a dark corridor cause skewed perspectives are always trouble in the long run.

One such path is romanticizing things, which often, if not always, have a very toxic side to them. And this is what people have been discussing this week on Reddit.

Reddit user u/mysteryscallop asked the AskReddit community “what do people need to stop romanticising?” stirring up a comment section of over 18,000 responses and generating 28,100 upvotes with 70 awards in just one day.

We’ve collected some of the best responses from the post and created a curated list of the things people tend to overly glamorize, glorify, romanticize and whatnot below. Check it out, vote, comment, and share your thoughts on what else people tend to romanticize in the comment section!

More Info: Reddit

#1 “Touching” And “Wholesome” Situations

“Touching” and “wholesome” situations where people in need have to rely on donations from others to pay for healthcare or other basic needs. Particularly when this happens in a developed country. Go-fund-me’s for hospital bills or teachers paying for kids’ school lunches. And then romanticizing this like it’s something that should be happening. Yuck.

Looking at you, USA. That’s not normal. Sincerely, Scandinavia

Image credits: Piaffff

#2 OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD. It’s not quirky or funny when I’m late for work because I had to back upstairs to check that the gas stove is off for the fifteenth time because I can’t stop envisioning the whole building blowing up.

I literally stand frozen to the spot trying to fight the urge to go back when I KNOW I CHECKED but the intrusive thoughts are too upset to deal with.

OCD isn’t cute and quirky and being organised. For me its believing that people will die if I don’t check again.

Image credits: UnspeakablePlants

#3 Poverty

Poverty. You read articles like "Hero mom works 3 jobs to pay for the treatment for his sick son"... That's not right, that shouldn't happen

Image credits: rsteel27

#4 Mental Illness

Pretend_Drink5816 said:
Mental illness is a serious condition. Having one does not make you cool, unique, or insightful. It's a disaster.

deja_geek replied:
The people who call ADHD a "superpower" are just flat out wrong. ADHD is super debilitating overall. While there are something we can do better than people who are nerotypical, overall ADHD is extremely hard to manage and often can destroy a person's home life, school and/or career.

Image credits: Pretend_Drink5816

#5 Overworking

Overworking.

My coworkers tend to make it a competition to see who can make the most sacrifices for their career. Who puts in the most overtime hours? Who does things off the clock for work more? Etc

It's bulls**t. I have a life and a family I want to prioritize.

Image credits: Disastrous_Emu_3911

#6 Special Needs And Disabilities In Kids

Special needs and disabilities in kids. My son is special-needs and the way people romanticize it and make it sound like he’s so lucky to have it and “what a Time to be alive” and all that s**t pisses me off so much. He’s a great kid, I make damn sure he’s got a great quality of life, but he’s never going to have a normal life and there’s nothing cute, quirky or romanticize-able about that.

Image credits: potatoesgonna-potate

#7 Women's Role In Family

Romanticizing a women's role in family, especially by husbands (case in point Chris Pratt) . Like she works and takes care of kids and cooks and cleans and still takes care of her figure and looks great while the husband is so clueless and dumb that they will burn the house boiling milk. Stop expecting all that of the woman and share in the responsibilities so that the she doesn't have to do all that alone.

Image credits: quartzyquirky

#8 Abusive Relationships

Abusive relationships. Like stalking your love interest/partner, drama all the time, bad communication and misunderstandings, trying to invoke jealousy, obsessiveness. It's not romantic, it's creepy.

Image credits: TZH85

#9 Teenage Years

Teenage years. Yes, you are young, but that doesn't mean s**t when you have no control over your life, no life experience, no money, no mental stability and nobody taking you seriously. I wish people would stop telling teenagers that those are the best years of their lives. I was absolutely miserable as a teenager. I'm 23 years old, 24 next month, and only now did I start to enjoy my life.

Image credits: oilpaintroses

#10 Trying, Despite Being Told 'No' Or Being Rejected

eggofreddo said:
Still trying after being rejected or being told no.

vanillayanyan replied:
And an extension of this would be to leave your exes alone. Stop texting them and trying to make things work when things are over. Respect people’s decisions to walk away. Dated a guy for 3 months and realized we weren’t in the same place in our lives in terms of life experience and I wasn’t willing to wait for him to catch up. Kept asking me to stop “giving up on us” and I got fed up and blocked him after he would not leave me alone.

Image credits: eggofreddo

#11 Having Followers Online

gor8884 said:
Having followers

taleofbenji replied:
There is a very big taboo problem in America today that society isn't ready to deal with.

Which is parents exploiting the s**t out of their kids on social media. And sometimes, the reasons that these kids are getting followers is pretty dark.

Image credits: gor8884

#12 Attractive People Doing Harmful Things

Attractive people doing harmful things?

People shouldn't get a pass to do toxic and rude things simply because they're attractive. Why do I see serial killers and toxic partners get romanticized simply because they're hot? Why does that make their horrible actions somehow badass and charismatic??

Image credits: Basic_Material

#13 The Military

ajrichardsonnz said:
The military.

moderately_moderate2 replied:

As a guy with 15 years in, I can't agree more.

Joining the military doesn't make you a good person, nor does it make you special.

Its a job that you chose, that you are compensated very well for (at least in the US).

I plan to retire in 5 years, and move as far away from a military base as I can. Im going to tell people I was in prison for the last 20 years or that I as a janitor.

Image credits: ajrichardsonnz

#14 History

History. I get it, as a historian I want to make people interested so that learning why it is so important is fun, but so many eras of history are romanticized and in reality most of history is filthy and violent. Everyone wants to talk about battlefield glory and the magnificence of empires, no one wants to talk about people s***ting themselves to death in a field camp or all the incest it takes to retain a dynasty.

Image credits: RevSnakebite

#15 Making Love

Sex, I mean yes sex is amazing but we have put it on such an insanely high pedestal it’s basically a superhuman experience. Almost every show, movie, piece of art somehow relates back to sex and like seriously I do love it, but there is more to life.

Image credits: Trictities2012

#16 Parenthood

Parenthood. It’s not all baseball games and bedtime stories. If you put the effort in to practice patience and bond with your children rather than lord over them, the rewards can be limitlessly gratifying.

Image credits: Boudrodog

#17 Being Fat

Being fat.. it’s not cute, it’s not self love, it’s a legitimate health issue and people don’t need to be shamed.. but people should consider the impact on their health.. I would know… fat guy here

Image credits: Mpoweraz

#18 Dropping One's Goals And Interests For Someone Else

Mattie725 said:
People dropping all their own goals and interests for someone else. Yes, the plot of standard rom-com.

AllNamesTaken145 replied:
This is so true my sister got her first boyfriend when she was 18 despite being good at school and almost graduating she drop out, and decided to start working to help her boyfriend out with his band, now she's 23 they broke up it's so idiotic.

Image credits: Mattie725

#19 The 'Gangsta' Lifestyle

The "gangsta" lifestyle and all that it entails.

I grew up in Oakland and have witnessed far too many of the people I grew with get caught up in the game. Roughly half of the guys from my former neighborhood are either serving life sentences or were killed. I grew up in the 80s, but it's even worse now.

Image credits: frog_without_a_cause

#20 Hustle Culture

Hustle culture. I don’t understand why it’s cool to always be busy and dedicating all your waking hours to making money. When do you get to enjoy your time if you are always stressed out?

Image credits: YellowStar012

#21 Destroying Ex Partner's Stuff

Destroying your ex's stuff. I don't understand why so much media portrays destroying game systems, cars, TVs, clothes etc. is an appropriate and healthy reaction to a breakup. Even if the person supposedly "deserves" it, it's still criminal.

Image credits: deutschdachs

#22 Rural Living

Small town / rural / country living and lifestyles. So many shows and movies love to portray these less populated communities as havens and perfect places to live and will almost never even acknowledge the very serious problems faced in alot of these communities. This leads to a significant portion of people (mostly middle age white dudes) to almost fetishize this ideal of a rugged yet charming small community unchanged for 150 years full of vibrant personalities where everyone knows each other; and while this is accurate to some extent these places also suffer from huge drug problems, brain drain, racism and homophobia, underfunded social services and are all too often dying in one way or another.

Image credits: P0p3Francis

#23 Bragging About Having A More Difficult Childhood

Bragging about having a harder childhood than your children and constantly shoving it in their face. Ironically these types of parents usually take out their trauma on their children and continuing the cycle anyway.

Image credits: Spoonloops

#24 Life In Vans Or RVs

Living in a van or RV. The people that do it comfortably are often quite wealthy. Also - smells like funk and lots of inconveniences.

Image credits: RFishy

#25 Excessive Smoking Or Drinking

Smoking and drinking so much alcohol that you're having a hangover. Both are so bad for your health, yet there's a lot of people who think smoking is sexy and forgetting what you've done the last night because of alcohol is cool. It's not cool, you might have done something really dangerous to you or/and other people.

Image credits: FatigueAmbulante

#26 Getting Married Young And Spending A Fortune On It

Getting married young and spending a lot of money on your wedding, and proselytizing your subjective view of love to the world through social media. Lots of couples I know need to go to counseling and make a lot of choices to grow their intimacy and bond in private…

Image credits: OutrageousDiplomat

#27 Codependency

Codependency. People often get it confused with interdependence. Codependency seeks value through the other person and there's a lack of proper boundaries. Interdependence is 2 autonomous individuals in a relationship together

Image credits: Big-Ambitions-8258

#28 Living In A Castle

Living in a castle. It was cold, damp, full of rats and other pests. No indoor plumbing, people were filthy. I could go on.

Image credits: Circus_bear_MrSmith

#29 Pregnancy

Pregnancy.

Edited to add: I don't know what the ratio is, but I know that while there are people who had great pregnancies, others had a hell of a time.

Just in my circle of friends, I don't know anyone who didn't have a tough time at some point. We've all commented that pregnancy is so romanticised and you don't find out what it can be like until you're in the thick of it.

It's like hearing about this great club and seeing all their romantic baby bump photos, then joining the club and someone pulls you to one side like "Right, here's a bag of symptoms. Stick your hand in and grab a few. Ooh, bad luck, you got hyperemesis gravidarum!"

Image credits: Impressive_Big3342

#30 Conflict

Conflict. It's always romanticized to "fight for what you believe in" or to "never go down without a fight" or stuff like that, to the point where people forget that opposing something or someone isn't the only solution to a problem. And also that just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they want to fight you or be in conflict with you.

Image credits: Puzzlehead-Engineer

#31 Asking Girls Out

Asking the girl out. It’s not going to be this big movie moment, stop building it up and just ask her

Image credits: whispa55

#32 France

France. Don't get me wrong it is a stupidly beautiful place... In parts. But movies and TV have made people believe it is a magical fairy tale place full of roamntic men waiting to sweep women off their feet and overly sexual women just waiting for a man to come along who can satisfy her appetites.

The reality is none of those things. And from a fairly extensive amount of travel that I have done, I'd argue that there are FAR more beautiful countries in the world (broadly) than France.

Again there is ABSOLUTELY beauty in France. But nothing to the tune of its romanticised nature.

Image credits: gtwizzy8

#33 Luxury Or Status Brand Product

Luxury or status brand product. People also should stop looking at another person as ideal. Be it be spiritual or political leader they support or just a sports star. No person is a superhuman at the ground level and often make mistakes as a regular person. And people should also stop thinking things as just good or bad. In almost every case a things are usually grey and just not black and white.

Image credits: slaybhi

#34 The Internet

The internet. It's not the freedom everyone hoped fifteen years ago. A s**t ton of advertisement, misinformation and stuff to pay for, makes it a very unfree place.

Image credits: Meerrettichkuchen

#35 Internet Celebrities

Internet celebrity. Most people that are famous on the internet probably aren’t making nearly much as people assume and they also are probably working may more hours coming up with things to film, negotiating places to go, and editing to make those short little TikTok or Instagram clips. They are paying the full price for their own benefits and they are paying taxes as an independent contractor. There is a definite shelf life to their earning potential as well and they have to be very careful about where they go and what they do because the internet is a very fickle market to base your livelihood on.

Image credits: expensivelyexpansive

#36 Ireland

Ireland, living here all of 20 years, the luscious green landscape comes with being too expensive, most people in their 30s not even owning their own house, and alcoholism being a public health concern. Don’t get me wrong I love my home but I’m getting out as soon as I can

Image credits: timbuckley01