selena, justin and the era of toxic relationships

and how young people are different now

This is a modern fairytale, no happy ending, no wind in our sail.

-The Heart Wants What it Wants, Selena Gomez

This is a bit different to the kind of thing I usually write about but I actually think it ties in to the general discourse around relationships, dating and the general feelings around it all right now. The whole internet is currently blowing up with takes on the latest ‘feud’ between Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez. I can’t really explain it too much because it would take a book to go into it but it basically has all to do with Justin Bieber and how both women were in love with him at the same time but how he married Hailey Bieber in a sort of surprise twist ending. The reason it was a surprise had to do with these main reasons- they were so young, 24 and 21, they hadn’t been seriously dating for very long but mostly because Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber were one of the most famous couples in the world and had a long, tumultuous and intense relationship that was so very public.

What’s interesting about this is that even though it just sounds like just another bunch of celebrities with crazy lives being ridiculous, I believe that it’s actually so much more than that. Sure, Selena Gomez is super famous and lots of Millennials and Gen Zs have grown up watching her and Justin Bieber was so super huge for a whole generation of teenage girls and has a long standing musical career where he has (sometimes) demonstrated that he is musically talented. But it’s not just their fame that’s getting people so emotionally involved in this situation, it’s that despite their fame, wealth, beauty and success, this relationship is one that soo many people in this gen (younger Millenials/older Gen Z) have gone through.

Intense Big Love

First you have to understand, Selena and Justin were each other’s first loves and it was the type of love that every teenager and 20 something aspired to have. It began like a very perfect love story. The way they talked about each other was always so heartfelt and wholesome. The way they looked at each other was a mix of sweet, innocent joy mixed with undeniable sexual chemistry. They were also basically the Hollywood Prom King and Prom Queen, but because Selena was known to be really nice, humble not a mean girl, people genuinely rooted for them.

But like a lot of first big relationships, especially during that era, things started going badly and got super intense. In the early 2010s, therapy and mental health still weren’t talked about and instead seen as something weird, or what really broken or damaged people did. So many of us were coming from situations where we had unresolved emotional issues like broken homes or depression, anxiety, addiction and mental illness but we just tried to ignore it and stamp it down or cover it up. Also, things like healthy relationship skills and emotional regulation weren’t taught in schools or anywhere and except for some very basic PSAs around domestic abuse, we weren’t even aware of issues like emotional and mental abuse. So when Selena and Justin started going through multiple break ups, fights, cheating, drug issues and jealousy, it didn’t feel like celebrities just acting out and being weird, it resonated with a lot of us.

Toxic Times

The early 2010s were an era where so many of us were dealing with intense issues that we couldn’t figure out because no one was really talking about them. Things like mental health stuff but also relationship dynamics and abuse. We didn’t use words like ‘anxious attachment style’, we said things like ‘clingy weirdo’ or ‘crazy’. We also didn’t really understand things like gaslighting, mental abuse or emotional abuse. We just knew physical abuse, and honestly, sometimes we’d let that fly too …‘cos love. Some of the biggest songs of that era were ‘Love The Way You Lie’, ‘We Are Young’ and ‘We Found Love’ ….. the theme of toxic relationships really sold.

When I was in college, I was surrounded by toxic relationships, all with their certain flares of what gave them their intensity. Some were about dramatic blow out fights, some were more of the subtle jealousy, cheating and sneakiness variety, some were manipulative and tactically designed, some were cluelessly driven, some had other elements like drugs and mental illness and some were just two otherwise typical people who for some reason treated each other badly. And the fall out of these relationships left scars- some left small scars and some left bigger scars…and one girl I knew lost her life.

Honestly, I’m pretty angry at the way we were all just kind of left to our own devices to figure it out. We all went to school where we spent six a hours a day learning, but we didn’t have any of the really useful and important skills we needed for probably the most important aspect of life, our relationships. We weren’t taught about emotional regulation, how to process emotions, how to do conflict resolution, how to know when things are going bad, how relationship dynamics work, when to leave and how to deal with rejection and heartbreak. We also weren’t taught about how the pill can mess up our emotions, how weed can make things less than chill if we do it a lot and how to emotionally connect with guys who couldn’t seem to even emotionally connect with their friends.

I think when ‘Love The Way You Lie’ came out, I was pretty shocked to see how much I was seeing reflections of my own life in a song about abuse in relationships. It became one of the first epiphany moments that I was dealing with something bad. But it wasn’t until Selena released her song, ‘The Heart Wants What it Wants’ that I finally felt like I could really relate. It just resonated with me completely, every line captured my feelings about my relationship and the music video just further mirrored what I was going through …

Although she’s definitely not a musical icon of the decade, this song just hit home for so many girls during that time. It was the first time we felt like we weren’t alone in a situation that does make you feel very, very alone. Because back then, and still now, one of the first things people will say if you talk about dealing with a bad relationship is ‘why don’t you leave’ and question your sanity for still being in love and wanting to work things out with someone that causes so much stress and pain. Selena (and Eminem tbf) perfectly show the complications of these situations, how deeply you can feel in love, confident and happy and how quickly it can seem like the floorboards fall from under you. It’s like one minute you’re so high, the next you’re lower than you’ve ever been, but you can’t make sense of it all. How can someone who makes you happier than you’ve ever felt in your life also make you feel the worst you’ve ever been. And if you do leave, will you ever feel that happy again?

The Modern Fairy Tale

The world is different now. Teenagers and young adults are immersed in positivity around seeking mental health and countless TikToks and videos around gaslighting, attachment issues, abuse and other things that we just didn’t have back then. People are more hesitant around relationships with people they don’t feel are ‘healed’, they’re quicker to notice red flags, to feel they can recognize signs of early toxic behaviour and to bounce sooner than later. I know the ideal is for us all to feel safe to fall for anyone, to be able to trust freely and that young love is always this beautiful thing but that’s just not always reality. We’re seeing how childhood trauma, mental health issues, addiction and self esteem are all things we need to heal to be able to love in the way we want to love and be loved. Selena’s song still resonates but I think there’s a new idea now, the heart wants what it wants but we can heal our hearts until we want what we need and what is good for us. We don’t have to be slaves to our emotions.

A few years ago, Justin and Selena broke up for the last time and two months later he married Hailey. The internet went wild and now we’re seeing a revival of that anger. Because in our fairytale stories, we want to have that happy ending, we want the love to prevail and to overcome the other issues. Justin and Selena were most definitely as in love as it gets, they had seven years of a love story but they just could never make it work. But I think it’s really telling that people who are ‘Team Selena’ are often in the gen where they were starting to date in the early-mid 2010s, we were the gen that still didn’t really know when to walk away and when to save ourselves. We were the pick mes, the ride or dies, we were the ones who were riddled with issues that we couldn’t label or fix and went into relationships with other broken hearts trying to make them full. Now, younger people genuinely do seem to be more about fixing themselves before they are with someone and they are looking for whole, not broken, people to be with. And I actually think that’s why there is a down turn in relationships, especially among young guys, as we’re still seeing lack of positivity towards younger guys getting therapy, support and getting skills to emotionally connect. If girls are absorbing information around these issues via TikTok and guys aren’t, there’s going to be a disconnect, and issues relating to each other on an emotional level.

Maybe it was because of the super prevalence of toxic relationships that happened in the 2010s that paved the way for some of this, we learned the hard way as a society and Selena and Justin became the cautionary tale for the next gen. Maybe it’s because we might have been the first group to come up from more broken homes, maybe it’s because musicians suddenly felt a bit more free to talk about the ugly side of their love lives in their music and make us all feel less alone and then maybe it was because we all just started to become more aware. Because if a toxic relationship can happen to Selena and Justin, it could really happen to anyone.