THE TYRANNY OF THE ‘HEALTHY’ RELATIONSHIP – Why the experts in healthy relationships have become a factory of unhappy neurotics

There is a silent epidemic taking over social media, therapy offices, and bookstores: experts in healthy relationships. They pop up everywhere with their infallible formulas, instant diagnoses, and recipes for conjugal happiness. “5 signs you’re with a narcissist.” “7 techniques for conscious relationships.” “How to spot red flags on the first date.” “Survive a toxic relationship in 10 steps.” It is a billion-dollar industry built on the illusion that human relationships are technical problems to be solved with checklists.
These pseudo-gurus selling relational salvation share one thing in common: a shallow, mechanistic, and dangerously simplistic understanding of the complexity of human desire. They have turned intimacy into pathological diagnosis, love into an inventory of approved behaviors, and desire into something that can be “worked on” with the right tools. Narcissist has become anyone who fails to match their expectations exactly. Toxic has become synonymous with any relationship that demands effort, confrontation, or real growth. And “healthy” has become this pasteurized ideal where no one bothers anyone, no one challenges anyone, and everyone lives in a bubble of mutual validation that looks more like an emotional ICU than actual life.
The trap is seductive. Who doesn’t want a simple formula to decode the chaos of relationships? Who wouldn’t prefer an instruction manual over facing the anguish of being with another radically different, opaque, uncontrollable human being? The problem is that these ready-made recipes do exactly the opposite of what they promise: instead of creating healthy relationships, they create hypervigilant neurotics obsessed with identifying pathologies in the other and incapable of sustaining any tension necessary for genuine relational growth.
Let’s get straight to the uncomfortable point: that couple you know—two years of therapy, complete library of books on healthy relationships, following dozens of “experts” on Instagram, attending conscious communication workshops, practicing daily mutual gratitude—is more emotionally dead than ever. They have turned what should be an encounter into behavioral auditing. Intimacy has become corporate governance. And desire? Ah, desire evaporated the exact moment they decided that love is hard work and relationship is a project to be optimized with emotional KPIs.
The Theater of Permanent Negotiation
Observe a contemporary “conscious” couple in action. They don’t fight—they process conflicts using non-violent communication. They don’t feel—they identify emotions, name them correctly, and validate them before expressing. They don’t desire spontaneously—they schedule intimacy because “it’s important to maintain connection.” Every gesture has passed through the filter of appropriate communication. Every feeling has been checked against the list of “healthy behaviors.” Every need has been negotiated in clear, specific, measurable terms.
The result? An emotional choreography so rehearsed that it has lost any trace of life. They have turned the relationship into permanent theater where every actor knows their lines, their blocking, their cues for entering and exiting the scene perfectly. There is no improvisation. No risk. No unpredictability that makes desire pulse. There is only the impeccable execution of a script written by therapists, coaches, and bestselling authors who promise conjugal happiness if you follow the protocol.
Worse: they have created a mutual surveillance system disguised as care. Every word is monitored for signs of “toxicity.” Every silence is interpreted as “stonewalling.” Every disagreement becomes evidence of “value incompatibility.” Any tension is immediately labeled a problem to be solved, rather than a force necessary for growth. They live in a state of neurotic hyperalertness, searching for pathology where there is only the natural friction of two incomplete subjects trying to coexist.
The problem is not communication itself. The problem is the fundamentalist belief that communication resolves libidinal economy. It doesn’t. You can articulate your needs perfectly using every active listening technique in the world, validate every emotion of your partner with surgical precision—and still be operating within a transactional structure that kills desire at the root. Because all this communicative sophistication masks a primitive and desperate demand: “Complete me. Validate me. Make me whole. And if you don’t, you’re a narcissist.”
When Non-Violent Communication Becomes Sophisticated Passive-Aggressive Violence
There is something particularly insidious about the superficial appropriation of relational tools. Non-Violent Communication, for example, was created to disarm conflicts, to build bridges across differences. In the hands of neurotics armed with half a dozen poorly digested concepts, it has become an emotional manipulation weapon.
Observe: “When you do X, I feel Y because I need Z. Would you be willing to do W?” It sounds impeccable, right? Except that in practice it becomes: “When you don’t reply to my messages in 10 minutes, I feel abandoned because I need security. Could you check your phone every 5 minutes?” The technique has become an emotional shackle. The need has become totalitarian demand. And any resistance from the partner becomes proof that they are “emotionally unavailable” or worse—narcissistic.
Concrete example: she did therapy, read all the books, considers herself “empowered” and “aware of her needs.” She demands millimetric reciprocity. She keeps score of every gesture, every word, every demonstration of affection. If he forgets to send the good morning text, it’s “lack of consideration.” If he needs time alone, it’s “avoidance of intimacy.” If he disagrees, it’s “invalidation of her feelings.” She has turned the relationship into an Excel spreadsheet where every entry demands a proportional output, and any deficit is interpreted as emotional abuse.
What she fails to see: she has scared away any possibility of genuine desire. Because desire does not operate by accounting. Desire does not flourish under surveillance. Desire does not respond to demands for mathematical reciprocity. She has turned what could have been an erotic encounter into emotional compliance management. And then wonders why passion died.
Or consider the inverse case, equally devastating: he read all the books on “healthy masculinity,” does therapy religiously, learned to “listen actively,” “validate emotions,” “be emotionally present.” He became the technically perfect partner. And his partner completely lost attraction to him. Because he stopped being a partner and became her unpaid therapist. Every time she expresses frustration, he switches to “emotional problem-solving” mode. Every time she wants to be challenged, he validates. Every time she needs erotic tension, he offers empathetic understanding.
He doesn’t understand: he has turned into the male version of the good enough mother. And no one desires their mother. Desire requires alterity, difference, tension. It requires someone who does not dissolve into the other’s needs, who maintains opacity, who resists. He annihilated himself in the fantasy of being the “perfect deconstructed man” and lost precisely what made her desire him—the presence of an other subject, irreducible, impossible to fully domesticate.
The Toxic Myth of Balanced Reciprocity
Healthy relationship experts obsessively sell the fantasy of 50/50. Relationship is balanced partnership. Mutual effort. Proportional investment. If you give 100%, the other must give 100%. If you communicate adequately, the other must reciprocate in kind. It is liberal democracy applied to intimacy—and it is a lie that makes people sick.
Human relationships are not democracies. They are asymmetrical encounters between radically different subjects operating with distinct libidinal economies, singular histories, specific wounds, opaque desires. The idea that you can measure, balance, make fair and proportional what happens between two human beings is a technocratic delusion dressed up as relational consciousness.
Worse: this obsession with mathematical reciprocity turns love into accounting. Every gesture becomes an investment awaiting return. Every word becomes exchange currency. Every act of care becomes an asset on the relational balance sheet. And when the accounts don’t add up—and they never do, because there is no objective metric to measure intensity of affection—the relationship enters existential crisis.
Example: the ultra-communicative polyamorous couple that negotiates every emotion, every insecurity, every trigger. They have spreadsheets for quality time. 15-page relational contracts. Weekly alignment meetings. Protocols for jealousy management. And they live in permanent crisis. Why? Because they turned love into international diplomacy. Every interaction requires mediation. Every feeling must be collectively processed. Every desire passes through a committee of approval.
What did they lose along the way? Spontaneity. Risk. The capacity to sustain tension without immediately turning it into a problem to be solved. The possibility of mystery. Everything must be transparent, negotiated, balanced. And in this process of hyper-rationalization, they killed precisely what should be alive—the desire that operates in the shadows, in opacity, in the non-negotiated.
When Everyone Is a Narcissist
There is a particularly perverse phenomenon in the healthy relationships industry: the vulgarization of psychiatric diagnosis. Narcissist has become anyone with reasonable self-esteem who does not bow to your demands. Borderline has become anyone emotionally intense. Psychopath has become anyone who hurt you. And “toxic” has become any relationship that demands effort, confrontation, or painful growth.
This is not psychology. It is cognitive laziness disguised as self-care. It is the refusal to face the complexity of the other, to sustain the anguish of being with someone who does not complete you, who challenges you, who frustrates you. Much easier to label, diagnose, discard. “He’s a narcissist” exempts you from any responsibility. “She’s toxic” absolves you from examining your own contribution to the dynamic. “Red flag” protects you from the risk of truly knowing someone.
Professional survivors of narcissists are particularly revealing. They built an entire identity around having been victims of a relationship with a “perverse narcissist.” They spend years in support groups, consuming content on the topic, warning others about the “signs.” They became experts at detecting narcissism in anyone who shows confidence, sets boundaries, or disagrees with them.
What they fail to see: they are perpetuating the same neurotic libidinal economy they claim to have overcome. They continue structuring identity in relation to the other—now the imaginary narcissist-other who inhabited their past. They continue operating in the victim-perpetrator logic that leaves no room for mutual responsibility, for ambiguity, for the uncomfortable truth that dysfunctional relationships rarely have a clear villain.
And when they finally enter a new relationship? They bring the hyperactive radar searching for signs of narcissism. Any self-confidence from the partner becomes grandiosity. Any boundary set becomes lack of empathy. Any disagreement becomes manipulation. They have turned themselves into walking pathology detectors, incapable of relaxing into the vulnerability of simply being with another imperfect human being.
Transactional Economy vs. Economy of Surplus
We reach the heart of the matter: the entire healthy relationships industry operates within the same paradigm that sickens relationships—the transactional economy. You invest, expect return. You communicate adequately, demand reciprocity. You demonstrate affection, require proportional validation. It is emotional capitalism: everything becomes commodity to be exchanged, everything has a price, everything demands equivalence.
This logic is so naturalized that it seems obvious. “Of course relationships require mutual effort.” “Obviously there must be reciprocity.” “Evidently I can’t give more than I receive.” Except that this “obviousness” turns love into a trading counter and intimacy into commercial negotiation. And in the process, it kills desire at the root.
Why? Because desire does not operate by equivalence. Desire is not democratic, fair, or balanced. Desire is asymmetrical, opaque, impossible to quantify. You cannot demand that someone desire you with the same intensity that you desire them. You cannot negotiate passion in proportional terms. You cannot account for attraction and demand mathematical reciprocity. Desire resists accounting—and it is precisely this resistance that keeps it alive.
The economy of surplus operates in a radically different logic. It is not about giving without expecting anything in return—that would be mere masochistic martyrdom, another form of neurosis. It is not performative generosity where you empty yourself for the other and expect recognition for your self-abnegation. It is something much more subtle and liberating.
Economy of surplus means desiring from one’s own accepted and creatively inhabited incompleteness. It means that your desire does not need the other as a validating mirror to legitimize itself. You do not desire in order to be desired back. You do not love in order to be completed. You do not invest affection expecting emotional discharge. Your desire circulates, overflows, witnesses—without the neurotic anxiety of immediate non-reciprocity.
This does not mean accepting anything. It is not submission. It is the radical freedom to desire without turning the other into an emotional debtor. It is the capacity to love without demanding from love the impossible task of filling your structural lack. It is sustaining the anguish of incompleteness without turning it into totalitarian demand upon the partner.
Clinical Cases of Contemporary Relational Neurosis
Case 1: The Emotional Auditor
She is 34, MBA from a prestigious business school, weekly therapy for 5 years, follows 47 profiles on conscious relationships. She enters every relationship with a mental checklist: does he demonstrate adequate vulnerability? Does he communicate needs clearly? Does he respect boundaries? Does he have developed emotional intelligence?
In the first dates, she is already assessing long-term compatibility. By the third month, she proposes a “conversation about expectations” where she presents a list of non-negotiable needs. By the sixth month, she suggests preventive couples therapy “to strengthen communication.” Every interaction is an evaluation opportunity. Every conflict becomes a case to be processed. Every gesture is checked against the internalized healthy relationships manual.
The result? She scares away any minimally whole man. The only ones who stay are either as neurotic as she is (and then it becomes a competition of who processes more feelings), or so accommodating that they accept living under permanent scrutiny in exchange for stability. Desire? Dead. Eroticism? Impossible under constant surveillance. She turned intimacy into a performance of emotional adequacy.
What she fails to see: she is repeating in the affective realm the same logic she learned in the corporate world. Metrics. KPIs. Performance evaluation. Continuous improvement. Except that human relationships are not projects to be optimized. They are encounters between two abysses that mutually recognize each other—and every attempt to control, measure, manage that encounter is precisely what kills it.
Case 2: The Impotent Deconstructed Man
He is 38, spent three years in therapy working on “toxic masculinity,” read all the books on feminism, participated in men’s groups deconstructing privilege. He learned to listen, validate, be emotionally present. He never interrupts. Always asks “how do you feel about that?” before expressing an opinion. Never imposes, only suggests. Never decides alone, always consults.
He became the technically perfect partner according to the manuals. And women flee from him. Or worse: they stay, completely lose desire, and later end it saying there is “no chemistry.” He doesn’t understand. He did everything right. He was sensitive, present, communicative. Why doesn’t it work?
Because he confused deconstruction with dissolution. Deconstructing toxic masculinity does not mean annihilating oneself. It does not mean turning into an unpaid emotional therapist. It does not mean dissolving any trace of assertiveness, direction, strong presence. He threw out not only the toxic, but also the desirable. He became so “safe” that he became predictable. So “empathetic” that he lost opacity. So “present” that he ceased to be an Other—he became her emotional extension.
Desire requires alterity. It requires someone who resists, who maintains mystery, who does not completely dissolve into the other’s needs. He annihilated himself in the fantasy of the perfect deconstructed man and lost precisely what made him desirable—the presence of an other subject, with his own will, capable of saying no, capable of maintaining creative tension.
Case 3: The Polyamorous Couple in Permanent Crisis
They are 32 and 35, open relationship for 4 years, 18-page relational contract, weekly check-in meetings, support group for ethical non-monogamy. They negotiate everything: time with other partners, level of exposure on social media, protocol for introducing new relationships, jealousy management.
Theoretically, they should be the pinnacle of relational consciousness. Practically, they live in permanent crisis. Every new connection from one triggers insecurity in the other that must be “processed.” Every feeling demands an emergency meeting. Every jealousy becomes a 3-month emotional work project. They spend more time negotiating the relationship than living it.
The problem is not non-monogamy. The problem is the belief that hyper-rationalization and permanent negotiation resolve the structural anguish of desire. They don’t. Jealousy is not a problem to be solved with protocol—it is a symptom of the impossibility of controlling the other’s desire. You can create 200 pages of agreements, the other will still desire opaquely, unpredictably, outside your control. And it is precisely that opacity that drives them mad.
They turned love into international diplomacy. Every interaction requires mediation. Everything must be transparent, agreed upon, balanced. And in this process of eliminating any shadow, any mystery, any spontaneity, they killed desire. They live in a relational ICU where everything is monitored, where nothing can pulse freely, where any tension is immediately interpreted as systemic failure.
Case 4: The Professional Survivor
She is 42 and 5 years ago left a relationship she diagnosed as “narcissistic abuse.” Since then, she built an entire identity around being a survivor. She participates in various online groups on the topic. Produces content warning about red flags. Became an expert at detecting narcissism and works as a therapist. Writes e-books on “how to identify manipulators.”
When she finally accepts trying a new relationship, she brings the hyperactive radar. Any trace of self-confidence in the partner triggers alert: “potential narcissist.” Any time he sets a boundary: “lack of empathy, typical narc.” Any disagreement: “gaslighting.” She turned herself into a walking pathology detector.
What she fails to see: she is perpetuating the same dynamic she claims to have overcome. She continues structuring identity in relation to the narcissist-other. She remains incapable of sustaining ambiguity, mutual responsibility, the uncomfortable truth that she also contributed to the dysfunction of the previous relationship. Much more comfortable to maintain the narrative of pure victim and malignant perpetrator.
Worse: she induces other people to create a personal environment so defensive, so shielded by pathological hypervigilance, so contaminated by permanent fear of being “fooled again,” that any possibility of genuine intimacy becomes impossible. As a therapist, she replicates this neurosis in her clients. She teaches them to see narcissism everywhere. Reinforces the identity of perpetual victim. Builds entire careers sustained by the perpetuation of trauma, not its overcoming.
And thus sabotages any possibility of healthy relationship—both her own and those who seek her for help. Because relationship requires vulnerability—and she cannot allow herself to be vulnerable when permanently in defensive mode, searching for signs of danger. It requires trust—and she cannot trust when every gesture is interpreted through the lens of pathology. It requires mutual responsibility—and she cannot assume responsibility when invested in the victim identity and, worse still, when she monetizes that identity through courses, consultancies, and content that keeps other people trapped in the same neurotic dynamic.
The Self-Sustaining Desire
So what would be a real way out of this generalized relational neurosis? No more techniques. No more protocols. No more checklists of healthy behaviors. Something radically different: learning to desire without begging for recognition.
This requires a fundamental paradigm shift. It requires accepting that you are structurally incomplete and that no other human being will fill that incompleteness. It requires stopping using the other as a validating mirror, as psychic prosthesis, as solution to your constitutive lack. It requires creatively inhabiting your own incompleteness instead of desperately trying to tamponade it through the other.
When you finally accept—not as resignation, but as radical liberation—that you will never be complete, something extraordinary happens: you become capable of truly desiring. Not desiring to be desired. Not desiring to fill a void. Not desiring as a validation strategy. Desiring because you are a desiring subject whose incompleteness is creative motor, not a hole to be plugged.
This self-sustaining desire does not need the other as mirror. It does not demand immediate reciprocity. It does not turn into totalitarian demand. It circulates, overflows, witnesses—without the neurotic anxiety of being matched exactly in the same coin, same intensity, same timing. It is generous desire not because you are “nice,” but because your desire is no longer hijacked by transactional economy.
Neuroscience-wise, this corresponds to being able to activate the SEEKING system—the dopaminergic circuit of seeking and exploration—without depending on the other as exclusive trigger. You become capable of generating desiring movement from your own creative incompleteness, not from desperate lack that needs the other to legitimize itself. Your nervous system learns to sustain activation without immediately collapsing into anxious mode when the other does not correspond.
Psychoanalytically, it is sustaining desire beyond the desire of the Other. It is being able to desire without constantly needing the other’s gaze mediating what you want. It is freeing yourself from the prison of only being able to desire what you imagine the Other wants you to desire. It is recovering opacity, singularity, an irreducible core of desire that does not dissolve into the other’s demand.
Philosophically, it is approaching what would be an ethics of radical alterity. Not trying to capture the other, domesticate him, make him transparent and controllable. Accepting that the other remains Other—irreducible, opaque, impossible to know completely. And instead of turning that opacity into a source of anguish (“why doesn’t he tell me exactly what he feels?”), turning it into a source of relational vitality.
Mutual Witnessing of Fertile Incompleteness
Genuinely alive relationships happen when two incomplete subjects manage to coexist without demanding from the other the impossible task of mutual completion. It is not fusion. It is not total independence. It is something far more complex and difficult to sustain: proximity that preserves alterity.
This means being deeply present with the other without dissolving your own opacity. It means witnessing his incompleteness without trying to fix it, fill it, turn it into a problem to be solved. It means sustaining creative tension instead of immediately turning it into a crisis to be managed. It means accepting that there will be zones of shadow, unsaid things, mysteries—and that these zones are not communication failures, they are essential parts of what keeps desire alive.
Mutual witnessing of fertile incompleteness is not a project. It has no steps. It does not come in a 10-step manual. It is daily practice of sustaining one’s own lack without turning it into demand upon the other. It is being able to love without demanding from love the task of salvation. It is desiring without turning desire into shackle. It is being together without losing oneself, separating without abandoning, disagreeing without destroying.
It requires something that healthy relationship experts rarely mention: tolerance for anguish. Capacity to sustain not-knowing, uncertainty, ambiguity. Capacity to be with someone who does not complete you, who frustrates you, who remains opaque—and not immediately turn that into evidence of incompatibility or toxicity. Capacity to recognize that a living relationship is one that challenges you, not one that permanently comforts you.
The gurus sell comfort. Techniques to eliminate conflict. Protocols to guarantee harmony. Tools to control relational anxiety. And in the process, they sell the death of desire disguised as health. Because desire does not want comfort. It wants tension. It does not want perpetual harmony. It wants creative friction. It does not want control. It wants risk.
An authentically healthy relationship is not one without conflict—it is one where conflict can be sustained without immediate fragmentation. It is not one where everything is transparent—it is one where mutual opacity can coexist without terror. It is not one where you never feel insecure—it is one where insecurity does not need to be immediately plugged with performative reassurance.
Beyond Neurotic Libidinal Economy
In the end, the essential question is not “how to have a healthy relationship”—it is “how to desire without getting sick.” How to love without turning love into transactional economy. How to be with the other without using him as validating mirror. How to sustain incompleteness without turning it into totalitarian demand.
There is no technique for this. No protocol. No expert who will teach you in 5 simple steps. Because it is not a skill to be acquired—it is a structural transformation in how you relate to your own lack. It is moving from transactional economy (I give to receive, I communicate to be validated, I love to be completed) to economy of surplus (I desire from my creative incompleteness, I love without demanding salvation, I circulate affection without anxiety over mathematical reciprocity).
This transformation does not happen by reading one more relational self-help book. It does not happen by following one more Instagram guru. It does not happen by doing one more conscious communication workshop. It happens when you finally face the devastating and liberating truth: you will never be complete, the other will never complete you, and that’s okay.
It is more than okay. It is precisely from this accepted and creatively inhabited incompleteness that the possibility of genuine relationship is born. Because only when you stop demanding from the other the impossible task of making you whole can you finally encounter him. Not as an object that fills your lack. Not as a mirror that reflects the image you want to have of yourself. Not as a project to be optimized. But as another radically different subject, opaque, impossible to fully domesticate—and it is precisely this irreducible alterity that makes love possible.
The healthy relationships experts will continue selling their formulas. Narcissist survivors will continue perpetuating the trauma industry. Gurus will continue promising conjugal happiness in exchange for following the correct protocol. And millions will continue buying because the alternative—facing one’s own incompleteness without crutches, without technique, without salvation—is terrifying.
The only real way out of this generalized neurosis does not come from outside. It comes from the courage to inhabit your own abyss without demanding that the other be ladder, bridge, or solution. It comes from the capacity to desire without begging. To love without negotiating. To be together while preserving alterity. To sustain tension without turning it into crisis. To accept mystery without turning it into problem.
It is not an easy path. It is not comfortable. It comes with no guarantees. It is the opposite of everything the healthy relationships industry sells. And that is precisely why it works.
Tired of ready-made formulas? To go beyond manuals and explore the real—and often chaotic—dynamics of desire and human relationships, visit my blog, where you will find hundreds of articles on human and organizational cognitive-behavioral development, as well as insights on genuinely evolutionary relationships that escape the sameness. Access marcellodesouza.com.br and discover what the experts don’t tell you.

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