The “Crazy” Ex-Girlfriend - A Manufactured Trope 

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I remember some of my guy friends telling "crazy ex-girlfriend" stories. My buddy Josh asked me, "Hey, why don't ladies have as many crazy exes stories?" and me and my friend Ashley replied, "Because we don't usually survive crazy ex-boyfriends. And if we do, they're not usually funny." They got pretty quiet after that.

There’s a Donald Glover monologue where he asks the audience “why don’t woman tell stories about their crazy ex boyfriends? Because they died”

It’s a huge red flag if a dude portrays all of his ex girlfriends as crazy. There’s one common denominator there. Not to mention the ongoing sexist implications of making women out to be crazy/hysterical. So if he’s saying it about more than one of his exes, run.

sadly the gender inversion of the Crazy ex girlfriend which is the stalker violent ex boyfriend is far more common in real life yet taken less seriously until the woman is murdered or traumatized...smh at society

Examples for crazy ex girlfriends on TV: a bunch of fictional characters. Examples for crazy ex boyfriends on TV: only True Crime and historical figures

I'm so happy you finally talked about crazy ex-girlfriend. It's such an underrated but important series

Now that you’ve done a spotlight on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, would you ever consider doing one of those series on individual characters and what they represent like you did for The Office, Friends, etc.? I think that show would be PERFECT for that.

"Jane Eyre" does call out Rochester for his treatment of Bertha and he winds up with some heavy karmic retribution in the end (Namely being blinded and losing his mansion by the very woman he imprisoned): Rochester: So this is my crazy attic wife. She is crazy. I have to keep her in here because she's crazy. And evil. Jane: This is bullshit. She can't help it and you're mean for chaining her to the wall. Rochester: We can't get hitched. Wanna be my mistress instead? Jane: I have too much self respect for this. Peace out, Bitches.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was an AMAZING series, thank you for letting your audience know of it's existence I really do feel anybody could benefit from watching Rebecca Bunch's struggle to find her own identity and her path to 'new normal'!

We also need to talk about how there are men who lie and frame their ex as crazy when really the ex is only reaching out to them because the man owes them money they told them they would pay back. It happened to me. I let my then boyfriend now ex borrow money and he promised he would pay me back but after we broke up he acted like I was a crazy ex girlfriend when I only wanted my money back. I just moved on after he tried to frame me like that even though he owed me.

Regarding the Crazy ex boyfriend, I wish you had mentioned Trent from CXG - a male character set up to be a reflection of Rebecca, and yet is far more frightening for the audience (and the characters) seeing as we already know ex-boyfriends to be an actual real life threat.

Mainstream media: she's crazy, she's gonna stalk you and your new girlfriend, she's obsessed with you, she won't ever leave you alone until either of you dies Most ex-girlfriends in reality: so I dealt with the break up like an adult, cried and then moved on🤷🏾‍♀️

Funny, my ex often talked about his "crazy ex-girlfriend". I am naturally calm and don't even know how to express anger properly (I am trying to figure that out in therapy...), so I was chilly chill. But then we broke up because he said I was "too calm, too shy", not enough thrill maybe. Whatever 🤷

Blank Space is actually a parody. After the media titled Taylor Swift as a crazy, obsessive ex-girlfriend for writing songs about her personal life, she decided to write a song from the perspective of this “character” that they claimed her to be. Taylor is such a badass.

I need to say that there is a line between the crazy ex and an actual abuser. Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo are labeled as crazy exes because they write songs about them. So they both have played into that trope to show that they're not what the media portrays them as. And give commentary on the double standard that is present in society when it comes to men doing the same things as them. The ex that is an abuser is very different, because emotional or physical abuse is real and definitive, quantifiable. It's not subjective. We shouldn't demean abuse just because it is coming from a woman and being aimed at a man. There are plenty of people who are abusive, regardless of gender. Abuse should never be dismissed.

Keep in mind that Bertha in Jane Arye is a symptom of Victorian society, where husbands could throw their wives in mental institutions for no reason, which T.S.Eliot famously did, most commonly labeled as hysteria. And Rebecca has a gay subtext, I am pretty sure the housekeeper was in love with her, but her husband realize Rebecca was a narcissist and could love no one.

As a man the minute someone says their ex is crazy, my first question is "what did you do to her?" Cause 9/10 you gaslit her and she is trying to deal with that.

Weird how men seem to be the primary beneficiaries of this trope. They get to be poor innocent victims because they were just SO desirable that some crazy girl couldn't get over him. Sure, Jan.

Glenn Close commented once in an interview that she couldn’t understand why people didn’t see that the character of “Alex” is a woman who clearly needed help and empathy, not ridicule. I think “Fatal Attraction” would be viewed way differently if made today.

The problem with this trope is that the ex girlfriend is usually normal at first then gets dumped and goes crazy like they are saying women are one heartbrake away from losing it that's not how the human mind works

The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is basically the Evil Stepmother but in relationships.

It’s like that Donald Glover stand up special “Guys have so many crazy ex girlfriend stories. Why don’t we hear any crazy ex boyfriends stories? Then I remembered. If your man is crazy, you gonna die”

i was the crazy ex in my 20s. quit drinking and no longer do crazy stuff after break ups. ya live ya learn. and ive been scared for my life to leave boyfriends. just goes both ways. i’m on disability for mental illness. many times i’m sought out by users because i am vulnerable. protect yourselves and put yourself first always. if someone doesn’t want you anymore then that’s life. feelings arent forever. we’ve been fed a myth.

THANK YOU for calling out Rachel's toxicity towards Ross. Both did horrible things to each other but 99% of the time people (including this channel) labels him as the toxic one and just The Worst TM.

It's generally so weird that (in movies more so than in reality) when a woman is hurt after a breakup or still hangs on to the relationship, she's deemed crazy and when a guy does it or is even obsessive about it, it's often romanticised

Lorna from Orange is the New Black is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever seen. I would LOVE an in-depth analogy of her

The crazy ex girlfriend is for sure real, I just don't think it's that common. I think often men say an ex is crazy to brush off any responsibility for emotional damage they cause and act like it didn't happen, which is straight up gaslighting (not every man does this, but based on my experience and that of people I know, this does happen a lot). I also know of some ex girlfriends who are legit crazy, as in they took pills for their crazy.

This trope is so sad, considering ex-boyfriends are the ones who are likely to harm or even murder their ex-girlfriends after a break-up. At least that's the realitiy in Latin America.

To be fair, Amy was crazy looooo g before her husband cheated on her. She’s actually a sociopath. When her husband investigates incidents in her past he finds out she has framed other people too. It wasn’t just her husband cheating on her that made her like that.

My ex told everyone I was crazy yet he was the one doing drugs and physically and mentally abusing me. I left and he stalked me.

Oh, crazy exes do exist. Not necessarily "crazy" in any clinical sense, more likely a result of possessiveness, entitlement, or narcissism.

It's nice to finally see some appreciation for crazy ex gf 😭

The take should do a video on how crushes are depicted in media

I'm mentally ill but I try very hard to be empathetic and take accountability for my actions in my relationship. I'm non violent, not controlling, go to therapy, take my meds, etc.. I've been very afraid of being the crazy gf that I've felt guilty talking about my mental illness with my bf. I'm terribly afraid of being a burden. Edit: I do talk about my issues with my bf but there's so much that I can't help but feel awful. See my response below... Sorry if I made it seem like I don't talk to him even if I'm ashamed and feel like shit about being a burden...

I wish they did a series for CXG, like they did for Mad Men and Breaking Bad. They’re so fleshed out that you could do a whole video on each of the characters!

I'll tell you now, I've always been on Medea's side. She's literally a magical princess descended from the gods. She plans Jason's quests, helps in them, and in some versions, does the tasks for him. He promises her marriage, so she leaves, When her father chases her down, she kills her brother and drops his body in the sea so her father stops chasing her. Medea gives Jason two sons, and so accomplishes everything a woman of her time should do. Yet when Jason meets a rich younger princess (not even one descended from the gods or even magical), he dumps Medea and tells her to leave with their children so he can set up house with the new woman (with what money? to where? remember she's stolen her father's treasures and killed her brother so her maternal family is out). So she does the only thing that will hurt Jason: kills the children, curses the new wife, predicts his death, and calls on her grandfather, the god of the sun, to give her a ride. What else was she supposed to do?

I only hate The trope because it Presents the women as crazy just because instead of explaining why. It’s a problem I have with the crazy tropes in general in media

I just finished a rewatch of How I met your mother. The original intent was to see if I could pick out the clues about the mother now that I knew the whole story and I kept putting this off. Before I started, I came across this channel's video's on ted, and a few others talking about nice guys and such (like how toxic ross is on friends). What got me to watch the show was a friend of mine who had started and stopped watching their own re-watch of the show after getting out of an abusive relationship, stating they couldn't handle Ted's Narcissism and how much it reminded them of the relationship they just got out of, and so I decided not only to keep an eye out for clues, I wanted to re-watch the show to see how toxic the views were on relationships in general. WOOF! I honestly think the show creators put Barney in there to be an exaggeration of toxicity that Ted would look decent by comparison. The first two episodes show's ted not taking no for an answer, gaslighting Robin, and love bombing her. And you see this toxic behavior throughout the whole show. This show was on for almost 10 years and was normalizing the belittlement of women and referred to male characters as women/girls in a way to belittle them if they did anything that stepped out of line with perceptions of masculinity. It's this kind of shit that socializes men to be assholes and women to accept it, and it even forces women to conform to an idea of how to act, that if the man doesn't respond to it the way the woman has been pressured into accepting it, she is seen as the perpetrator when she snaps from the insanity of these expectations. Two women from the show come to mind, one referred to as BlahBlah until ted finally remembered her name to be Carol at the end of the last season, and the other Jenette, who destroyed teds stuff after he kept gaslighting her (there are some caveats with the fact that she's a cop meaning she was already prone to violent outbursts and being overall an asshole/bastard as can be expected from all cops). With Carol, he was still hung up on Robin and their first meeting, and it's no surprise she reacted the way she did. I can only imagine what she's been through before meeting him. With Jenette, Ted was so lost in his pursuit of "the one" that he was dragging her down into his own downward spiral of expectations that he didn't have the decency to deal with his shit and not get someone else tangled up in it. What I overall see is this society telling people how to act, even subconsciously, and when the cookiecutter fantasy world doesn't match the reality in front of people, it causes them to snap, and we don't have much room for healthy coping mechanisms when dealing with these shattered expectations. So closing this longwinded comment about the subject of the "crazy" ex-girlfriend specifically, what I see is a society that doesn't leave women much, if any wiggle room to deal with all the expectations put on them in all the other aspects of their lives. When someone is fed up with feeling powerless and the frustration of the constant abuse, I'm not surprised at all that people reach their breaking points.

The thing is, like attracts like, so the men were equally immature or mentally unwell. Quite “crazy” is a word to take no responsibility for your own choices.

8:36 Big problem here - Rebecca does not hallucinate, she dissociates. A hallucinating person doesn't know their hallucinations are not real, the fake & real are incredibly blurred. What Rebecca does is dissociate - she is aware that her introspection is not real, and that it is fantasy. It is a RESPONSE to powerful emotions, not controlling her emotions. This distinction is incredibly important to make as not doing so can result in life-changing neglect against those with mental illness, which I myself have witnessed first hand.

Borderline personality disorder is often what caracterize the "crazy ex girlfriend" and it's sad for people who have that disorder to just get called "crazy"

Oh believe me, it exists. Crazy ex boyfriend exist too. It’s not a gender exclusive thing. Though I must say I’m not the biggest fan of this trope you can’t just ignore any and all examples of women or men doing shitty things. It’s overused as hell but it’s a trope for a reason.

‘The Girl on the Train’ still gives me nightmares. The scariest part is not the text but that people may relate to it.

The amount of comments hung up on the "it doesn’t exist" part is baffling. You people realize that they’re talking about movie and tv tropes, right?

She's just a girl in love, doesn't want to be held accountable for her actions.

There's alot of crazy ex bf lol , overplayed and sexist when it comes to women

Awesome. Can you do The Mistress next and how the anger regarding infidelity often gets misdirected towards women, both the other woman and the wife? And what is it about attached Men that is so tempting? With examples like Monica Lewinsky, Joan and Peggy from Mad Men, April Warner and Dee Fillcott from Why Women Kill, and the Pre Code film , need to look it up EDIT: The Smiling Lieutenant

I have seen cases in real life that would normally be called "crazy ex girlfriend" and both cases were from women who were mentally ill and labeling them as "crazy" for some reason was used to downplay who serious was the case. One of them was violent towards her former husband and i refused to call her crazy, i straight up called her an abuser, which is what she was. If the point of the video is saying that reducing unstable behaviour in the word "crazy" is just brushing on the woman´s mental health AND ignoring a possible male victim of some kind of stalking at best and violence at worst

In Hinduism, divorce was virtually unheard of until much later as marriage was seen as a sacrament (like Christianity) and widowed women found it hard to remarry as it would mean relinquishing their ex-husband’s wealth although widowers could marry as much as they wanted. It’s the same everywhere: Marriage is a socially acceptable prison for women.

In iran my country we are more scared of crazy husband or father

I have had an ex pull a knife on me so I definitely know this exists. It does seem like my experience is an anomaly. But the tendency of violence being used toward an ex partner is more prevent along men.

Lilith is the og "crazy" ex-girlfriend

Crazy ex girlfriend/boyfriend is an old trope. The difference is that the crazy ex girlfriend is usually portrayed in comedy movies, whereas crazy ex boyfriend is usually in thrillers, horrors or dramas.

AT LAST!!! It's about time for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to shine in this channel. Btw, I think, in Greek mythology, before Medea, there was Hera, a goddess of marriage, unhappily married, might lose power as a marriage goddess if she divorced unfaithful Zeus.

My momma always told me only actions you can control are your own so never let anyone get you out of your hook up! Also anyone can do crazy things thusly gaining the label crazy and no not the mentally ill just people who lack self control 🤷🏾‍♂️

It's funny how now Princess Diana is only spoken of as this sainted, universally loved, idealized figure, yet I remember at the time the press was actually brutal towards her. Even when what was said about her wasn't itself negative, the media seemed to have this desire to consume this woman, she wasn't allowed a second's peace and not a single action went unscrutinized, to such a point that whether the conclusions of that scrutiny were favorable or not was besides the point. The media was the true "crazy ex" in the Lady Di narrative, chasing her to her death.

Saying that "men makes her crazy" is like saying "she was asking for it", where they remove the accountability they did despite the reasons why and also labelling these women "crazy" and just as is, is where this take gives enlightenment We can't just say that I killed someone by driving onto them while drunk because you just going on a breakup, there's a lot of layers to that than just providing fallacies and not giving these people accountability.

I usually agree 100% with this Chanel and I see some of what they are saying but I had a manic-depressive ex-wife who stalked me at my place of work, lied about me being abusive, tried to get me fired by making a false claim, lied about killing my cat, and then hit on most of my friends. So I'm biased if you say it comes out of nowhere, but I understand stories like these are made to paint woman as irrational. Which is simply untrue. My Ex was just in serious need of extensive medical and psychological attention I couldn't afford to give her... and also a bad person which is unrelated to her mental issues.

I was JUST rewatching CXG episodes yesterday!! What a pleasant surprise, I’ve been waiting for this video for SO LONG

I do think that there are real “crazy” or rather toxic or abusive ex-girlfriends, and that should be taken seriously (it’s interesting how often the trope’s played for laughs) but as the video says it’s far less common than the male variant. People say that men’s worst fear going on a first date with a woman is being laughed at, while women’s worst fear is being killed. I don’t think that’s entirely true, I think they do fear similar things to us, or at least fear a toxic, over possessive partner, but the difference is in how realistic that fear is and therefore how much a part of your life it is. I don’t think think men often get how much of an ever present, background noise fear male violence and abuse is in women’s lives especially in dating. And how genuinely scary it is to decide to trust and be vulnerable with someone who (usually) has both more social and physical power than you, and who isn’t having to take the same level of risk to be in a relationship with you. But it’s also just... a normal part of life. It’s a really weird headspace to live with. I don’t think the “crazy” ex trope can ever really be a joke to women who date men, unless it’s like trench humour. It shouldn’t be a joke when it happens to men either but the trope often seems to be played for laughs in an “imagine if it happened this way round wouldn’t that be weird?” kind of way, or least it appears that way to me.

All my crazy ex’s would agree with you. They didn’t think they were crazy either.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend was such a great show. It did such a good job deconstructing the crazy ex girlfriend trope.

Its almost humorous as to why this trope came to its being. I mean we have to ask ourselves, why is this trope so popular? Sure its because the patriarchy has always been attached to the idea that women are hysterical and irrational, but why doesnt this trope stick to any other relationship with a girl, why is it always with a woman a man has a romantic relationship with. This really all comes back to the insane ego some men have when talking about their sexual and romantic capabilities. Its almost like a trophy that they've collected "oh look at what I made this woman do" he made her crazy. She is so obsessed with him, not because she has mental issues and needs medical care, but he is an almost divine being that leads women to this "craziness", the power he holds over her even AFTER they've broken up is like some sort of finished accomplishment, shes a ruined women and thats that.

I wish I could agree that the crazy ex was a completely made up trope and has no real basis in real life, but due to the constant harassment from my ex that me and my fiance have been getting for the better part of a year, I can only agree that it's way less common and more complex than you see in TV and movies. Great video either way.

Every time you call me crazy I get more crazy What about that? And when you say I seem angry I get more angry...

I could not disagree more about the Jane + Coach beard relationship being a relationship that "works for them", more so I see it as an attempted honest depiction of a mutually toxic relationship, where both people cause eachother intense misery most the time, with sprinkles of compassion and intimacy that only holds them together, because they fear no one else could love them. That relationship is not good for the growth of either person imo.

I love it how you treat all these tropes with the most honest and respectful approach I've seen so far in videos addressing these tropes. And the 'Crazy' Ex-Girlfriend is no exeption indeed.

In Wuthering Heigths isn't Heathcliff Catherine's crazy ex.

When someone says that they have a crazy ex girlfriend it's sort of a joke But when it's a crazy ex boyfriend damn that's literally a life threat

The crazy x does exist I was friends with one. She’s legally on methadone, gets her hit in the morning before work. And she’s a nurse.

There are exes who are very manipulative and want revenge. Their is a radio show in my hometown who has a segment called “Revenge”, where people call in to get payback at someone. There was one episode of the Revenge segment, thus guy “Jerry” called in and was planning revenge on his ex “Gigi”. He said that he and Gigi dated, then broke up, but a month later Gigi calls and tells Jerry that she’s pregnant; Jerry went back to Gigi for the sake of the child, but they ended up losing the baby, so they break up again (Jerry even admits that he doubts that the pregnancy was real). Jerry starts dating someone new and one day, Gigi called his new girlfriend and told her how Jerry had forced her to abort their baby. That segment of Revenge was crazy! So for Revenge, the radio host called Gigi and got her on the phone admitting to the stuff she did (Jerry was on the other line), and Jerry took the transcript and posted it on her Facebook wall. While the “crazy ex girlfriend” can be a trope, for some people it is very much a reality.

The Great Gatsby is a gender reverse Crazy Ex Girlfriend

México, and I would said Latin America, in a nutshell. The fear of being murder by your current or ex boyfriend is real and extremely terrifying -more when most of the murderers are free-, but you still hear about the “crazy ex girlfriends”…

It’s disappointing that you blew past the exploration on Crazy Ex Girlfriend of how Rebecca thought her behaviour was fine because it was expressing 'love' and 'cute' because she was female. This is why they brought in Trent as gender-flipped example, to show that there are different standards for women and men taking accountability for possessive, controlling and gaslighting strategies to win their desired partner regardless of whether or not they have mental health issues. I agree that ‘Crazy Ex’ overall is a sexist stereotype that threatens women into burying basic needs to be seen as ‘cool girl’ and not ‘crazy’, and it’s great to shine a light on it, but speaking in absolutes like there’s no such thing as a crazy female ex because women are always 100% victims of everyone else is reductive and infantalising. Women are absolutely capable of emotional abuse too, and Rebecca does display abusive behaviour toward people throughout the series. Yes Josh Chan is a douchey manchild, but she tried to KILL his grandfather?? The fact she’s mentally ill and/or female doesn’t excuse shit like that, and the show made a point of her taking accountability for herself, whereas this video had the take of ‘Rebecca is a victim of society okay next point’. It’s there in the show’s intro….‘it’s a lot more nuanced than that’.

She probably has BPD . Y’all really need a psychology expert to help out on your Chanel especially when the trope includes something that includes mental health . I saw another video from a psychology channel and the guy said that in films the crazy ex gf has the worst traits of BPD . While in men they portray them more as having psychopathy , all male villains , like mob bosses , and your bond bad guy . Most people who have BPD add usually women , and I have seen it on men before . But people of all sexes & genders have the capability of being awful . Some men are gaslighters and they want to portray women as crazy , but on the flip side if you talk to a lesbian I’m sure some of them have their crazy ex gf stories too .

I mean, Medea wasn't divorced. Jason just wanted a wife with more social standing and was totally willing to keep Medea as a mistress. The play even has her pause to be all 'You care about the kids more than Jason does' and she gets explicit divine aid; admittedly from Hera, arguably THE 'crazy ex' in that she routinely responds to her husband's infidelity with murder.

I suffer from severe BPD and in the past never took medication for it. Hence, I know there are many stories about me being the crazy ex. Now, I live a quiet single life with my cats. Even medicated, I don't think I can handle relationships.

Sometimes people call you crazy just so they don’t have to take ownership for what they did to you

Having BPD does make you feel crazy. Thanks for covering this.

While the word “crazy” is a bit derogatory nowadays, and the behaviors are most definitely not exclusive to just women, the “crazy” ex 100% does exist. Its awful and goes way beyond the normal discomfort of your average break-up. There are a lot of people I’ve known who unfairly call their ex “crazy”, but don’t let it fool you into thinking it doesn’t exist. People will be abusive during the relationship, threaten to stalk/harm/kill the other person when they break up with them, will target their ex’s next partner, will try to scare the person into getting back with them by saying they will kill themselves if the person doesn’t return to them, etc. It is really truly awful for the person who broke up with them and nothing to minimize.

I once had neighbors who told people I was crazy because I didn't do everything they wanted. They no longer live in my building

Crazy Ex Girlfriend was the best show!

If a man uses the adjective "crazy" to describe his ex, usually, there is history of abuse and maybe worse and he uses that adjective to discredit her word. It's funny, isn't it? A man with a "crazy ex girlfriend (even though that doesn't really exist) is annoyed. A woman with a crazy ex boyfriend is dead.

They exist. Believe me.

If a man calls his ex crazy, I'm immediately wondering what he did to her to make her crazy. It should be a red flag, don't jsut believe him

I'm usually with you on all your videos, but this one feels extremely biased. I believe there are both crazy ex gfs and bfs. And some are justified and some are not. To say it doesn't exist is outrageous.

Even Medea got an unfair treatment in her story; first, she was struck by one of Eros's arrows (so she didn't even had control over her own feelings) and consequently had to help Jason against her family's wishes, wich lead her to run away from her homeland with him (risking certain death if she stayed). Jason always relied on her powers and her plans to get what he wanted, and THEN, when she was no use to him anymore, he started courting a local princess (while he was already MARRIED for years with Medea and had two kids with her), planning to keep Medea as HIS MISTRESS all so he could get a royal status! He broke his oath not only to her, but to Hera herself (You know, the goddess of MARRIAGE AND FAMILY??), who was his protector through his adventures! So yeah, I kinda understand why she went mad...

The funny thing is that Medea isn't even seen as wrong in the original series of plays. Her actions are supported by the gods themselves, specifically Hera, because her husband was terrible and deserved it. You watch her story from the beginning, and you can see the manipulation, tragedy, and betrayal she experiences on an intimate level. With the crazy ex-girlfriend trope, you don't see her motivations nor is her pain taken as seriously. She's assumed as going too far and being without justification, and we're expected to accept that at face value. This is true even when it's clear that her ex-partner is pretty awful.

Thanks for this! And I will forever love Princess Diana.

There's huge cultural pressure to cut all ties with anyone that we have been intimate with as soon as the intimacy breaks down. This can be an emotionally brutal experience which can push people to all kinds of destructive behaviour from obsession to suicide. Much of this comes from the old 'the one' trope in which there's an all or nothing aspect to relationships that denies any possibility of simply developing lasting bonds that evolve over time with multiple people... which would be far more nourishing to us as individuals and to society as a whole. The idea that it could be beneficial to acknowledge the existence of an 'ex' is just so alien to the way most people now think that it becomes increasingly unlikely that anyone in a social group would show support for it. Marriage was a contract that dealt with property rights not a social construct for supporting a natural human instinct to seek out exclusivity in physical relationships! Such an instinct doesn't exist in our nature... it is instilled by convention and justified by tradition in direct opposition to actual lived experience. I'm not saying that there isn't a time of life in which it is desirable to 'settle down' rather that for many people such a desire is impermanent or at the very least situationally dependent... it isn't a genuinely heartfelt core motivation... whereas the desire for community really is and it is this that suffers from the rabid, excessive and often entirely unnecessary 'cutting off' of contact from people that we have gotten close to and who have gotten close to us.

Crazy Ex's exist in real life and in fiction and they are both male and female. This video seems to be saying media portrays it harsher against women... um... I think it's perspective. In a romance story or romance subplot 'crazy ex' is often a obstacle, if the main character is male the girl he wants will have a crazy ex boyfriend, like 99.999% of male driven coming of age stories main character is trying to get with a girl but the girl has a crazy ex boyfriend. It seems like this TAKE is either looking at media geared towards women or just ignoring the countless examples of crazy ex-boyfriends.

It should be noted that historically, men could call their wives 'crazy' in order to imprison them in a sanitarium to access their money or as a threat to keep in line. Women had no agency to fight this, usually, a male relative had a right to intervene if they had power within society. Sadly, this tradition continues in many countries to this day

Pretty sure there are many cases proving that the crazy ex gf does exist.

It’s no fun to talk about crazy ex-boyfriend because the end game is to kill the woman,lol

Stop playing, this is an actual real life trope.

One interesting detail about Medea: despite being such an influence on the 'crazy ex girlfriend/wife' trope, the tragedy in which she actually commits filicide treats her as justified in the eyes of the gods. Jason betrayed his oaths to her and the gods (especially Hera, the goddess of just a little thing called *marriage,* and Zeus, the god of *oaths* among other things,) when he tries to court another woman for her status as a princess, since he and Medea are fugitives. Medea survives the play and doesn't really ever get a story about how she died, leaving her ultimate fate up to the imagination while the chorus mocks Jason for thinking any spirits of revenge or justice will heed the demands of an oathbreaker. As for Jason's fate? He dies as Medea prophecizes- crushed under the weight of his only achievement when the rotting prow of the Argo falls on him while he sleeps one night. Medea went on to marry a king while Jason never obtained the throne he married Medea to secure in the first place.

It resinated in me. I am affraid to get mad, as I do not want fighting or getting hurt or the label as an angry woman/on her period. But I had to have a counsler telling me every emotion is okay and should be felt as to deal with it and the source for it

You guys are finally talking in depth about Crazy ex girlfriend

Great to see the mention of Jean Rhys from our small Caribbean island Dominica!