Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker vow to 'destroy each other completely.' Is this healthy love?
New couple Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker have a goal for their relationship: to destroy each other completely. The drummer, 45, shared a love note Feb. 20 to Instagram that his reality star girlfriend wrote him, in which she wrote the ruinous message, which she signed-off with love and a drawn-out heart.
The message echoes one that Barker tweeted out a few days prior.
May we destroy each other completely
— Travis Barker (@travisbarker) February 17, 2021
The promise of wreckage is certainly not the brightest, but it's one that's actually pretty popular, partially thanks to pop culture. One example is a famous line from Grey’s Anatomy that puts it plainly: “It wouldn’t be love if it didn’t [destroy you],” Derek Shepherd says to his sister as she is just beginning to fall in love with a fellow doctor. There's also Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball," the music video famously featuring the singer performing her ballad on top of an actual wrecking ball. "I came in like a wrecking ball / I never hit so hard in love / All I wanted was to break your walls / All you ever did was wreck me / Yeah, you, you wreck me," the chorus goes. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts even have a song titled "Love Is Pain," featuring the lyrics, "We are not to blame / For seeing love is pain / And we are not ashamed / To say that love is pain! / And we'll do it agai-ain."
Despite the mainstream references, experts caution against wrapping love and pain together.
“We’ve been taught that 'love is pain' and in order to receive the love we desire we must be willing to go through hell and high waters in order to reach the point in our daily lives and relationships where we experience true joy and bliss,” says Amira Johnson, MSW, a clinician at Berman Psychotherapy. While this way of thinking isn’t intentional, it does more harm than good. “Rather than meaningfully connecting with others, we often choose chaos and destruction and reframe that as love. We don’t make the necessary intentions of allowing ourselves to be truly vulnerable and peel back layers of ourselves to create an environment that fosters a truly loving relationship."
Terri Cole, psychotherapist and author of Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen and (Finally) Live Free, agrees, saying “real, healthy love is giving your person the power to destroy you but trusting they won’t.” According to Cole, healthy love starts with boundaries. “Healthy love is boundaried love. Period. Healthy love is not destructive and that 'destroying each other completely' should not be aspirational,” she says. In fact, Cole explains that love that focuses on destruction shouldn't be considered love at all, rather she'd consider it "trauma bonding," which is a relationship with disordered boundaries and behavioral patterns that cycle from high highs to low lows and ultimately the cycle is a cycle of abuse.
But not all is lost if you have fallen into this trap of thinking love should hurt. Johnson believes that those who are in relationships where they set the intention to “destroy each other” need to remember two things. “First, words are powerful and that which you speak has the ability to become the reality you experience and two, in the process of destroying one another you may risk tearing each other apart so deeply that ultimately you run the risk of never experiencing the joy and bliss that comes with a true, real and healthy relationship,” she says.
At the end of the day, both Cole and Johnson agree that love definitely should not involve destruction. “Love is a combination of care, trust, recognition, honesty, open communication, affection and the ultimate desire to help yourself or someone else evolve spiritually,” Johnson says, adding “love is not destructive, narcissistic, physically and emotionally painful nor chaotic.”
So while Kardashian and Barker might be happy — and good for them if they are! — their message should be read by others not as aspirational, rather with a grain of salt.
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