By Zoe Hyde
Why are women compelled to always be the saviour? And what does it really say about our relationship with ourselves?
In Taylor Swift’s newest album, The Tortured Poets Department (a moment for this title, please), she sings the precise lyrics that so many women, myself included, have found themselves living:
“They shake their heads saying, ‘God help her’, When I tell them he’s my man, But your good Lord doesn’t need to lift a finger, I can fix him, no, really I can…And only I can.”
Ah, yet another Swift song seemingly written directly about my personal life. How did she know?
Furthermore, the recent popularity of Mike White’s genius show The White Lotus — particularly the interesting dynamic between the couple Rick and Chelsea — made me feel very seen. Chelsea, evidently much younger than her partner Rick Hatchett, tries with endless hope, desperation, and, at times, delusion, to rescue him from the intensity of his internal mental torment. In response, Rick treats her with a sense of disposal and zero gratitude or sensitivity. To viewers, it’s clear their relationship is unhealthy.
It has left me in deep consideration of how many people — myself included — have danced with romantic heroism, where we’re with someone to save and fix them, to the point that it becomes our purpose. What does it say, in fact, about the relationship we have with ourselves?
Are Chelsea and Rick the Healthiest White Lotus Couple? – TIME
Many people think they will never enter a toxic relationship dynamic — until they suddenly find themselves in one. Sometimes, people can’t even recognise it until the experience is in the distant past. There is limited public research on why and how such relationships come about and persist, and even less on the victims who engage in them and this supposed urgency in the quest for romantic heroism.
For me, I often analyse a very significant romantic relationship I had several years ago with someone I met overseas, who then travelled to Australia to be with me. It was an all-consuming, intoxicating relationship. Some of the greatest moments of my life happened with this person: riding motorbikes and eating endless street food in Vietnam, watching sunsets in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, trekking through glow worm caves in the Gold Coast Hinterland, and exploring the chaos of the outer suburbs of Bangkok.
But there were also moments of jealousy, addiction, manipulation, gaslighting, and threats. It was an unpredictable dynamic between us — tumultuous and unexpected — but it was our dynamic. I saw the good in him. I knew he wasn’t a bad person. He just did bad things. Or so I thought.
I’ve seen other women in my life endure the mental bruises of similar toxic relationships. I could see it all objectively — it was so obvious to me that they urgently needed to leave their boyfriends. Yet I couldn’t do that for myself. It’s almost as if I argued my circumstances were different, even though I feared deep down that they weren’t. I told myself a story — a story about how he was a good person and I needed to be there for him.
But, as the saying goes, you cannot save someone who does not want to be saved — or worse, doesn’t see any issues within themselves, even when those issues are leading to their own demise.
When researching for this article, I explored the archives to discover why and how toxic relationships begin, persist, and become the most painful and heart-wrenching to recover from. And why are so many women attracted to men, often with narcissistic traits, whom we also feel responsible to rescue?
I’m not saying romantic relationships should exist without support—not at all—but the difference is that healthy relationships are built on mutual respect, kindness, and a sense of independence or interdependence, rather than co-dependence. I’m also not saying all perpetrators in toxic relationships are narcissistic or psychopathic. But, when researching, I discovered the following:
Women who’ve experienced such turbulent relationships often describe the beginning as loving, attentive, and addictive. People with psychopathic traits have an advanced ability to lie without remorse, shame, or fear, and they can detect other people’s vulnerability with great precision. They also possess heightened skills to gain trust and then use sensitive information to coerce and control their victim, eroding their self-esteem and manipulating them into staying.
Toxic relationships are centred around instability. The toxic individual holds all the dominance and control, swinging between extreme highs and devastating lows.
Ongoing breakups and reconciliations are common. Dr. Lenore Walker (2017) describes this cycle in three phases: (1) tension-building; (2) acute battering incident; and (3) loving contrition. Once the foundation is laid in the honeymoon phase, bad behaviour gradually escalates. Apologies and begging often follow, with the abuser reframing the incident around their own trauma, to the point that the victim ends up consoling them.
Hope is restored. The cycle repeats.
Stakes get higher, begging gets louder, and time passes. This is how a trauma bond is forged. The victim consciously chooses to remain with the person causing them harm, clinging to the hope of change. Someone caught in romantic heroism may experience anxiety at even the thought of separation. Co-dependency is born. The victim self-sacrifices for the perceived greater good of the other person, and seeks their approval.
Of course, there’s more to it. Certain childhood experiences and personality types make some more predisposed to maladaptive relationship strategies — but you get the gist.
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So, why stay with the person? Why feel the need to repair their broken soul?
When researching narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), I came across this: “[Those with NPD can be] boastful, self-centered, and domineering in conversation. They may act in a pompous or exhibitionistic manner, always seeking attention and admiration in an arrogant or even bossy fashion, or, at times, in an eccentric, larger-than-life show of entitlement” (Lay, 2019, p. 310).
Admittedly, this can be magnetising. Again, I go back to seeing the best in someone, and often, those attracted to narcissistic individuals have lower self-esteem and a shaky relationship with themselves. That vulnerability is detectable.
When someone is bright and charismatic, it’s enchanting. You fall in love with not just who you think they are, but their potential. Future trips, pets, children’s names, recipes… it becomes like an unwritten contract, and you feel indebted to the relationship.
In unhealthy relationships, people often overshare deeply personal stories to gain empathy. This creates an illusion of a deep connection. And then, how can you walk away from someone who’s been so vulnerable with you?
Saviourism can also be a distraction from our own trauma and challenges. Focusing on someone else’s brokenness provides a false sense of purpose. To leave them would feel like personal failure — not just of the relationship, but of your own ability to fix them.
We may even attack anyone who questions the relationship.
From the beginning of time, women have been conditioned to be ‘nice’, to be liked. Think of how often women are called ‘bossy’, ‘annoying’, or ‘bitchy’ — and how rarely those same labels are applied to men. Society conditions women not to be too much, too loud, or too opinionated. We’re still romanticised as aspiring to marriage, motherhood, and caretaking roles.
This only reinforces the idea that our purpose is to be the steady one — the buoy, keeping troubled men afloat.
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When the relationship ends, the romantic saviour — the one who endured the torment — must rebuild not only themselves but also their other relationships. Many admit they’re left with embarrassment and frustration, doubting their own intuition. They move through the world differently: less trusting, more cautious, and often hyper-dependent.
It is good and sacred to be there for someone, and connection, especially in vulnerability, is deeply human. But the most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself.
After all, as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are. And you cannot support, fix, or heal anyone who not only doesn’t want to be saved, but is pulling you under with them.
So, how does it all happen?
To put it simply: a charming deceiver meets someone vulnerable, someone unconsciously drawn to trouble, in pursuit of fixing it, and the perfect sorcerer’s spell of romantic heroism is cast.
I still think about you. A part of me still longs to see you, have one of our conversations about politics, travel, and adventure. To laugh with you. Even to just watch a Quentin Tarantino film again. Even though you made me feel like a shell of a person. There is so much good in you, somehow I still think and see this. But I know the science behind my madness. And with that, I can protect myself from falling back into the addictive dance of seeing the best in you, of being in love with your potential. I will always want the best for you, and I don’t want life to be dark, gloomy chapters after chapters for you. But, as the song goes:
“…I can fix him, no, really I can (no, really I can) Whoa, maybe I can’t…”
