“What’s Something People Romanticize But It’s Actually Horrible?”: 50 People Don’t Hold Back

Baby gender reveals. Just pretentious status and attention chasing that is unnecessary to be separate and additional to a baby shower.

Traditional-looking religions like Amish and Old-School Mennonites. "Imagine living such a simple life! So family focused. So grounded in community. None of the distractions of modern life. "

And yeah. There are some benefits. But in reality most of these communities are incredibly controlling. Their members don't know how to live life in the real world, and this is leveraged against them by threatening to expel people from the community if they don't do what is expected. It is especially oppressive for women, who are expected to obey their husbands and their pastors, have lots of kids, and keep their mouths shut.

Source - my background is Holdeman Mennonite.

Staying in a relationship "for the kids" totally ignoring the trauma those kids deal with seeing a toxic abusive relationship.

The Kardashians.

The "bad boy" trope. There's this tendency for people to glorify dysfunction and romanticise an unhealthy imbalance of impulsiveness, aggression and emotional unavailability. But it's extremely toxic and unsalvageable.

Joker and Harley Quinn couple. I seen so many people think they were in love and not realizing that it was an abusive relationship.

Prestigious_Kale8839:
So much this. If you want a fictional couple to emulate, try Gomez and Morticia.

Homeschooling your children.

Children are supposed to mix with other children.

Fighting for someone's love.

Nah. No means no, there is no such thing as "hard to get".

“Hustle” culture. The “I work so hard I’m making so much money” but what I see is you have no life and only feel worthy if you have money and material things.

Living in other eras throughout history (in particular medieval times), people who fantasise about this seem to think they would have been a wealthy lord or a noble knight rescuing hot maidens every week, when in reality 99% chance they would have been a poor, illiterate peasant working 16 hours a day just to feed themselves and their family before dying from diarrhea aged 40.

Open Marriage - Most guys want to open their marriage until their wife is getting unlimited offers and he sits at home alone watching porn. The wife never wanted to be open, but then his offer lets the genie out of the bottle and the trick is on him!

Any sensationalized mental illness/learning disability. Depression, anxiety, autism, people are getting cute about schizophrenia now.

This isn't 'quirk'. It's lifelong.

War.

haver_of_friends:
My dad told me when I was younger that if I ever wanted to join the military, he’d make me watch Saving Private Ryan. Well, I never enlisted, so he never made me watch it, but I ended up watching it on my own for the first time last week at 25.
Bro, that seen where the German slowly stabs Pvt Mellish in the heart while Upham cries in the stairwell, had to be the most disturbing and emotionally upsetting depiction of war that I’ve seen so far in my life. And to think that people glamorize that lifestyle baffles me.

When a community bands together to help someone out with their medical bills, or workers donate vacation days so a colleague can take time to recover from illness. Nice that they’re doing it, and appalling that they should have to.

spudzilla:
Even worse are the stories of kids running lemonade stands or mowing lawns to help raise money. Child labor! Yay, America!

Constantly being the bigger person to a person who continually disrespects you. It is like slowly drinking poison, it changes your heart for the worse.

plaincoldtofu:
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Either your soul dies slowly as you try to act as the adult to someone who is emotionally a toddler, or you spend your time punching back like you’re getting bullied on a school yard. It seems best to just get out of the situation once you realize the dynamic.

Stalking, “he likes you, isn’t that sweet?” No it’s not. It’s incredibly creepy and terrifying to have someone watch your every move. 

Grand public proposals.

Sheilahasaname:
My ex did this. It was so humiliating, terrifying, and traumatising. He essentially coerced me out of a plane by buying me a skydiving ticket. I'm terrified of heights. Some stuff went wrong and by the time I ended up back at the sight, he had a big sign laid out and hundreds of people watching. I was crying, but not because I was happy.

isthatabingo:
It isn’t bad if they’ve discussed it ahead of time and the one being proposed to has said they are ok with a public proposal. Anyone who proposes to someone without discussing it before hand is stupid imo, and doing it in public not only embarrasses their significant other, but themselves.

I'd say the mob. It's interesting and people talk about the loyalty and "secret society" cool ness of it.
But the reality is most of them were a bunch of greedy sociopaths.

not_today_mr:
The mob and gang life in general. Don't people know how dangerous it is in the first place to them and their friends and family.

Criminals of any kind through pop culture.

rawr_Im_a_duck:
There’s a whole community of mostly teenage girls who have full on crushes and obsessions with school shooters. Supposedly a lot of them receive “fan mail”.

The alpha male creedo. The only people who enjoy alpha males are other alpha males.