Graphic Novel Review: So Much for Love: How I Survived a Toxic Relationship

Author: Sophie Lambda (translation from French by Montana Kane)

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 304

Publish Date: May 2022

Publisher: :01 First Second

Catalog ID: ISBN: 978-1250785992

Where to buy: https://bookshop.org/lists/recently-reviewed-on-graphicmedicine-org

Author website: http://www.sophielambda.com/?lang=en

Review

 by Soph Myers-Kelley

Sophia Lambda in So Much for Love: How I Survived a Toxic Relationship shares the vulnerable truth of her experience dating a manipulative, abusive person with scathing honesty, and jumping off the page emotions. Her art utilizes beautifully soft and embracing lines, and the use of color is perhaps the star of the (visual) show. While most of the art is black and white and grey, Lambda uses one or two bright colors to emphasize the mood of a given scene and the emotions she’s feeling. It makes the images pop and draws your attention to important elements in the book as you look at varying reds, yellows, blues, oranges, and greens.

As for the story, Lambda, a comic artist, meets a celebrity at a party, which eventually sparks a blossoming romantic relationship. Quickly, she is drowned in love-bombing from this man. Marcus Racamier (the pseudonym Lambda chooses for this ex-partner) overwhelms Lambda with texts, affections, deeply thought-out compliments, quality time, physical touch, any love language, you name it! To the point where they become a couple, make plans to move in together, and meet his family.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last very long until manipulative behaviors show up. Whether Marcus is pathologically lying, yelling because a comment Lambda made ticked him off, sharing overwhelming jealousy, or gaslighting, it becomes evident that Lambda needs to make a hard decision. Her conscious, characterized in the graphic novel as an alcoholic brown stuffed bear named Chocolat, is based on a real stuffed animal she kept as a child. Chocolat continues to try and share with Lambda that something is wrong, that she needs to act and stand up for herself.

What makes her book even more admirable (besides already sharing so much about her personal life, including some low lows) is that she uses her experiences to educate the reader on how to spot and avoid manipulative relationships, or how to get out of one if you’re already stuck with a manipulatively behaving partner. She shows readers three stages, idealization, devaluation, and rejection, to watch out for in manipulative relationships. She even includes a “30 criteria to identify a manipulator” list.

Lambda uses the term manipulator to describe what others might describe as psychic vampire, narcissist, or sociopath. She explains that the main separation between these conditions are their cause and the intentions of the individual. So, her list of criteria is generalizable and not necessarily proof of a partner or person having a specific condition. It’s more of a tool you can use if you’re concerned about being in a toxic, manipulative relationship. She further explains that Marcus could have fit all three terms and rather than trying to figure out the right one, she focused on her experience as a victim of his behavior and moved on.

This book emphasizes the worst of partners who show these traits and is not written in the perspective of the narcissistic partner- so its depictions are, of course, one sided and not reflective of a comprehensive look at why these partners might have become this way- what traumas they may have endured to become so jaded. But this book is not meant to cover that experience. What it does is share an example of a real-life toxic relationship, how Lambda got out of it, and how you can, too.

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Soph Myers-Kelley is a medical librarian, herbalist, and activist living in North Carolina. They can be contacted at https://www.smyerskelley.com/ and followed at https://www.instagram.com/sophmyerskelley/

Originally posted at graphicmedicine.org here: graphicmedicine.org/comic-reviews/so-much-for-love-how-i-survived-a-toxic-relationship-2/