In 2025, the relationships that dominated our screens weren’t selling us healthy love. They were defined by longing, ambivalence, rivalry, and instability, and somehow that was exactly why they worked.
What made these relationships so enticing was the toxicity recognized by millions. It felt relatable.
The push-pull. The hope. The magnificent almosts. The heartbreak. The fantasy that love, if intense enough, could heal old wounds.
Here is a look at the most enticing on-screen relationships of 2025 and the attachment dynamics driving them.
Tell Me Lies
Before it becomes volatile and destructive, Lucy and Stephen’s relationship emerges through chemistry, proximity, and intensity.
Raised by a narcissistic, erratic mother who gaslights, invalidates, and torments him, Stephen learns that vulnerability is dangerous and love is transactional. Because emotional exposure feels unsafe, his feelings are controlled, suppressed, or strategically deployed. What appears as charm or confidence is a survival strategy, and his composure is the result of emotional detachment.
Lucy enters the relationship carrying unresolved grief after her father’s death. His loss destabilizes her sense of safety and leaves her angry, unmoored, and deeply disappointed in her mother. The person who once anchored her emotionally is gone, and the remaining attachment figures feel unreliable. In that void, Stephen becomes a focal point, a source of intensity that gives her grief a place to land.
Stephen maintains power through emotional withholding, distortion, and deliberate unpredictability. Lucy responds by trying harder, doubting her own perceptions, and slowly losing access to her judgment. He reframes events, minimizes harm, and subtly denies her reality until she begins to question her memory and reactions. Breadcrumbing keeps her invested through brief moments of closeness that promise repair but never deliver it. Over time, she becomes disconnected from her instincts and increasingly unsure of what she feels versus what she is told to feel.
This relationship captures how trauma bonding forms when one person’s emotional shutdown meets another’s unresolved grief. The bond feels intense because it temporarily numbs pain while creating more damage.
Heated Rivalry
Heated Rivalry offers a version of attachment wounding that is tightly contained rather than openly destructive. Shane and Ilya’s affair feeds off competition, banter, sexual tension, and secrecy, all of which allow closeness without emotional exposure. The relationship can exist only as long as it remains hidden.
In elite, hyper-masculine performance cultures like professional sports, emotional withdrawal is normalized. Not being self-revealing and not needing support are treated as signs of strength. In these environments, sex without attachment is normalized. Physical closeness without commitment or emotional risk protects masculinity. As long as the dynamic remains playful, competitive, and slightly adversarial, deeper attachment needs remain buried. Emotional distance is maintained through deflection and humor.
Competition feels safer than vulnerability, and aggression and dominance are more acceptable than emotional openness. Within that context, secrecy becomes a safe container rather than a red flag. It protects public identity, preserves power, and prevents visibility that would require emotional accountability.
As long as both men continue to perform and succeed on the ice, the emotional cost of the relationship remains unexamined. Performance becomes a cover for avoidance.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah form one of the most revealing attachment triangles on television. Conrad is the classic grief-stricken avoidant, emotionally withdrawn and hard to reach, while Jeremiah offers warmth, availability, and reassurance. Belly oscillates between them out of competing attachment needs, and we watch her slowly unravel from a relatively secure attachment style into self-doubt and insecurity.
Attachment Essential Reads
Conrad represents intensity, depth, and the fantasy of being chosen by someone unreachable. Jeremiah represents safety, attunement, and presence. What makes this triangle so compelling is that it captures a version of love many viewers have lived while exposing the moment when wanting love begins to cost someone their sense of self.
The triangle works because it captures one of the most common internal conflicts driven by attachment wounding. Familiar pain can feel more trustworthy than secure connection, and intensity can be mistaken for intimacy, especially when safety feels unfamiliar or undeserved.
Outer Banks
JJ and Kiara’s relationship is built on loyalty, survival, and endurance. Trust is not assumed. It is earned slowly. JJ consistently tests the relationship to see if Kiara will still be there. Sometimes he deliberately pushes her away with volatility and impulsivity. Each time, she shows up anyway, and he begins to trust her.
JJ’s early attachment history is defined by neglect, violence, and chronic instability. Love, for him, is often followed by loss or punishment. Closeness and stability feel threatening, and connection feels like it could disappear at any moment. His risk-taking, recklessness, and volatility are survival responses.
Kiara is pulled into a familiar role for many partners of trauma survivors, where she becomes the stabilizer, the one who stays steady while the relationship revolves around managing emotional fallout.
What makes this pairing so compelling is that it captures how attachment wounding can turn loyalty into proof of love. Kiara’s devotion becomes evidence that the bond is real, even as her own needs are increasingly deferred.
This relationship reflects how trauma can turn romance into a survival pact. What looks like ride-or-die love is often two nervous systems trying to stay regulated inside a world that never taught one of them safety.
Across television in 2025, the relationships that held our attention were rarely examples of secure connection. Instead, they reflected attachment patterns shaped by loss, instability, and unmet needs. Whether rooted in grief, power imbalance, survival, rivalry, or family loyalty, these stories reveal how early coping mechanisms impact adult relationships. We are often drawn to what feels familiar, even when it hurts. Through these fictional relationships, viewers are able to recognize the pain of their own attachment wounds in ways they do not yet allow themselves to feel.
