Lessons I Learned About Toxic Love From ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’

If you haven’t seen Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile yet, it’s available on Netflix now. It stars Zac Efron as Ted Bundy and Lily Collins as his long-term girlfriend, Liz Kendall.

Don’t expect to go into the film seeing blood and gore at every turn, because this is more about the story of a woman falling for the wrong guy without realizing it until much too late.

Here are a few things I personally learned from watching Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile:

Just because someone treats you well, it doesn’t mean they’re a good person.

Your person might treat you like you’re the most valuable gem in the world — and that’s wonderful — but watch how they treat your waiters and your bartenders and your friends. If they’re horrible to everyone else, they might turn around and be horrible to you one day. Even if they always treat you like a queen, do you really want to spend your life with someone who makes everyone else miserable?

When you have a bad gut feeling about someone, you shouldn’t ignore it.

Spoiler Alert: Liz is the one who gave the police Ted’s name. That means there was a part of her that believed he was capable of extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile acts from the very beginning.

If there’s even a tiny little piece of you that wonders whether your person has been manipulating you and does not deserve your love, don’t ignore the thought. Don’t blindly continue forward, pretending everything is fine.

When everyone warns you about the person you’re dating, you should probably listen.

Some people have no idea what they’re talking about. They might be wrong about your person’s bad reputation or they might be jealous of your relationship or they might be trying to cause drama.

However, if every single person in your life has been warning you this person is no good for you, you should at least take their warnings into consideration. They must be seeing something you’re not seeing.

Loving someone toxic can destroy you — even after the relationship ends.

It takes a long time to heal from a toxic relationship. Even after you cut someone toxic out of your life and stop answering their phone calls, it’s going to be hard to get over the baggage they left behind.

You might drink more than you should. You might skip work more than you should. You might mope in bed more than you should. You might become a shell of the person you once were.

Just because someone is attractive, it doesn’t mean they’re a good catch.

There’s more to a relationship than physical attraction. Even though someone might cross off everything on your list when it comes to their looks, you still have to get to know them before deciding you want them to have your babies.

On top of their dashingly good looks, you should make sure the person you’re dating is also sweet, responsible, respectful, thoughtful, can make you laugh, and is not a mass murderer.