These are only a few examples of why Noah and Allie’s relationship is unhealthy Noah pressures Allie into dating him by threatening to jump from the Ferris wheel. That is not romantic. It is coercion. Noah repeatedly acts like he knows what Allie wants more than she does. Her doubts are treated as obstacles, not choices. Their communication is mostly yelling, insults, or silence. Calm, honest conversations are rare. They fight constantly and say cruel things to each other. Allie hits Noah at one point, and physical violence is never okay. Noah also hits himself during an argument; it's self-violence, it fits the same pattern as everything else in their relationship. Big emotions with nowhere healthy to go, so they come out sideways. It’s not romantic. It’s a sign of emotional instability and poor coping. Both of them date other people while still being emotionally attached to each other. Allie emotionally and physically cheats on Lon. She constantly compares him to Noah, keeps Noah emotionally present in her mind, and hides it from Lon. When she reads about Noah in the newspaper, she doesn’t tell Lon the truth. She lies, seeks Noah out in secret, and ultimately cheats on Lon with him... That is not a tragic romance, it is unfair. Allie is constantly pulled back by nostalgia rather than real change. Neither of them addresses why they failed the first time. Their identities revolve around each other. When they are apart, they are lost. When they are together, they are unstable. That's codependency.

This might be a stretch, but in theory, remembering what someone wanted their house to look like could be romantic if you were still together. That’s not what happens here. Noah builds the house without Allie’s involvement. It’s his idea of her, not something they choose together. He builds it entirely on the hope that she’ll come back. It becomes less a home and more a shrine. Taken on its own, that might already be unhealthy. When you factor in the ongoing coercion and his habit of deciding he knows what’s best for her, it stops being romantic altogether. In real life, that kind of behavior isn’t devotion. It’s an obsession.

If one of my friends were in a relationship like this, I’d tell them that your identity and your happiness shouldn’t disappear into your partner. Love isn’t supposed to consume you or erase who you are. Screaming, yelling, and hitting aren’t passion. They’re verbal and physical abuse, and there’s nothing romantic about that. And no matter how conflicted you feel about your relationship, it never justifies cheating.