There’s nothing like a series of Love Island to highlight how complex and difficult dating and relationships can be — and the fact that absolutely everyone has an opinion on them, always. Part of the reason for this is that what constitutes bad behaviour for one person may be permissible for another in the context of a relationship, because ultimately we are all different in what we are looking for and how we see the world.
The huge caveat here, though, is when this behaviour crosses a line into emotional abuse, which is an issue that some Twitter users are highlighting following last night’s Love Island episode, with regards to the behaviour of Danny Bibby towards another islander, Lucinda Stafford.
First, for the uninitiated, a quick recap: Danny joined the Love Island cast in Friday’s episode, promising to be the “alpha male” of the series. By Saturday, calls on social media for him to be evicted from the island for historical use of racist language prompted the show’s producers to break with the tradition of not allowing islanders to have contact with the outside world by giving Danny the opportunity to issue a statement apologising for his actions. Despite this, many viewers disagreed with the decision to keep him on the show. TLDR: to say he got off to a bad start with viewers on the show would be an understatement.
On Sunday night’s episode he did little to dispel this negative impression after acting in what many described as a controlling way towards Lucinda. Hot off the heels of the recent recoupling — which saw one of the OG islanders, Sharon, leave the island — Aaron Francis pulled Lucinda for a chat. The two had been flirting in recent days, and Aaron had been surprised by Danny’s decision to couple up with Lucinda and wanted to chat to her about it. From the start, Danny was frosty.
Quickly his demeanour flipped to visibly unhappy, shown in shots to be staring at Lucinda and Aaron as they chatted in a way that seemed so hostile it prompted Lucinda to ask Aaron to move somewhere where Danny couldn’t see them. When she later returned to Danny and informed him that Aaron had tried to kiss her, he flipped, calling Aaron a “f-ing mug,” and promising Lucinda he’d go and have a word with him and call him out on being “disrespectful.” It made for quite unsettling viewing in 2021 to watch a man trying to defend the honour of a woman he’d known for 24 hours, though Lucinda said it was “quite hot.” From the outside, it certainly seemed possessive.
Though things seemed to cool the next day, by the evening Danny started issuing ultimatums to Lucinda, pressuring her to make a choice between the two men when she’d already communicated that she wasn’t sure. “I don’t want to invest my time if you’re not feeling it,” he said, “crack on with other people,” before later describing he had a lot of pride and that if someone “mugs him off,” then it’s “game on.” It’s quite coded language but it’s not difficult to find a threat in his words, the subtext of which seems to be — if you reject me, I’ll make you pay. Later, when Danny walked past Lucinda and Aaron chatting and made a disapproving face, Lucinda appeared quite nervous, telling Aaron she thought he looked “fuming.”
As writer Paula Akpan tweeted,“Lucinda is already visibly fearful of this guy and it’s been like 48 hours,” to which a lot of others responded either with red flag emojis or repeating similar concerns. So should we be concerned about his behaviour? And does it mean, as many are speculating online, that he has the traits of an abuser?
While it’s true that possessiveness, control and an easily triggered temper are all quite classic signs of an abusive personality, it’s too soon to extrapolate just yet, and I would caution against anyone throwing the word “abuser” around, as it’s not only a big accusation — but could also trivialise the experience of survivors.
Nonetheless, there are certainly some worrying signs this early on in the coupling — often referred to as ‘red flags’ — that we must pay attention to. As Women’s Aid describes, abuse is “an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence.” When it comes to emotional abuse, and particularly coercive control, it tends to be a slow-burning process in which boundaries are consistently broken down or challenged over a long period of time, so it would be far too early in this case to make such a claim. Others online leapt to his defence, saying Aaron had shown Danny no respect and that it was therefore reasonable to react that way.
Nonetheless, other behaviours that should be paid attention to are Danny’s extreme description of his “pride” being sacrosanct to him, and the suggestion that anyone that crosses him would be made to pay, which could be read as a warning of the kind that indirectly causes people to behave in the way he wants in order to avoid facing the consequences. Moreover, the fact that he is quite openly hostile and quickly aggressive are also bad signs, as they suggest that he is quite jealous. Despite telling Lucinda he understood she was keeping her options open, his behaviour has repeatedly suggested that he finds this to be an affront to his ego. Within such a short period of knowing each other, such an extreme position is certainly concerning.
Taken alongside the historic social media activity he has since apologised for, it would be easy to make assumptions about his behaviour, but it is simply too early to reach any sort of definitive conclusion, especially given how heavily edited the episodes are. Ultimately, time will tell if these early problematic reactions and interactions with Lucinda are the sign of a deeper pattern of controlling and manipulative behaviour. I hope for the islanders’ sake, that the producers are paying close attention.