Not To Make This About Me Or Distract From This Post Or Anything But Also Oh God Thats Michelle Wheeler Right There - Tumblr Posts
One simple trick to make it obvious that Mike and El don't have a healthy relationship:
Switch their genders. Imagine that El is a GUY with superpowers. And Mike is a GIRL who feels like a nobody next to him.
Why would this amazing guy ever like her? She doesn't deserve him. She's just some random person who happened to catch his eye.
(Pics by u/alwaysbi and from Reddit)
He heightens her feeling of inadequacy. Yet she can't imagine losing her superhero boyfriend, because her sense of self-worth depends on having this guy.
She must make sure he DOESN'T LEAVE HER. Loving him as a person is less on her mind than her fear that he will leave her. (Mike literally spends more time thinking and talking about El leaving him than about her being hunted by part of the government.)
When the time comes, it's chaotic and our superhero is in danger of dying. She genuinely doesn't want him to die. But in her love confession, she says that he is HER superhero. She still views him as better than her. She looks UP to him and admires him from below.
Their relationship has never been about them being in love with the other person, but with the IDEA of the other person, the IDEA of a conventional "happy" relationship. And in this case, one where she sees herself as the lesser half of the two.
And still, after her confession of love, he is barely talking to her! For his own reasons (in El's case, probably healthy ones), the superhero seems to have moved on. The girl's fear of losing him was actually well-grounded.
The unhealthiness of Mike and El's relationship is disguised by the fact that the show switches the usual dynamic in real-life opposite-sex couples, where often it's the girl who feels inadequate and undeserving of the guy.
We know the show DID pull back the veil at one point: Mike refers to himself as Lois Lane and El as Superman in describing how he feels:
The writers deliberately chose these words to make clearer the unhealthy unequal dynamic in the Mileven relationship. (As well as hint that Mike might like boys. =D )
Hey Mike! There IS someone who loves you exactly for being you, and unconditionally...
-teambyler