“How Will I Know” if it’s Healthy or Toxic Love? Whitney Houston Lyrics Answer This Question

Whitney Houston Photo credits goes to this Flickr user. The heart and background image are added.

Next year, Feburary 11, 2022, will mark the 10th anniversary of Whitney Houston's death. In year nine since her passing, I'm celebrating her as a human being who loved and desired to be loved in return.

Romantic love has its ups and downs, so I have discovered from the time I first heard these five songs as a teenager. I choose to celebrate the happy feelings these lyrics depict. However, I also use them as a guide. Even today, they help me identify healthy versus toxic love traits.

1. “How Will I know”

Written by George Robert Merrill / Narada Michael Walden / Shannon Rubicam

This question crosses most of our minds when dating, am I right?

This song came out when I was a teenager and just beginning to learn what love is. It hit the charts at the perfect time for me. It still played on the radio when I was in high school in 1989, four years after its original release date.

It does hint on the idea that what we feel might be love, but it does warn us that we can’t always trust our feelings. At the same time, we can enjoy the "rush" that the first stages of being "in love" gives us.

“How Will I Know” became especially useful when dating in high school after my first breakup with someone I genuinely felt what I believe now was love even if it didn’t last. Whether the relationship works out or not, this song helps you decide if it was love in the first place.

2. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”

Written By Shannon Rubicam / George Robert Merrill

When this song released in 1987, I was in junior high and loved to go to school dances. It still played two years later when I was a freshman in high school and danced with a boy for the first time. Growing up, I always felt there’s few things in life as satisfying than sometimes feeling “the heat with somebody” on the dance floor.

It describes the kind of romantic attraction associated with lust or infatuation that should not be mistaken for genuine admiration. On the other hand, a relationship starting out with a strong attraction can develop into love. It at least isn’t “toxic” yet because it barely started – just dancing on the dance floor. Innocent enough it is, right?

In this case, we just have to take it slow and get to know one another to find out if our "dance partner" is someone we can also have as a life partner. Give it time to find out if it's healthy love. It could be.

3. “I Will Always Love You”

Written by Dolly Parton

It’s a Dolly Parton Remake, but the way Whitney confidently projects every note of it from the heart fascinates me. However, the bittersweet message of this song leaves me nothing but pain right now because I'm newly single -- again.

In spite of my personal feelings that resent these "goodbye" lyrics, I grade it as less toxic than other romantic scenarios.

After all, it at least involves two single people not in an illicit affair. Otherwise, I'd rate it a big fat "10" on the toxic scale with 10 being the most toxic based on my feelings. That would not be a realistic rating. I'm just sick of this kind of "sad love" scenario, but unfortunately, it does happen.

Here's why I hate this song so much right now. I'm a 47-year-old woman never been married who’s tired of being alone, I don’t much care for the message of having no choice but to leave someone I love. For that reason, when I leave someone who I cannot be with, it’s usually of the “F— off” variety versus “I hope life treats you kind” and that I’m wishing you “joy and happiness, but above all this, I wish you love.”

The only way I'd be okay with the "goodbye love" ever again is if it was a romantic partner I was in a relationship with or married to for many years. Maybe by the time the person was to pass away, that I can accept.

I will admit however, when Whitney's version of "I Will Always Love You" first came out, I was much younger and more optimistic.

I for some reason in my early 20s could stomach that loss of love depicted in "The Bodyguard." But that's because I thought I'd find the kind of love I wanted by now. So even if it was "true love" in the movie, honestly, at this point, I really don't give a sh--. I'm no longer in the business of losing love. I need it around me and don't want to give it up if I don't have to unless the person is dying. I'm too old for this juvenile crap.

However, I must say that it was perhaps a healthy kind of love while it lasted in the movie.

4. “Saving all My Love For You”

Written by: Gerry Goffin / Michael Masse

I don’t make it a habit of falling in love with married men I can’t have, which this song describes. Nevertheless, I identify with the excruciation of all too often wanting a man who’s still single but still in love with an ex. This song helps me not feel so bad about falling prey to emotionally unavailable people. I'm not the only one who does.

"Saving all My Love for You" also shows a desperation that I aspire to upgrade from as I continue to believe for at least one mutually loving romantic union in my lifetime.

This song was first released in 1985. Back then, I thought I was too good to be the kind of person who would end up in love with a someone who couldn't be there for me the way I needed and wanted him to be. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I feel prey to that trap.

"Saving all My Love for You" reminds me that nothing good can come from becoming involved with an emotionally unavailable partner. It doesn't matter if the person is married or single. It's all the same bull. That one you think you're in love with, that individual will never be there for you or love you the way you want or need.

I say find someone who can be there for you like some of these people are for their current or former long-term partners or spouses. That's what I plant to do. Gone are pining over someone I can't have!

5. “So Emotional”

Steinberg William E / Kelly Thomas F

I've been hearing your heartbeat inside of me

I keep your photograph beside my bed

Livin' in a world of fantasies

I can't get you out of my head

I've been waiting for the phone to ring all night

Why you wanna make me feel so good

I got a love of my own baby

I shouldn't get so hung up on you

Oh I remember the way that we touch

I wish I didn't like it so much

--As Sung by Whitney Houston

Need I say more? "So Emotional" embodies everything that toxic love stands for -- but it realistically describes the human condition when loving someone we can no longer have if we ever had the person at all.

Reminder: Whitney did not write this or any of the other songs on this list. She played a part when she acted out the lyrics on stage. However, it seems that many of her love songs played out some of the toxicity that might have occurred in her marriage. This does not make Whitney a bad person by any means. It just reminds us that we're all human and often conditioned to embrace whatever kind of love we can get rather than be alone.

Of all Whitney's Late 1980s hits, this one released in 1987 should, according to me, receive the number one most toxic love song of hers. It to me is a milder way of what Alice Cooper sung just two years later: "I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison."

Back to Whitney, and "So Emotional," this song describes a love that we all wish we had, but it's based on fantasy. We might miss a person who is not right for us. There's also the pathetic waiting by the phone that we need not do if we don't want to appear too desperate -- especially if the relationship is really over.

What These Five Whitney Songs Teach Us About Love

It's not that all the lyrics of the above songs describe just toxic traits of love. However, they do show us a number of situations in which we try to have relationships with people in unlikely scenarios. If we would learn to find someone who is available right now for the kind of relationship we want, we wouldn't have to go through so much pain. We'd just be able to meet, fall in love, and get married.

If only life were that simple, right? Maybe it can be.