I don't know, how can a relationship where you support each other your entire life be toxic?? I understand who liked Seth more but if you really think about it I think that would be more toxic a relationship where you are constantly compared to the first love of your love because you look alike
Henry's relationship with Seth was absolutely toxic for him but on some level, they both knew that and went with it.
Sam KNEW that Henry blamed himself for his accident and for ruining his baseball career and Sam still waited years to tell him that he never really liked baseball nor wanted it as a career. What's even crazier is that Sam was really going to go into a baseball career for Henry. Yo, that's crazy. Because of his feelings for Sam, the only real relationship Henry ever had was with Seth. And Henry's primary support system is Sam's family. I'm not calling Sam a toxic person but clearly, their relationship with each other stunted them both in a lot of ways. In real life, you'd call their relationship an unhealthy emotional dependency.
I wouldn't call a real relationship the one in which just one of you is in love and the other one is just trying to catch up with your feelings and treat you good just because you are a really good person and because he would have wanted to be treated that way by the person he really love.
Besides, yes their relationship is a bit messed up but at the end of the day it's just normal if you think that one of them is so dense that can't even recognize his own feelings for his best friend and the other one is just so scared of loving and losing his first love that even knowing that his feelings were reciprocated he never said anything and even let him get married without a word. I have to say that when I found out that he always knew I was really mad.
It's not really that I like Seth more(I do though). I think it's more that I just didn't really like Sam. Sam wasn't a bad character or a jerk I just... couldn't connect with him? I don't know. I just didn't feel like this was Henry AND Sam's story. I also don't feel like I ever understood Henry's love for Sam.
Obviously, you go into stories like this and you know who the main couple is. And the whole story is setting you up to want them together but I never really wanted them together. The more I learned about Sam, the more I thought he was just kind of toxic for Henry.