Many of the relationships in WoT have no build-up, are ridiculously one-sided, and would be completely unworkable in real life. Take Rand and his ladies, for example. The only one who got even a bit of foreshadowing was Elayne, and that was limited to one single week of kissing in corners. Most people here in our world wouldn't even call that a relationship in their freshman year of highschool. Then after that single week, they separated for nearly a year, and the very next time they saw each other they got married. Right. The other ladies didn't even get that much foreshadowing; Min was treated like a stranger and Aviendha as an enemy, until both said "oh btw let's get married." Avi has some standing of her own and doesn't necessarily need Rand for social status, but Min is basically riding his coat tails. Similar to how Gawyn has limited standing on his own (he's the first prince of the sword, but that's basically a glorified general, whose role Birgitte has filled, and Elayne is getting on just fine without him); his attachment to Egwene, and more generally to the Tower, is the only thing that actually makes him matter.

You could draw similar parallels to AS and their Warders. Almost none have had any foreshadowing to their relationships and have power balances tilted heavily to one side. Por ejemplo, Mo and Lan, who were enemies until Mo said "btw let's bond". Or Merise, Daigian, Beldeine, and all the other AS with Ashaman warders: all of them barely knew their bondees before bonding them, and most treat their "partners" like crap. Or Myrelle and Lan, who didn't know each other at all, got pushed into the relationship by factors which were unusual if not necessarily out of their control, and then had a highly one-sided relationship in which Myrelle actually tried to prevent Lan from doing something which could save his life (ie protecting Nynaeve) in order to preserve her control of him. And let's not even get into Berelain and Perrin (and Galad), Valan Luca and what's-her-face, Tuon and Mat, or the whole Women's Circle versus Village Council nonsense that seems to govern the 2R. Truth be told I don't have a lot of sympathy for Gawyn, because he was a moron to side with Elaida in the first place, and during ToM he treated Egwene at least as disrespectfully as she treated him, but given how Maury-like most Randland relationships are, he could have done a lot worse.

Anyway, long story short, Egwene and Gawyn have a jacked up relationship, but that is not unusual in the series. The lack of foreshadowing, one-sidedness of the relationship, stupidity of the partners, and disrespect inside the relationship, are endemic to relationships in Randland.