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Enemies to lovers trope5/7/2023 I need more gender nonconforming friends-to-lovers arcs. I need more wlw and mlm friends-to-lovers arcs. It’s the most relatable of all the romance arcs, and quite frankly there aren’t enough books that teach us how to navigate that grey area between friendship and relationship. I don’t know about you, but almost every crush I’ve ever had was on one of my friends.Īnd that’s why I need more friends-to-lovers romance arcs out there. Done right, friends-to-lovers is a breathless, anxiety-inducing, will-they won’t-they, finely crafted romantic arc that introduces a supportive, self-sacrificing power couple that’s been dominating the story before they ever shared their first kiss. They want to give this a shot, but you’re afraid to ruin the friendship. You’re single, but they’re in a relationship. And a good friend, a true friend, will watch you have other crushes and want nothing more than for you to be happy… even if it’s not with them, even if they have to swallow their own jealousy to be the support system that you need.Īll too often, friends-to-lovers is a story of missed connections. But a friend? You still have to see each other tomorrow and the day after that.įriends-to-lovers is the ultimate slowburn of ‘ships, because you first have to establish a rich friendship before you work romantic tension into it in order to make it believable that these two friends have any chemistry together at all. Did he/she/they say you look beautiful because you look beautiful, or because he/she/they feel how you feel? Are you cuddling on the couch to watch a movie because you want to be close to each other or because you’re already as close as two people can be? Are you growing apart or growing stronger together as your relationship changes?įriends-to-lovers comes with all the tense anxiety of enemies-to-lovers except worse because you can cut an enemy out of your life if the romance doesn’t work out. Think of the last time you had a crush on a friend, because I know that, at some point the life of every alloromantic out there, you probably did. Or, as Lisa from Team Epic Reads puts it, “friends-to-lovers is 100000% better, but it hurts.”Īnd she’s not wrong. It’s about being afraid of ruining one of your most important relationships with romance, but realizing in the end that romance makes your friendship stronger, not weaker. It’s about the inherent sizzling tension of being genuinely unable to tell if you’re flirting or not because you guys have always been like this. It’s about realizing that the person you love most is the one that knows you best. Because friends-to-lovers isn’t about entitlement, possessiveness, or Nice Guys. Jealous and possessive behavior when a new guy enters your life? Thinking he’s entitled to have you because he’s been with you all this time? Making you realize your friendship was only ever valued because he thought you might kiss him one day? Yuck, yuck, yuck.īut I’m just a girl, standing in front of the internet, begging them to reconsider that stigma attached to one of my favorite tropes. Too often, it was conflated with the insidious Nice Guy trope, where that guy you think you’re just friends with is secretly hanging around in the hopes that you’ll “reward” him with your affections one day. Pop culture soured on the friends-to-lovers trope for very good reasons. And, sure, nothing says flirting like banter and arguments with an undercurrent of heat.īut I’m sorry to say that for many people, there’s a very good reason why our enemies are our enemies, and it’s probably got nothing to do with secret feelings. Sure, enemies-to-lovers - no matter how you choose to define that, because I am so not wading into that discourse right now - comes with the inherent sizzling tension of having to reassess your pride and prejudice (shoutout to Liz and Darcy) against another person before love can truly bloom between you. All I’m saying is that enemies-to-lovers seems to have overtaken friends-to-lovers in the teen romance landscape, and that’s just not right. Some of my best ‘ships are enemies-to-lovers. Before I choose this hill to die on, I want to be clear: I don’t hate the enemies-to-lovers trope.
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