...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
True Love Is Boring
- 7 statements
- 0 feature instances
- 44 referencing feature instances
| True Love Is Boring | type |
FeatureClass | |
| True Love Is Boring | label |
True Love Is Boring | |
| True Love Is Boring | page |
TrueLoveIsBoring | |
| True Love Is Boring | comment |
In fiction, "love" means conflict. If a work has a "love story", that story usually cares only for extremes: falling in love and falling out of it in short order. So your favorite Official Couple (or Beta Couple) finally answered Will They or Won't They?. Our couple has fallen madly in love, carted off to their honeymoon, and are probably getting started with that whole "Babies Ever After" thing. A happy, feel-good time is had by all, right? Nope. In the next season, it turns out that married life isn't what they thought it was. He lost his job and became The Alcoholic? She started having an affair with the handsome postman? They drifted apart after that disastrous (but convenient) miscarriage? She divorced him and remarried four years ago!? Happy Endings can only happen if things... you know... end. This is the reason the finish line in a love story is at the start of the relationship. Romance Arcs only deal with couples getting together in the first place, and in happy stories, it ends there. If it doesn't, the majority of screen time will be about watching the relationship self-destruct, introducing the possibility of an affair (or having an actual one), breaking up, or struggling with the aftermath of such a breakup. Alternatively, it'll skip straight to a Distant Finale, never showing any of their married life but some distant milestone like a second honeymoon or death in old age. Because otherwise, conventional wisdom holds, there would be little personal conflict, and as we said, Romance Plot = Conflict. So, if you want to enjoy your happy ending, you'd better stop reading/watching/playing right after it happens. While a couple will do almost whatever it takes to get together, they rarely conquer their problems to STAY together. In one tragic way, this is Truth in Television. The greatest highs and lows of a relationship are at the beginning and end; the parts in-between tend to become mundane because it's just everyday life. Love is easier when you're high off of emotion and the excitement of something new and forbidden. But, once you've got it, you're forced to ask Now What? Romantic relationships need to be worked at, and sometimes people get bored or burned out with their status quo and argue about petty things. On the other hand, where this trope comes into play is that there's rarely any sign of these mundane good times. Instead, fiction skips straight to the good stuff. This must not be taken as that happy couples can't face conflict at all, mind you. They might face difficulties like paying bills together or learn how to be parents, and that doesn't really affect what they feel for each other in the slightest. Problem is, then the relationship itself ceases to be a source of conflict, and rather becomes an asset for the characters to face other conflicts. Romance plots are not a superior form of conflict, but they are very familiar and emotionally powerful—and thus easy. Removing romance as conflict means that another conflict has to pick up the slack, but this doesn't mean those are lesser stories because of it. This trope is often used to prevent or reverse Shipping Bed Death, and as justification for never resolving Will They or Won't They?, or as justification for turning the couple's Romance Arc into a Yo Yo Plot Point by having them do the on-again-off-again thing. If it happens offscreen between sequels/episodes, it's a Downtime Downgrade. If the characters (and their fans) are "lucky", the Divorce Is Temporary. If not, the next best thing is to hope to be Amicable Exes. This is most likely to apply to a Super Couple. Related to Victory Is Boring and Failure Is the Only Option, which cover plot conflicts not associated with romance. Disposable Woman and Death by Origin Story are cases where this is done preemptively before the story proper even begins. May be Played for Laughs in an Awful Wedded Life comedy. NOTE: To qualify for this trope, the couple must go through three phases: A difficult or long-running courtship Followed by very little narrative focus on their happy relationship/married lifenote They may be written out of the story, or the story will gloss over their marriage for far more interesting topics and adventures. Followed by death/breakup/divorce/separation/infidelity/unhappy relationship. Alternatively, in-universe or out-of-universe lampshading of the phenomenon is also acceptable. Please remove any examples that do not qualify. For a less depressing view, many of the couples on Happily Married are aversions of this trope. Examples |
|
| True Love Is Boring | fetched |
2024-03-15T11:31:43Z | |
| True Love Is Boring | parsed |
2024-03-15T11:31:43Z | |
| True Love Is Boring | isPartOf |
DBTropes |
The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
Copyright of DBTropes.org wrapper 2009-2013 DFKI Knowledge Management. Imprint. - Thanks to Bakken&Baeck for hosting. Contact.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.