The Ubiquitous Love Triangle

[rachelmanija]

Love triangles, always popular in many genres, seem to have become a near-requirement for YA fantasy and science fiction.

I usually do not like love triangles. They bring up the possibility of infidelity, which I hate in literature.

They bring up a lot of angst which I find hard to identify with - this is probably a very personal reaction, but I always think, "Having not one, but TWO attractive guys you like? What a great "problem" to have! That's like getting two fabulous job offers, or being accepted by your top two colleges!"

Plus I find it annoying that, if the heroine genuinely loves them both, no one ever even considers the possibility of polyamory, or even not choosing immediately and seeing how things shake out. (Honorable exceptions: a few books whose titles are spoilery given that this is surprising and happens at the end, but they're by Janni Simner, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Caroline Stevermer. Um. And Laurell K. Hamilton. Maybe that one should be dishonorable.)

It's also usually excruciatingly obvious who the heroine will pick, making her angst annoying and pointless - one guy is clearly evil, unworthy, or doesn't reach the heights of exquisite wonderfulness as the other.

It is very annoying when the triangle is resolved without the heroine making a meaningful choice, because one of the guys dies or turns out to be evil or falls for someone else. Total bait and switch!

Finally, the ubiquity in certain genres may be why many seem to be pasted on as an afterthought. Elements pasted on due to marketability rarely add to the artistry of a work.

One of the few that I've ever liked was in Patricia McKillip's Changeling Sea, in which there were three guys and a girl, and they all had about equal screen time and were all attractive and likable in some sense. Plus, she picked my favorite.

Talk to me about love triangles. Why do you like them? Why do you like the ones you like? Why do you dislike them? And which are your most and least favorites?

Please mark triangle-related spoilers in the header of your comment, ie, "Spoilers for Hunger Games."

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

I like love triangles when something besides the three characters' happiness is at stake.

Though, now that I try to think of other examples, perhaps it is fairer to say that I like love triangles when they're Casablanca, and leave it at that.

Spoilers for Song of the Lioness

[boundbooks]

I liked the handful of love triangles in Song of the Lioness, because they weren't 'oh, who will I pick,' but more of 'Alanna has different lovers who were right for her at different times of her life.' One or two of them overlap in terms of having feelings for her at the same time, but overall, it's not a question of 'who will Alanna pick,' but more of Tamora Pierce saying that 'hey, it's really unlikely that the person you love at fourteen is going to be Your One Perfect True Love for the rest of your life.' Alanna's relationships feel organic and changing, and are reflective of her evolving views of herself and who she wants to be.

So, I like those (very mild) love triangles, because they're more about Alanna and her journey than unremitting, pointless angst. :P

Re: Spoilers for Song of the Lioness

[holyschist]

more of Tamora Pierce saying that 'hey, it's really unlikely that the person you love at fourteen is going to be Your One Perfect True Love for the rest of your life.'

YES! And I wish more authors did that (or that Pierce herself were more consistent about it--she did it for Alanna and Kel, but Daine and Aly basically settle down with their 16-year-old crushes).

I also love how everyone is mentioning SOTL, haha.

spoilers maybe for Changeling Sea, Tortall, Darkborn

[ambyr]

I am unfond of them. I think Changeling Sea failed to trip my love triangle meter because the book is so short; there's no real time for angsting between them. It's more "I met three guys and decided to date one" than "oh noes, whoever shall I pick?"

The triangle in Song of the Lioness also does not bother me, in that case for the opposite reason: it's spread out over a period of years, so it feels more of a natural evolution of affections than a forced choice. (Also there is a third dude who plays a refreshingly casual role.)

I was very, very happy with how Alison Sinclair's Darkborn trilogy resolved its triangle/quadrangle. Sufficiently happy that it made up for how displeased I was with other aspects of the ending. But like you say, that sort of honorable exception is rare.

Spoilers for Elfquest and Song of the Lioness

[holyschist]

I largely hate them for the same reasons, and I feel like they've gotten worse/more obligatory since Twilight. On the other hand, I hate this new trend for female protagonists to basically settle down with their first crush.

Some that worked for me:

Alanna in Song of the Lioness--I like that she dated three men, and I like that one of them it was never really going anywhere even if Liam didn't die and they knew it. I liked that her conflict was not "is George or Jon hotter?" but "Would marrying Jon stifle everything I am? Would marrying George be equally stifling for different reasons?" and she made, IMO, the right choice from a self-retaining point of view--she would have been a terrible queen and Jon would have stifled her utterly--vassal and wife don't go together well.

Cutter, Leetah, and Rayek in Elfquest--the possibility of a threemating is explicitly brought up at various points, but as Rayek says, all three parties must like each other very, very much, and that ain't happining.

Dewshine, Scouter, and Tyldak in Elfquest--not exactly a love triangle, as Dewshine and Tyldak are more gripped by overwhelming mating urge and don't even like each other much, but I like that the three of them found a way to deal with it without damaging Scouter and Dewshine's relationship or saddling Tyldak with something he wasn't really capable of (the actual raising of a child).

Of course, Elfquest also has polyamory all over the place--it's the usual solution (not even a solution, since usually there's no perceived ~problem~ when bisexual polyamory is the default), which is why it is suggested and discarded due to intense personality conflicts in the Cutter-Leetah-Rayek situation.

Re: Spoilers for Elfquest and Song of the Lioness

[rachelmanija]

I hate this new trend for female protagonists to basically settle down with their first crush.

Yeah, very unrealistic! Though a lot of books cover such a short time span that there's no way to know what happens after it ends, if everyone's still sixteen at that point.

I really like books that bring up the problems associated with relationships that don't fit the usual mold.

[zvi]

I like love triangles because I do read them as threesomes, and I really like threesomes. (Like, I like threesomes so much I run a fest for it.)

[musesfool]

Ugh, my dislike for love triangles was cemented at an early age when after loving "The Sword in the Stone," I read the complete "Once and Future King." Stupid stupid people. It bothered me so much as a kid that Arthur's best friend and wife were cheating on him with each other. Ugh. As an adult, I'm just like, why didn't they just work out a threesome? SO MUCH TROUBLE WOULD HAVE BEEN AVERTED!

[lotesse]

Oh god this. Once & Future was bedtime read-aloud material; dad had to stop eventually because I just. couldn't. take. it.

[nonethefewer]

I tend to massively dislike love triangles, even when I'm reading a book that's focused on the love triangle.  It's boring to me, for a great many reasons -- the plot is written poorly, or there's the usual rom-com miscommunication nonsense, or one person is obviously terrible but Oh She Might Choose Him, or whatever.  It almost always feels contrived and stupid.

That's before I even get into the poly thing.  I don't think every love triangle should be resolved with polyamory, but it's incredibly annoying, especially in the future, that polyamory, or some open-style variant, is almost never an option.  Bah.

It also occurs to me that I cannot think of a single time when there's been a love triangle where the person doing the choosing is a man, unless it's for political-marriage reasons.

[ursula]

Sense and Sensibility is big on love triangles where the men choose.

[em_h]

I generally greatly dislike love triangles too (though I admit I had a sort-of one in the flashback sections of the last novel, although that was really more unrequited love than a triangle, and anyway was mostly meant to illustrate the immaturity and foolishness of the characters at that time).

I do love Margaret Drabble's The Needle's Eye, which I suppose is technically kind of about a triangle, though the two principal characters barely touch and never explicitly declare themselves to each other -- it is in large part that restraint that I find appealling, and true to those particular people in that particular situation. There's another Drabble (The Waterfall) that ends with something about as close to a poly solution as she could get away with in her time and context.

There are some Graham Greene novels I'm very fond of which include triangles, but they tend to operate more as plot devices, not so much a wallow in the angst of it all. Similarly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It's a spy novel which includes a triangle for plot-related reasons, and that I can deal with, though I'd prefer to find different engines for my own plots.

[smw]

I'm dispirited by love triangles for the same reasons you stated, particularly the "I'm sorry, are those crystal slippers too tight?" angle and because there's a distinct failure of honesty in everyone involved (I guess the characters talking about it in a mature manner would cut the drama short?). And, you know, polyamory. Would always like to see more of that.

Can't think of any in particular I liked or disliked, to be honest – alas, haven't been reading much YA in the recent past.

can you spoil a Dickens book?

[ursula]

I just finished reading Bleak House, which includes the *nicest* love triangle in the history of nice. Man #2 realizes that our heroine thinks of him more as a father than a romantic figure, and sets her up with Man #1. His method of doing so would make a less-than-angelically-nice woman furious, but fortunately our heroine is angelically nice, so it's all right.

Everyone involved is really too perfect to create real tension, but I do like the fact that they're all trying to do the right thing for each other (and our heroine unwisely engaged herself to Man #2 due to an excess of selflessness, so perfection is not without its downfalls).

spoilers for Riordan's Kane Chronicles; McKinley's Hero and the Crown; Evanovich's Stephanie Plum

[minnaway]

Eh, not a love triangles fan.

One example where I dislike it: Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, where we spend so much time dithering over Morelli or Ranger. Bah. I like all three characters on their own, but not the triangle aspect.

One place where I'm withholding judgment: in the second installment of Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles series, The Throne of Fire, one character is pulled between two guys. It's not bugging me because it's a very small element of the book, and I like both of the guys, and I'm actually not sure where it's going to go.

One place where I liked it: Robin McKinley's Aerin/Tor/Luthe triangle in Hero and the Crown, where we see one lover for one time in her life and Luthe for later. I like Luthe rather more than Tor, but I like the concept that Aerin got two relationships with people she loved.

[adrian_turtle]

The one in The Persian Boy appeals to me very strongly indeed. I'm not sure why I like it so much, despite it being sodden with angst. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of infidelity or the threat thereof?

Mild spoilers for Maureen Johnson's Little Blue Envelope books

[sholio]

I generally dislike love triangles for all the reasons you cited -- plus, it is often an artificial way of introducing tension between characters who would otherwise get along. And so I resent it for the unnecessary melodrama.

Having said that, there's one special case in which love triangles do kinda hit my buttons, and that's if the rivals become friends regardless of their feelings for the object of affection. Specifically, I love seeing it with women, because the women-as-rivals-for-a-man trope is so ugly and overdone, and I can do a 180-degree turnaround from simmering annoyance to a happy puddle of goo if two women are introduced as rivals and then immediately discover that they have too much in common with each other not to bond and become friends. (I like seeing it with guys too, but I think specifically it gets to me with women because the jealous female lover is a trope I thoroughly hate, and I love seeing it subverted.)

Of course, now I'm having an awful time thinking of examples. I know I've run into it more than once, but the only examples that's coming to mind is a book I actually discovered via your blog, the second of Maureen Johnson's Little Blue Envelope books (and thank you so much, by the way, for the recommendation, because I absolutely loved them! I think about half the books I've been reading lately were discovered via your recs. So thank you. :))

Actually, those books are also an example of the other special case when love triangles work for me: when they're not presented as a classic triangle, in which the protagonist becomes obsessed with choosing which of the romantic options is his/her One True Love Forever(TM), but rather, it simply feels confusing and ambiguous in the way that real life often is. I love complicated, sexually ambiguous relationships, when the characters themselves are not quite sure what their relationship is or what it's going to develop into, but it's quite likely that it's not on the One True Love Forever track. Best of all is when they're content with whatever weird shape it's managed to develop into, and don't actually want the One True Love Forever, white picket fence thing. I am hugely fond of unorthodox relationships.

[owlectomy]

I've always had trouble relating to love triangles. I'm very introverted and very much a loner by nature; I'm rarely seriously attracted to people, and even more rarely think it would be a good idea to be romantically partnered up with them; perhaps as a result of that, I genuinely can't imagine having two people romantically interested in me at the same time, and being romantically interested in both of them to a degree that made it difficult to choose.

Perhaps that's a failure of empathy on my part.

[mildred_of_midgard]

I was reading through the comments, and I had to make a stop here just to second this post. I'm too tired to work through how I feel about triangles in literature, but this is me in real life, exactly.

And thank you so much for "think it's a good idea to be romantically partnered up with them". I never hear anyone else put any emphasis on this, and for me it's what I think in terms of. If it's not a good idea, I don't go there.

spoilers for fruits basket

[marycontrary]

I thought Tooru did well with her pair, and that she did not rush to choose a favorite. Neither did the loser die or go evil.

Re: spoilers for fruits basket

[jinian]

Not even that either person was a loser, but that everyone figured out what the right types of relationships were for them. Similar to Cardcaptor Sakura actually -- commenting separately in case you haven't read. :)

spoilers for Cardcaptor Sakura

[jinian]

A chance to talk about my current bedtime reading and object of unreasonable love! Let me count the ways in which (things which are to a first approximation) love triangles in Cardcaptor Sakura are resolved by gaining maturity or already having it:

Sakura - Yukito - Shaoran
Shaoran figures out he's responding to Yuki's magic rather than experiencing personal affection. I don't quite buy the way his blushes turn off like a switch after he figures out he really likes Sakura instead; it seems like a response I'd have to train myself out of, but I guess some people are really hardwired to be that monogamous? The complete acceptance of his being pashed for a boy, though, means the whole thing makes me happy.

Tomoyo - Sakura - Shaoran
Tomoyo is never ever possessive about Sakura despite clearly loving her like crazy. A person could mention the previous-generation parallel Sonomi - Nadeshiko - Fujitaka here, though Sonomi undercuts my maturity argument pretty thoroughly.

Shaoran - Sakura - Eriol
Eriol is not interested that way (and Tomoyo sees that), but Shaoran stays in Japan rather than going home to his family just to give Eriol the beady eye. While Eriol is well worth the beady eye for many reasons, jealousy isn't really the most warranted motivation. But no one beats anyone up or is even uncivil really, and things resolve despite being dysfunctional in other ways.

Yukito - Touya - Nakuru
Nakuru just wants to eat Touya's magic, but there is definitely attempted flirtation. This one is not about anyone's maturity but Touya's -- Yukito's obliviousness doesn't count as maturity, and Yue has to have seen the whole thing going down and misguidedly decided not to act so he could be emo.

(I will pointedly ignore the love triangle jammed into the anime.)

[firecat]

And Laurell K. Hamilton. Maybe that one should be dishonorable.
*guffaw*

I think "love triangle" is a trope that can be done well or poorly. I don't like them when there are a whole bunch of unpacked assumptions (usually the assumption that lifelong romantic/sexual monogamous partnership is the only proper way to live, so if you are attracted to two people you have to pick one and dump the other and have done with it).

I also dislike them if the love triangle consists of endless repetitions of "I'm with this person, but oh no! I got drunk or upset and slept with the other person! now I must go get myself in trouble so that both of them can rescue me and we can start the process all over again."

I like them when other possibilities are explored, especially if the other possibilities include romantic friendships.

[neery.livejournal.com]

I hate love triangles to the point where I can't even think of a single one I like right now. It's just not a type of angst I can really emphasize with. I do like them sometimes when they end in polyamory.

[evalangui.livejournal.com]

They end in polyamory? Are we talking original fiction? Oo

[janni.livejournal.com]

What I loved when I first read The Changeling Sea was that it hadn't even occurred to me boy 3 was an option, because all the focus was on the triangle.

In a different book from the one above, I have someone who's clearly just not interested in any of the alternate boys who come along. I've seen a review or two commenting that as new male characters came along they expected a triangle (but didn't mind there wasn't) which I found interesting. But for that particular character, any boy beside the one she's in love with is just people, not a potential love interest. It feels like triangles ignore other options in both directions.

I don't dislike triangles, but I do feel like they're only one option. And I do dislike when the triangle resolves too easily, or when the werewolf one guy has to start acting like a jerk to make the choice more clear.

And I also wonder about boys who just wait around to see who the girl chooses. I mean, if a girl were involved with both me and someone else, and all of us felt like we were ultimately going to be monogamous, wouldn't I eventually begin getting involved with other girls and exploring my options, too? Why should there be multiple possibilities for happiness for her and only one for me?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Good points!

For the last, I think there's also structural issues. That would be much easier to do in a book in which the boy also has a POV, but YA sff now seems almost exclusively first or third person, one girl's POV only. You could still do it, but it would be hard to get a sense of that other relationship since you could never see them interacting alone.

[thecityofdis.livejournal.com]

I hate them for all the reasons you mention. They are usually enough to get me to throw a book across the room.

Notable exception: I just finished the first Hunger Games book today (I know, I know, my cave. I live in it.) and hate the whole triangle angst less than I usually do because of the motivations and circumstances that brought it about.

But mostly, I am just constitutionally incapable of empathizing with somebody who is in a relationship (or thinks they will be, or might want to be) and simultaneously pining after somebody else. It makes me hate a character instantly.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The "staged for viewers" angle does make the Katniss/Peeta thing a lot more interesting. Sadly, it does not go in a direction that I liked in later books.

I'm okay with characters feeling conflicted or having a certain amount of, "I know I love so-and-so, but I feel disturbingly drawn to X." It's just when it gets to a certain level of angst, or tips into cheating, that it drives me bananas.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

My primary requirement in caring about a love triangle (aside from the more general caring-about-the-story requirements, which of course come first) is that the third leg of the triangle has to also matter. I go into it at more length here (http://www.swantower.com/essays/craft/love-triangulation.html), but the short form is that Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot works for me where many other triangles do not because Arthur and Lancelot also have a meaningful relationship, albeit (usually) a non-sexual one. Without that leg, it falls out of the "tragedy" zone into "make up your damn mind already, girl."

And yes, resolving it by killing off one of the contenders? Bad form, Smee. Bad form.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yes, this -- certain Arthurian retellings are some of the few cases where I've ever felt sympathetic towards a triangle involving infidelity. It also helps a lot for me that NONE of the parties involved end up with much of a happy ending: I really tend to hate the sort of triangles where the cheaters end up with a happy-ever-after together and that's supposed to somehow retroactively make it all OK, because it was True Love and that excuses ~everything~, donchaknow.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I think it just depends on how it is done. I certainly love the FANTASY of a love triangle, if the girl has two hot guys after her (I'm not as interested in the reverse of two girls one guy--*that's* just a dumb male fantasy :) !!).

But I will have to think about examples I enjoyed, not because there are so few but because I'm bad at coming up with examples from the drop of a hat. I think Sherwood does good love triangles, actually.

I do think people can love more than one person, and that is not a sign of badness. In fact, now you're making me want to try my hand at writing one. Oh, wait. I guess I did in Jaran already (she has sex with both guys but ends up somewhat reluctantly choosing one over the other).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I like Sherwood's because they're so much more complicated than simple triangles. Like swan_tower says above, they tend to have relationships going in all directions.

Maybe my real issue with the "love triangle" is that it seems to offer complexity, but usually ends up being extremely simplistic.

Very vague comments - no more spoilery than the post above

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Would you tell me the name of the Stevermer book, encoding in ROT13 (http://www.rot13.com/) if necessary? I don't think I've read that one, and I'd like to.

The Guy Gavriel Kay ending you refer to is especially fabulous because it's the logical solution to hundreds and hundreds of years of literature.

There's also a Robin McKinley book I'm sure you've read in which the protagonist doesn't have to give up either love interest.

Re: Very vague comments - no more spoilery than the post above

[naomikritzer]

Yes, the Robin McKinley solution was one I immediately thought of. But it's a rare beast, to say the least. I liked that solution a lot when I read the book at 13: it was so SENSIBLE, all things considered.

[naomikritzer]

I devoured Mary Stewart's gothic novels when I was a teenager. My recollection is that most of them had two men, and in most cases one of them was going to be the love interest and the other was going to turn out to be eeeevil. They were still a lot of fun to read, though, because she was so good at keeping me guessing.

Regarding YA: I was pondering this recently. (Specifically, the "mandatory romantic rivalry; casual dating around VERBOTEN" problem.) It is my impression that at one point in the distant past, teenagers went on lots of dates with miscellaneous people and you were only exclusive if you AGREED to be EXCLUSIVE, which was a fairly big deal.

At some point before I started dating in the late 1980s, it quit working like that. When I was dating, if you went on a date, that made the other person your boyfriend and you were stuck with exclusivity unless you broke up.

IMO, this is stupid, unhealthy, and leads to all sorts of negative consequences, including too-early heavy sexual experimentation. (When it's one person all the time, there's an impulse to keep things fresh by doing new things...) It is my further impression that Kids These Days have worked out some alternatives, and it would be nice if books could reflect what they're actually doing. (Which I'm pretty sure does not include 50s-style Dates with Ritual Pinnings to Show Seriousness -- though I'm pretty sure books are still being written that have kids doing just that. For sure, the books for teenagers in the 1980s still acted like this was the norm, despite the fact that I did not know ANYONE who was actually dating that way.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I just asked a sample teenager I happened to have handy. ;) She says you only date one person at a time, but you're not officially boyfriend/girlfriend until you have the Talk, announce it to your friends, etc.

So I guess you could still date quite a few people, so long as it's sequential rather than simultaneous.

Spoilers for The Wings of the Dove

[vonniek.livejournal.com]

I like dysfunctional romances that don't end happily. Which means that I don't actually need everybody in the triangle to be likable for me to enjoy them, as long as each side of the triangle has complicated and compelling relationships with the other two. For example, one of my all-time favourite literary adaptations to screen is the Ian Softley version of Henry James' "The Wings of the Dove". Two of the three protagonists behave absolutely despicably and the story ends with everyone in spiritual ruin (or dead), but I adore it to bits. The key, I think, is making the relationship between the romantic rivals as interesting as the two competing love stories.