Rewriting Romance
Why we're telling the wrong happily ever after
Each semester I teach a section on text analysis where I touch on the importance of understanding the underlying message in stories. We don’t go deep into Joseph Campbell and the idea of social myth1 but I think it’s important for students, for people in general, to be aware of what the stories we watch and read are actually saying.
Every semester one of the key elements I touch on is how we’re often telling the wrong happily ever after.
In the majority of romance stories, the end is actually the beginning—when the couple gets together. Through tension and miscommunication, banter and flirting and obstacles the couple finally finds their way to each other. The couple reaches that moment of “happily” and readers are assured that a fleeting emotion lasted “ever after.” Cue the end kiss, perhaps a wedding, and the audience sighs.
In real life, this is the beginning of a relationship, not the end of the story.
The problem when we put the happily ever after in the wrong place is we create unrealistic expectations. This isn’t news to anyone. Any adult who has spoken to a newly wed or young person in love has probably cautioned that relationships are a struggle. Blending lives, families, and personalities isn’t easy even when you’re entirely compatible. And over the years, decades if things go well, love takes work.
“I’ve always thought of duty, commitment if you will, as something as much a part of love as delight and desire.2
When society tells the story that the beginning is the hard part then when a couple is together, and the struggle continues (shifting into new problems, but continues nonetheless) the natural response is to think there’s something wrong.
This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.
Is there something wrong with me?
Did I marry the wrong person?
Should I try again?
Because surely if I chose well, it wouldn’t be this hard.
While I don’t think changing our stories will change our society entirely—fix broken people, heal broken marriages—I do think it’s important that we tell different versions of the story.
The key is in where the conflict lives.
When the main conflict in the story is the couple getting together, then once they finally make it to that kiss then that’s the end of the story. In Hollywood this is known as the Moonlighting Curse.
Moonlighting, which starred Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, succeeded in part because of a bickering partnership rife with sexual tension that carried the show for 3 seasons. Then they got together, ratings plummeted, and an incredibly popular show died a quick and painful death, or so the story goes. While our cultural perception is not an accurate view of the show’s demise3 this isn’t that article. This isn’t about the truth; it’s about the perception.
The perception is that resolving the romantic tension between the couple tanked the show. Therefore, if writers keep couples apart in a story the show goes on.
Most romance stories are either about a couple getting together or about keeping a couple apart.4 Both scenarios place the conflict squarely on the couple. Generally, there is an additional external conflict of some sort—a promotion, a failing business, a difficult family—however it’s not the key story conflict. It’s a bit of scaffolding to hang the relationship conflict on.
We barely know how to weave conflict of any other kind to create interesting romances.5
If, however, the external conflict is the key conflict, then the characters have a chance to work together against it.
The romance can be very much alive and grow and deepen as the characters experience trials together.
Making the story conflict something external to the relationship allows it to create secondary conflict between the characters. Sometimes, also, it pushes them closer together.
If the Moonlighting Curse “proves” writers should keep couples apart until the end, Once Upon a Time does an excellent job of providing a counter argument.
Snow and Charming experience a variety of external conflicts throughout the seasons. In the first season despite the conflict keeping them apart, the flashbacks get the viewer rooting for them. Not because their names are Snow White and Prince Charming (in other words because we’re supposed to) but because for all the trolls and comas (how much did you want to read that as commas?) and curses they’re better together than they are apart.
It’s a romance that shows it’s more than possible to have a couple come together and work well depending on where you anchor the conflict of the story.
Once… also shows a bantering couple can come together and the show remains interesting in Hook and Emma. They are opposed in the beginning and yet in all the bickering and tension there’s flirting. They fight with each other then they fight for each other. The relationship moved and the show still worked6—because the conflict between them was an accent, not the story itself.
We need more stories where the couple gets married in the middle of the story.
We need more stories where the couple has been married for decades and they are still the central, interesting protagonists of the story rather than supporting secondary characters.
These stories exist, though they’re in short supply.
We also need stories about how hard it is to find someone; how hard the beginning parts of a relationship can be as you get to know one another and each other’s friends and family. It’s a valid story. It’s simply not the only story.
And that’s the point. Not that couples can’t get together. Or that you shouldn’t center a story around a bantering couple. But that you should know where you’re centering your conflict so you can deliver the best story possible.
“social myth” is a term I’m using to summarize Cambell’s ideas in The Power of Myth: Campbell, Joseph, and Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. Anchor, 2011.
Some stores include a variety of romance as this quote suggests: Kitchens, E.J. Wrought of Sapphire and Sea. Brier Road Press, 2024.
Scott Ryan Productions: https://www.scottryanproductions.com/tag/when-did-dave-and-maddie-get-together/
https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/romance-structure
Yes, there are stories with both strong external conflict and romance. In these stories, however, the romance is generally considered a subplot. I am suggesting a different structure where the couple and the romance remain the primary focus of the story, but the conflict isn’t between them. The conflict is external to the relationship and they either face it together or get together in the midst of facing it.
As much as it ever worked. An analysis of the problems in Once Upon a Time is another post.