The Point of Triangles

I’ve been thinking about love triangle…

…and how much I hate them.

I know that isn’t a new or hot take. I just hate them, mostly when there’s no reason for them.

That got me thinking: What exactly is the right way to use a love triangle and would I actually hate it if it was ‘used correctly’? Basically, what exactly is a love triangle?

To paraphrase The Princess Bride: I don’t think it means what we think it means.

We’ll use two relatively well known ‘love triangles’ as reference: Twilight and The Hunger Games. While the two have many, many differences, there are a few similarities. Both are considered Young Adult Fiction, both have some elements of romance and action, both are written in a first-person perspective of a teenage ‘loner’ girl. Also, both are undeniably popular and written by middle-aged female authors.

(I’m not saying any of these things are good or bad, they are just observable similarities.)

In both examples, we have a girl—Bella and Katniss—who is the ‘center’ of a love triangle. She has two boys who are ‘in love with her’ and hate each other.

And this is what constitutes a love triangle in YA, according to basically everyone. The secondary characters fight over the main character—who is typically used as an audience insert character—and everyone picks a side. But that doesn’t look like a triangle to me. More like a tent, or a tree?

I feel like a ‘true’ love triangle would be something like: Jacob loves Bella, Bella loves Edward, Edward loves Jacob.

My imagining of one actual type of Love Triangle

Or something like: Peeta loves Katniss, Katniss loves Gale, Gale loves Peeta, Peeta loves Gale, Gale loves Katniss, and Katniss loves Peeta and the lot of them feel like they need to be in a single, two-person relationship and is, probably, hetero-normative.

My imagining of another type of Love Triangle. Just because it’s more complicated doesn’t make it better, btw.

When did everyone decide we should call something as boring as two people being in love with the same person, a triangle? I also wish that one of the people involved would grow the fuck up and realize that maybe they deserve better than someone who refuses to either make them feel worthy or be willing to compromise on their needs, and just leave. Find someone who will actually love you for you, Peeta. You deserve better.

Or, they need to all sit down and examine why they find the idea of some type of polyamorous relationship is so abhorrent to them.

Anyway…

And yes, I realize that Young Adults (I’m talking about the demographic these books are based on, IE the characters contained therein, not necessarily the readers(obviously)) don’t always have the brain power or ware withal or experience to know that this isn’t cute.

I understand the appeal, I really do! Two (typically) very attractive individuals that you are quite fond of are so enamored on you and only you that they feel the need to fight over you? On the surface that’s awesome!

But look deeper, please. One says “I’d rather die than be without you(sic)” and the other says “Better you be dead than one of them(sic)”. And when an individual says “You are my life now” or makes it clear that you are literally the only thing they care about? None of that is healthy!

I know all of those examples are from The Twilight Series, but that’s because I feel like The Hunger Games handles it better, not much, but better. It’s a different level of life or death, but Gale and Peeta still seem to only exist for Katniss. But we’re not talking about flushing out characters today.

Take a few seconds to think it through. Notice above I said ‘fighting over you’. I didn’t say fighting for you. It’s a manipulation tactic. It’s seeing the character the two are fighting over as a thing. “If I’m with this person, I’ll be happy” or “I can’t live without that person”. No. Just no.

And if anyone threatens harm on themselves if you leave them or do something they don’t like, like, try to get them help, but get out of that situation. If you are being blamed for the actions someone else takes on their own behest, you don’t need them in your life.

I will say, it’s an entirely different story if you coerce them into doing something. The above simply applies to situation of someone saying something like “if you leave me, I’ll hurt myself and it’ll be your fault” or “you deciding to not listen to me is going to cause me to hurt myself. Do you want that to happen?”. Those are clearly thought-out manipulation tactics, like I said.

…That was heavy…

Now that we’ve spent quite some time talking about it, let’s get definitions involved!

According to Wikipedia: “…While it can refer to a polyamorous relationship between three people, it usually refers to two people who compete against each other for the undivided romantic attention of a single interest.”

Well. I’m glad they acknowledge the possibility of a poly aspect. But you see what I mean? If the thing you need is exclusivity, why on earth are you pursuing the possibility of a relationship with someone who either doesn’t know what they want or has no interest in monogamy?

smh. People and relationships confuse me.

…Honestly, I’d love to see a story where everyone actually talks through these things and negotiate these situations like adults. Huh. Maybe that’s why you mostly—and I am emphasizing that I said mostly—see this particular trope in Young Adult fiction.

Don’t worry, youngins, us olds are dumbasses too…

I’ll see you in the next post. In the meantime, have the day you deserve!