My Love-Hate Relationship With Love Triangles // ft. LOTS of discussion!

Love triangles. You either love ’em or you hate ’em.

Or, you’re like me, and you’re stuck in the middle! Love triangles are one of the most common tropes in books, and there are a lot of controversial opinions on them. Since it’s almost Valentine’s Day, what better chance is there to discuss them?!

In this post, I’ll be listing the pros and cons of love triangles, and then sharing my thoughts on a few popular (read: stereotypical) love triangles in the bookish world. I anticipate lots of rambling to come in this post. 😉

Reasons Love Triangles Aren’t So Bad

There have to be good things, right? I know that love triangles can get a lot of hate and sometimes they deserve that hate. Yet there have been times when I enjoyed love triangles.

They get me to really care about the characters. I get so invested when there are love triangles involved. Suddenly, I have! to! know! who! is picked!! That keeps me reading, since I have to know what happens.

When I ship them, I am unstoppable. I’m sure all bookworms can relate. Once we ship characters, we hold tightly and fight for that ship. Once I find two people I love together, I’ll probably keep reading, no matter how much I like the book.

They can bring a lot of character development. I enjoy watching the character choosing develop as they realize more about themselves, and watching them make the choice of who to go with.

It can rip my heart apart, in the best way possible. Apparently, readers like getting their heart ripped out?? Because why else would we keep reading books?? When the character doesn’t pick who I want them to, my heart rips apart, of course. Who knows why this on the pros list.

It gives me a lot to talk about regarding the book. Love triangles open up so much discussion. There’s a lot of controversy since people are on different “teams” and overall, it’s just fun to argue for your character.

Why Love Triangles Make Me Scream in Agony

Now for the fun part. Because insulting love triangles is definitely going to be fun!!

Christmas is over, but the Grinch is still relatable

Girls are stronger than that. Love triangles can make the girl in the triangle look weak. It makes it seem like she needs a boy to be happy, and I don’t think that’s the case. Sometimes I’m just rooting for the girl to dump both boys.

They are overused. Sometimes I feel like if I read another love triangle, I will throw every book I own off the edge of a cliff.

It can get pretty boring. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to read a whole book where the girl is playing eenie-meenie-miney-moo (did I spell that right I have no idea) the entire time.

I feel bad for the boys (or girls). When one person is trying to pick between two other people, I honestly feel so bad for the two others. They’re usually getting treated poorly as the main character struggles to choose between them.

Sometimes it takes over the plot of the book. I hate it when the most of the book is focused only on the romantic relationship (unless it’s a romance novel). Like, I didn’t sign up for this!! I signed up for adventures!

At the end of the day, I really can’t decide if I’m for love triangles or against them. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come to a consensus on that!

I know that they’ll always be prevalent in the books that I read, and the bookworm community will always have lots of opinions about that. Sharing what I like and dislike about them has helped me understand my thoughts about them a little better! 🙂

The more shallow and easy-going part of me loves them, because it’s entertaining and fun to take a “side.” That part of me thinks, it’s a book! it’s not that serious!

But the deeper part of me that craves meaningful books doesn’t like them, because of how they sometimes portray the choice between two people as a game. That side thinks, this doesn’t seem right.

BUT! I’m Olivia. I’m indecisive, and I can tell that I will never come to a conclusion if I really do hate or love love triangles.

My Opinions on Popular Love Triangles

Finally, I’ll be sharing some of my opinions on popular love triangles in MG/YA fiction. Then we can scream about it in the comments later. 😉

Katniss-Gale-Peeta

I’M SORRY I HAD TO DO THIS.

everyone @ me right now

I love the Hunger Games. (Though I haven’t seen the movies yet, only read the books.) And I just can’t talk about love triangles without mentioning this one, because it’s practically the Golden Love Triangle.

I am Team Peeta, and will always be Team Peeta, and will scream at you (I’m joking, sort of) if you Team Gale. Honestly, my opinions on this could fill up an entire post?? Maybe I’ll do that someday.

America-Maxon-Aspen

This love triangle is from the Selection series, which I read a long time ago, but still love. (Can someone please explain to me why the Selection isn’t a movie yet?!) I am ALL Team Maxon here, for reasons which I pretty much explained in this post. 😉

Harry-Ron-Hermione

OKAY, so this isn’t a real love triangle, since Harry and Hermione were just close friends and never actually had any romantic feelings. But, a lot of people in the Harry Potter fandom ship them, so it’s sort of a love triangle created by the fandom??

I’m Team Ronmione, all the way.

Cassia-Xander-Ky

This love triangle is from the Matched trilogy, a trilogy that seems to have a lot of differing opinions in the bookworm world. (I enjoyed the first and second book, but DNF’d the third.)

I shipped Xander and Cassia! This is one of the few times when I don’t ship the girl with the boy she meets and falls in love with, but instead with the “original” boy- the one she’s known for her whole life.

Thus this long post comes to an end. I love writing discussion posts about topics that I have a lot of opinions on, so this post was especially fun to write. 🙂 I truly hope you all enjoyed reading it!

Do you love or hate love triangles? Why? Who do you ship in the triangles I talked about? Let’s chat in the comments.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash >> creds for the amazing photo I used in my featured image!