Lately, I’ve lost my appetite for angst in romance. Not conflict—romance needs conflict. A love story without obstacles isn’t a story at all. But these days, I have no patience for the ones steeped in suffering, where the characters aren’t just working through the barriers between them but are also drowning in personal misery, trauma, and tragedy. I don’t need broken people clawing toward each other like love is their last lifeline. I don’t need stories where the world is bleak, the characters are barely holding on, and happiness feels like a fluke rather than an inevitability.
It’s not that I’m avoiding hard things. I read literary fiction, where joy is doled out in sips. And, ugh, I read the news every damn day. I know life is unfair. I know people suffer. But romance, for me, isn’t where I go to marinate in despair. It’s where I go to believe in connection, in the idea that love is something we build, not just something we cling to in the wreckage.
Much of art—and romance is, of course, art—insists that struggle defines love. That if characters don’t endure a gauntlet of torment, their happily ever after won’t feel earned. But that’s nonsense. Plenty of great romances feature couples who navigate real obstacles without being trapped in lives full of suffering. The challenges to love don’t have to come packaged in relentless misery.
These days, I want my romance aspirational. Not in the fantasy-wealth, impossibly-gorgeous-people kind of way, but in the sense that it exists in a world where happiness feels possible. The journey to love can be hard—misunderstandings, distance, rivalries, personal growth—but I don’t want that journey set against a backdrop of relentless suffering. I don’t want stories where characters spend 90% of the book miserable, waiting for love to save them. I want a world where love isn’t the only bright spot but part of a life with space for joy.
Maybe someday, I’ll have the bandwidth for angst again. But today is not that day. So if you need me, I’ll be with the romances where love has obstacles but life isn’t a slog through endless pain. Where the world isn’t so bleak that happiness feels like an anomaly. If you love the dark, tortured stories, you do you. That’s fine. It’s just not what I need right now.
What about you? Have your tastes in romance changed? Are you here for the deep angst, or are you looking for love in all the light places?