Why Writers should be moving away from LOVE TRIANGLES!!

How many books have you read with a love triangle in it? From my perspective I’ve read loadsssss! It’s not my kind of fun and in this blogpost, I’m going tell you the reasons why I believe we should stop fantasying about being stuck in the middle over two people wanting to be with you.

First of all, it’s overrated I feel like after I read the hunger games trilogy the love triangle rate increased exponentially and I feel sad because the main point of the books were overlooked by the majority – Katniss volunteered to die in the hunger games for her sister Prim not for Gale or Peeta, this then led to Katniss starting up a revolution and in the end Prim still died. (Which is even more heart-breaking than Katniss never seeing Gale after the end of the revolution.) 

BUT....I feel I still love the hunger games even though I didn't enjoy the love triangle.

Love triangles tend to degrade all involved because it makes it look like other characters are not “pretty” enough or “worthy” enough of someone else’s unconditional love unless they have multiple romances or flirtations going at the same time. Also, this makes the main character involved looking like they can’t decide and its as if they are less intelligent which does not motivate the reader to be smart or figure out a decision even when it’s a hard one.

Majority of the time it’s a girl in the middle of two boys fighting for her affections, the girl is at first described as “not that pretty” but clearly must be because they attract a lot of attention and majority of the time have extremely long hair and are too skinny which in circumstances you can understand but it also makes teenage girls or even adult women feel the need to be skinnier (including myself). To me a book should be about motivating your sense of emotions or rebellion and not to degrade the way you look.

I also find the love triangle overused, my favourite kind of genre is one that inspires rebellion against tyranny and I feel like writers do not seem to notice that’s what I’m looking for. The Shatter Me series were well written, but I feel like a love triangle didn’t make it any better, same with the matched book (I didn’t bother to read the series because I didn’t care about the love triangle). An Ember in the Ashes has extremely good prospects but again like the Shatter Me series love triangles really don’t make me like the main characters anymore - but an Ember in the Ashes are still a good read nonetheless.

Good examples of love triangles are the Red Queen series because in the first book you see a pattern forming where Mare leans more toward Maven at one stage but turns to hate and that leads to her leaning back onto Cal, that was good love triangle. BUT…. Another character confessed his love to her as well and I just found it a bit too much.

A general good romance intertwining with the rest of the book plot was "Rebel of the Sands" where there was a tiny love triangle but was quickly resolved and I felt deeply moved by the romance because both characters (Amani and Jim) went out of their way for each other to survive. 

My favourite book “Heart of Mist” is the best by far for an almost rebellious sort of spirit because the main character didn’t actually instigate a relationship romantically (at least not in book 1, not sure if there will be for future books) and Bleak still empowered me and made me feel inspired and creative and at the same time there were other romantic relationships going on in the book which were also not love triangles!

So, I hope you enjoyed my post about love triangles and would love to hear your thoughts (even if they are opposing my point of view) in the comments or @ElectricallyE on twitter.

Thanks, have a good day!