In a world where nearly all of our entertainment comes from the books we read, and the television shows and movies that we watch, I think it’s important to take a step back and really look at the media that we’re consuming. As someone who is a young adult, I always try to have a somewhat critical eye when it comes to the movies and literature marketed towards my age bracket. Among many of these, I’ve noticed a very particular trend: almost everything has a love triangle in it. Now, while I love movies and books, and I really do even love love stories, there are a few problematic things about the love triangle obsession that need some light shed onto them.

1. Overused: Think about any book you read, or movie you watched recently, particularly ones aimed at teenage/young adult audiences. Now think about how many of those have explicitly stated or heavily implied love triangles. Exactly. I’m not sure when it became the universal device for literature and film, but I certainly would love to see a change. If it’s really something that content creators are violently attached to, then please for the love of substantial plotlines, get a little inclusive. Try not to make everything so white and straight. Why not make every film have accurate representation of POC and LGBTQ characters instead of manipulating an entire piece of work to fit in a romantic storyline?
2. Unnecessary: There’s a lot of films out there that have unnecessary romantic subplots to begin with. Really, why does every action/adventure movie have to have a romantic conflict in it? The main excuse I always hear is that it’s the only way to get women to go see the film. Which is a statement that stereotypes the interests of all the members of an entire gender. Saying that romance is solely for women just means that scriptwriters and movie directors are too lazy to come up with an interesting enough plot to make everyone of every gender want to go see their action movie. In all these movies when a group of three people is trying to save the world from total and utter destruction, or cause a revolutionary uprising, realistically the last thing on someone’s mind would be, “How will I ever choose between Person A and Person B???” They’d be more concerned about the cause that they’re fighting for and, you know, not dying.
3. No Variation: What I mean by that is, every time there is a love triangle it is almost always a girl trying to choose between two boys. And on the off-chance that it is a boy trying to choose between two girls, it's never really portrayed as him trying to "choose" per se, but more that he is trying to find a way to be with both without the other finding out. (Plus 99.99% of the time they’re all white and straight.) When the girl is trying to choose between the two boys. One boy is almost always the Bad Boy Who Secretly Has a Soft Side, he’s The Boy That She Can Change/Save with Her Love. And the other boy is The Boy Who’s Always Been There, the one that the audience sympathizes with because he’s the Good Boy Who the Girl Takes For Granted. I bet you pictured how those descriptions apply to love triangles from at least three major blockbuster films.
4. Excessively Heterosexual: To be a bit more specific about my last point: If authors and directors really want to keep the 2:1 ratio of men to women, fine. But make it interesting. Try something new. If you really want to break the mold, try something that’s not so heterosexual. Have a bisexual boy trying to choose between a girl and a guy. Shake it up a little. Change the ratio. Have 2:1 ratio of women to men with a bisexual woman. Or have three men. Have some gay and bisexual drama. Or have three women—throw a little lesbian and bisexual tension in there. All this assuming that creators are super attached to the idea of a love triangle. If you really want to throw a wrench in the plan, have two people pining after someone who’s asexual/aromantic. That way someone can actually stay 100% focused on the actual plot of the movie while the other two get caught up in the romantic subplot and become useless sometimes. The world is your oyster once you start using representation.
5. Female Stereotypes: In conjunction with my previous points, these movies give young girls everywhere one of two choices: she can either be the girl who is so confused about what she wants that she can't decide for three whole movies, or she can be the girl who is complacent with being strung along by the male protagonist. Neither of these are healthy choices. The fact that nearly every young adult film has a woman who can’t make up her mind, who apparently strings these guys along for however many books/films are in the series, paints such a negative picture of teenage girls. Believe me, teenage girls have enough negativity surrounding them in the media. Just give them some strong and positively portrayed characters to look up to. These movies make it seem as though women can’t ever make up their minds about who they want to be with. Which is a super archaic mindset to begin with, but it’s now 2016 and still being exploited as a plot device. If your female protagonist is supposed to be saving the world, solving a mystery, etc., her biggest internal conflict in the film shouldn’t be who she’s going to want to date when all is said and done. While it might be difficult to believe, a relationship with a man is not every woman’s first priority especially in the face of a potential apocalypse.
6. No One Ever Criticizes the Men: Let me clarify something before I start: I am not saying that the men involved in Hollywood love triangles are always awful people and audiences should hate them. What I am saying, though, is that while yes, audiences tend to choose who they want the female character to end up with when all conflicts in the book or film are resolved, and they have their list of reasons they do or don’t like one character or the other, no one ever takes a step back to criticize the dynamic the two men in the films are creating. More often than not in these movies, the boys involved in the whole scheme are perfectly aware that their female comrade is not only trying to solve the main problem of the plot, but also trying to choose between them. And it always turns into a measuring contest, and a constant tug-of-war between these two male characters with the girl in the middle. Which, realistically, is not only super unhealthy, but super unproductive. How is your Pining Teenage Girl supposed to choose someone when she never gets left alone to think things through for her choice?
7. It Always Ends The Same: When it gets to the point in every plot where all three are yelling about how the girl needs to make a choice, directors should realize that in real life plenty of women would just throw their hands up and walk away, because no guy is worth that much conflict. Why in every literary love triangle do two of the people need to end up together? That’s not how real life works at all, and some books and movies should start addressing that. When the world is safe from imminent danger, when the family member is rescued from the bad guy, when the crime is finally solved, these people may very well realize that they should not be getting into a romantic relationship with each other. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with conflict resolution that ends in all parties being happily single.

Love stories are great, and because romance and relationships are things that are prevalent in the lives of many teenagers and young adults, I do think it's extremely worthwhile to include them in the media aimed at our age group. But it's something that needs to be done intelligently, and people need to realize that not every plot has room for a romance, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. Just like any literary or film device, everything should be used in moderation, and not to perpetuate age-old stereotypes when there is new frontier ground to be broken.