Thanks for your responses, everyone.
I should add that I’m… somewhat ambivalent about the entire
idea of a love triangle to start with, anyhow. Although I suspect I’m borderline asexual, I’m also on board with Twilight Mexican in that I find the entire idea that love of any sort is a finite resource to be completely incomprehensible. If you love one person, that doesn’t mean you can’t
also love another person, and that goes for all kinds of love – if we want to go with the
Greek terms, then
agápē (ἀγάπη),
philía (φιλία),
storgē (στοργή),
philautía (φιλαυτία),
xenía (ξενία), and yes,
érōs (ἔρως). No one thinks that
storgē is a finite resource; if a person has a second child, society never accuses them of no longer loving their first child. Yet somehow, if a person loves a second person (in the
érōs sense), there seems to be a societal assumption that they can’t also love the first (in the
érōs sense). And that’s the source of the entire concept of a love triangle.
I mean, people get jealous. I understand that. I don’t grok it – I’ve never experienced it to the point where it could ruin a relationship for me – but I understand it. But to me, if you actually love a person, that’s an issue you can work through.
However, I also have this possibly crackpot hypothesis that some people are wired for monogamy, and some people aren’t. (Some other people may be happy in either kind of relationship – I myself seem to fit in this category.) I’m not sure whether this is due to biology, upbringing, environmental factors, or simple personal preference, but some people seem to be unable to fathom the idea of non-monogamy, whereas other people seem to be completely unable to deal with monogamy. I suppose my philosophical objection to the prevalence of love triangles in fiction is because the third option – where it’s established that the focal point of the triangle loves and participates in relationships with
both of the other two points, and everyone is happy with this resolution – is rarely, if ever, presented as an option. (And sometimes, the way it’s handled in fiction infuriates me on a visceral level for reasons I can’t rationally explain – don’t get me started on the ending of
La La Land.)
The problem is that non-monogamy is still stigmatised in society to a rather alarming extent. People can face severe legal and social consequences – being fired from jobs, denied housing, ostracised by “friends”/family members/acquaintances/strangers – for practising non-monogamous lifestyles. The lack of positive representation for such relationships in fiction is a serious problem; it normalises the idea that there is something strange about them. It’s no coincidence that when positive portrayals of queer relationships began appearing more often in media, support for marriage equality also rose. Similarly, people have been becoming more accepting of transgender individuals as they have been portrayed more often in fiction. As many of you are aware, I have a great personal stake in seeing non-binary people portrayed positively in fiction; I shan’t get into a long digression from my long digression, but their absence in popular culture was a major factor of my not coming to terms with a major aspect of my identity until I was thirty years old.
And I think societal expectations of monogamy result in trouble in other senses. I think trying to force the square peg of naturally non-monogamous people into the round hole of monogamy just results in deception, infidelity, self-loathing, and broken relationships. If it were accepted that some people simply aren’t going to be happy being monogamous, and that there isn’t anything
wrong with those people, we’d probably have a lot less infidelity and a lot fewer divorces.
So anyway, I’m not too fond of love triangles just on principle. Representation matters. The whole idea of a love triangle – that it’s impossible for one person to love two other people in the
érōs sense – bothers me. It reinforces the idea that there
has to be a decision between the two sides, and that no one can be happy if there isn’t one. But maybe the decision that leads to the maximal happiness for everyone involved is no decision. (As a great Canadian philosopher once remarked, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”) Maybe the focal point doesn’t
have to favour one participant over the other.
From what I’m reading here, it looks like there may actually be a possibility that Square Enix goes down this route in the remake, which naturally would utterly delight me. They certainly seem to be trying to nullify the idea of any sort of rivalry between Tifa and Aerith, which I appreciate.
In short, I probably wouldn’t dislike love triangles so much if they were handled better. We’ll see where this one goes – I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much – but maybe it won’t disappoint me.
ETA: corrected a few typos; oof. that’s what I get for rushing a post before dinner
