I used to think I loved adventure stories because I’d grown up on them. The truth, I’ve realized, is a bit stranger. I’d rather watch bloody violence and explosions than sit through those gut-wrenching nail-biting moments of social awkwardness that fill so many romances, dramas, and comedies. Those moments fill me with a vicarious squirmy awfulness—the characters may experience emotional or social anguish, but my response is visceral, often literally painful. 

When I last reflected on this in my review of Trying…

…I mentioned little toddler-Henry writhing on the couch and turning himself upside down to get though the discomfort of watching those scenes. I don’t do that anymore (I’m too big, I bump into lots of things), but that feeling has stuck with me. I struggle to watch others’ shame, embarrassment, anxious uncertainty, misunderstandings, heartbreak… hell, even disappointment can get me squirming. All of those things eat at me when I see them in films, especially when I’m empathizing with someone experiencing them in the scene. 

As you might imagine, this experience renders broad swathes of movies unpalatable. It’s not totally reliable; there are some movies that hit those emotional notes yet don’t leave me squirming. Even so, I almost always prefer action, adventure, thriller, or even horror movies. Those might be stressful, but they aren’t often actively painful for me to watch.

Many comedies these days (and especially romcoms) play off those emotions for cheap comedic fodder. Shame, embarrassment, misunderstandings and heartbreak, they’re all used for low effort jokes. They’ve been part of the comedic repertoire since at least Shakespeare’s plays, and they’ve not gone out of style. I still find them painful.

Reflecting further, I think my pain with these experiences connects to my love of co-op and team games. I love the feeling of being on a team. Cooperation, trust, the certainty of knowing your allies have your back and will be ready when and where you need them, the joy of being able to offer that certainty to your friends… it’s a very good feeling.

Many of those worst emotional experiences that I struggle with in movies are corrosive to any sense of unity or cohesion. They’re the experiences that leave that feeling of teamwork (or a happy emotional resolution) bleeding out on the floor. I hate them.

Yet those experiences are too useful for writers to ignore. When they aren’t used as jokes, those awful emotional moments are the contrived obstacles thrown into a story to deliver the right dramatic beats. After all, within a romantic comedy in a three act structure what better tools are there to turn up the tension towards the climax of the story? All those awful misunderstandings (and all the other things that come along with them) can be cleared up in a few quick scenes of climactic resolution, letting the audience ease into their happily-ever-after.

Even though I know this pattern, have used it myself, and can often call the timing and nature of the resolution, I still don’t like it. Maybe I’d be more willing to admire the regular use of these tropes if I didn’t so often find them agonizing. They’re certainly part of what I find so difficult about some romance novels, even as I enjoy them.

I suppose that’s another part of it: I still like the stories that indulge in these painful moments, I just struggle to see the stories all the way through. There’s the obvious “I find it painful” side of things, but there’s also the fact that these contrived dramatic feelings of disconnect all too often feel pat, lazy, or trite. I want people to do better, to find different ways of inserting tension into their three act romcom.

I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. I’ll keep watching these movies and reading these books and wishing that they were a little less painful for me. But maybe this will help you understand why I feel the way I do about some of the stories I review here.