When Harry Met Sally: Why Must Classy Fictional Characters Be “Just Friends”?

When I was thirteen, there was a group of people on the Internet who were completely, objectively incorrect.

They called themselves “noromos.” In their — patently foolish! — opinion, Mulder and Scully, the two protagonists of The X Files, were not destined to be each others’ One True Love and kiss dramatically as the music soared.

Bizarro, am I right?

We shippers — short for “relationshippers” — knew what was up. Mulder called Scully his “one in a million.” She was his “touchstone.” Even Cigarette Smoking Man knew that she was “the one thing [Mulder couldn’t] live without.”

But noromos stubbornly resisted the siren call of the UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension). In fact, when they weren’t denying its existence, they were bemoaning it. Having a romantic relationship between the leads would destroy the series! And cheapen Mulder and Scully’s engaging friendship! It would lower the tone of the whole show!

Yeah, Preteen Me thought, but not having them in a romantic relationship just because you’ve plastered romantic plotlines with a big Not Sophisticated stamp would be even worse.

Noromos, I kid. As I watch The X Files as an adult, I become more sympathetic to your point of view, though I’m still a shipper at heart. But more importantly, as I grow as a writer, reader, and consumer of media, I wonder at the romantic relationship/friendship relationship dichotomy that we see so often in fiction, and at our tendency as a culture to dismiss narratives about romantic relationships as somehow lesser.

When I was pondering two of my own characters a while back, one of the reasons I worried about explicitly acknowledging a sexual element in their relationship was the idea that writing a sexual relationship is an “easy way out.”

Why, though? Sexual relationships aren’t any easier to write — in fact, they pose unique challenges. Not only must sexually charged scenes advance the story, but their emotional (or physical) effect on the reader must be deliberate. Describing attraction, kisses, and sex is difficult, because the more intense the scene, the easier it is to accidentally make your reader laugh.

And although a writer has an ethical responsibility to her readers at all times, real-world norms like rape culture, heteronormativity, and body shaming make portraying romantic relationships or sexual activity always, always, always politically charged.

So what’s the deal then? Why is writing a romance supposed to be lesser than writing a friendship?

Mainstream culture tends to look down on narrative forms that emphasize sexual and/or romantic relationships: erotica, fanfiction, romance, YA that is perceived to be aimed at young women*.

There’s certainly a strong element of sexism; all these genres share the same perceived target audience, women and girls, and are often considered to be written mainly by the same. Romance — the “feelings” plotline — is for hysterical females, of course, and couldn’t possibly be as worthy as the equally goofy plots that rumble through male-oriented power fantasies. But I think there’s even more to our dismissal of romantic relationships as less worthy or sophisticated than platonic ones.

In addition, we (at least, those of us in the West) live in a culture that often confuses sex with intimacy. So, many of the intimate relationships we see in fiction are either explicitly romantic (e.g. House and Cuddy) or read as such (e.g. House and Wilson). It’s comparatively rare to see interesting platonic intimacy that reads strongly as friendship.

One great example of the latter is the Holmes-Watson dynamic on Elementary. Although both characters are attractive people who have demonstrated attraction to potential partners of each other’s gender, there’s little or no sexual tension between them. I love that they are friends who are good for each other and treat each other as equals without it being a big deal that their relationship happens not to involve sex.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I’m sick of Hollywood treating romantic love as the only kind of love there is. Sometimes it feels like showrunners and moviemakers are convinced that unless we see two people smooching, we won’t get that they care about each other or believe that concern for one could be the reason for the other’s actions.

Maybe for this reason, people like me often assume that romantic love stories paint in broad, cheesy strokes. Friendship tends not to involve torch ballads, or hearts pounding in chests or standing outside someone’s window with a boombox. In stories, grand gestures belong to romantic love, and when they don’t, we still tend to read them as such. Friendship is more an emergent property of the everyday, the subtle. The classier.

But, still: why? In real life, a happy long-term relationship is substantially about the subtle everyday, too. Romantic love can be sophisticated, understated, and engaging as well as moving and exciting. Heck, there are plenty of romance and erotica authors who knock the whole gamut out of the park: smart, electric sex scenes; fun smut; smart, electric, fun smut; gripping subtlety; gripping, subtle sex scenes; gripping, subtle, electric, smart etc. depending on the needs of the story.

Maybe the real problem is our — writers’ and fans’, and I include myself in both categories — unwillingness to acknowledge that there is no hard and fast border between different kinds of love. That sexual attraction may happen in and out of committed relationships — including in relationships where we have no desire to act on it. Or, conversely, that a nominally romantic relationship may have its bedrock not in unusually strong physical desire but in what, in other circumstances, might be called friendship. That using the terms “romantic” and “platonic” as opposites may, for many people, be an artificial dichotomy.

Obviously, there are some for whom the difference is real, and I wouldn’t wish to suggest that those who identify as, for example, sexually oriented a particular way or asexual or aromantic are mistaken about who they are.

But I wonder if part of the perceived crassness of writing romance is that it often seems to replace writing about friendship. Friendship can still be part of real-life romantic relationships, but when two characters hook up, the subtler non-immediate-sexual-attraction-related parts of their interactions often disappear. Sometimes, perhaps, writers like me forget that characters in love don’t necessarily stop being friends.

Maybe what the noromos were worried about wasn’t necessarily kissy-face happening on their screens. Maybe it was kissy-face supplanting instead of enriching the already engaging friendship between the two characters.

And from some of the poorly done romances I’ve seen, I can’t help but wonder if they’re right. Lots to take forward and continue to think about as I think about where to take my characters.

* It was frustrating hearing friends who otherwise share my tastes dismissing The Hunger Games as “like Twilight” — having read neither — because they both had “a love triangle for the teen girls.”