Why do we need sufferings, to nudge us towards Happy Endings?

I am a diehard romance story fan and I have grown up reading romantic novels. As every normal teenager, it first started with Mills & Boons and then as I grew older, I moved on to some of the best selling novelists like Nora Roberts, Elizabeth Lowell, Susan Elizabeth Philips, Nicholas Sparks and a few more authors. Needless to say I grew up watching the mushy romantic movies as well. More often than not ( specially where the male and female protagonists are at loggerheads initially) towards the end of the story, there is a pain in the form of a near death situation or a death of a loved one, a separation or a suffering of some kind which forces either of them to profess his/ her to the other. But that’s not how it is in real life. We don’t necessarily have to wait to endure pain to profess our love to our loved ones. All we have to do is to get past our egos, believe in the truthfulness of our love and profess it. In a 400 pages’ work of fiction or a 2 hour movie, such a situation is CREATED. Not necessarily such a situation will arise in our lives before our loved one has drifted away and actually we don’t even NEED such a situation to hold on to somebody. It is just a matter of looking beyond imperfections and acknowledging the presence and the efforts of a beloved. I fear that maybe by portraying that suffering and pain may lead to a success in a relationship or strengthening of a bond, subconsciously this is what gullible and vulnerable people may start believing in. Maybe the writers need to portray more about leaving aside menial differences and looking at how lovable their partner can be. But then probably the readers too love this cotton candy that is offered to them, which may not entirely be true but is not a myth either.

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