I see talk about love triangles here often, & I rarely share my opinion, bc I don't think my stance is a very popular one. But I'm really feeling my love for love triangles today, so I'll try to explain why I love them, & why I even think they can be important, especially in YA.

As an adult reader, certainly my favorite kind of love triangle is one in which I really like both of the vying love interests & the choice the MC makes is not really between one good option & one harmful one, but rather about what really works in practice, beyond romance alone.

That said, I remember being a young person & struggling so hard, not with just what I wanted or what I valued about myself, but how other people saw me & the values they held that—even if I didn't share them—SERIOUSLY affected how I was viewed & treated by everyone around me.

One of the things that simply can't be ignored in that calculation is how much young people are judged, not just by who they are or who they like, but who likes THEM. We may not approve of this. We may not think it's good or healthy for anyone. None of that makes it less true.

I was unpopular as a young teen & I don't mean I was a quiet nerd with 1-2 friends. I was openly reviled. Kids in my math class had a running competition to see who could make me cry that day. Most often I had zero friends, because being my friend cost so much social currency.

I kind of get it. I was weird in ways even I didn't yet understand. When things got better in my later teens, I was aware of how much I owed to the people who chose me. But I was also keenly aware of how my daily life depended on WHO chose me & what that signaled about my worth.

That kind of environment is such a mindfuck, both in terms of how other people saw & valued me and in how I saw & valued MYSELF. Everything I hated about my own image and appearance—and there was a LOT—was stuff I wanted to be able to reject & couldn't. Not in MYSELF, anyway.

Beautiful, popular kids seemed like a different species to me & many were major assholes. I didn't like or understand them. But in my secret heart—in the ugliest corners of my mind—I had to wonder what it might be like to be CHOSEN by them. And that's where I'm going with this.

When I see the hot asshole guy in the love triangle—the one who, to an adult reader, is obviously the wrong choice—what I see for the MC is that secret, ugly question. What would it be like to be chosen by THAT guy? How might that change their life & what's the acceptable price?

We all know how we think those stories should turn out, but that doesn't change the fact that many teen readers are always grappling with how to value themselves separately from their relationships & the ways other people value them. To me, that's what the love triangle is about.