Why Are We Drawn To Love Triangles In The Media?
A few weeks ago, I heard a question about why people are drawn to love triangles in the media. The question was asked in reference to a TV show I have never watched, but it left me thinking about how love triangles can connect with very deep layers of our psychology. This is not an attempt to fully answer that question, but a few loose thoughts based on my understanding of some aspects of our emotional and psychological development.
Love Triangles Shape Our Development
Most people are part of a love triangle from the moment they are born. The relationship with our parents creates conscious or unconscious dynamics that shape our most formative developmental experiences. Freud famously conceptualized these dynamics through the Greek myth of Oedipus. Broadly speaking, the Oedipus complex describes the unconscious conflicts and wishes involved in the relationship between a boy and his mother, and the ways in which the father (and the relationship between the parents) is experienced as threatening to that special attachment. How we navigate this process shapes our sense of self, personality, and relationships in adulthood. While the metaphor of the Oedipus Complex has been questioned for many valid reasons, it speaks to the depth and often turbulent emotions we hold in these early triangular experiences.
The early impact of triangulation persists even in less “traditional” family configurations. For example, in a single-parent household, the absent parent can, we know from clinical experience, be very present in the psychic life of a child, whether as a hated figure or longed-for rescuer. This presence creates a triangle in the child’s mind that can be emotionally very powerful as he situates himself in the fantasized triangle. Similarly, a home with same-sex parents will also lend itself to a triangular configuration, regardless of gender roles, expressions, or identities. Or in the case of divorced parents, a child can feel part of a love triangle that includes a parent’s new partners or lovers post-separation. As a therapist, it is not unusual to see the significant impact that the child’s experience of those relationships can have their attachments and personality in adulthood.
What all these situations have in common, and what I think defines part of power of a love triangle, is that our loved one -the parent or caregiver we feel closest do- has a relationship we are not part of. Whether that relationship is with our other parent or with someone else, the child is excluded from it. These early triangles become the arena where we first wrestle with feelings and experiences of desire, exclusion, competition, rivalry, and loss. These experiences can be very difficult to navigate and often anxiety-provoking, as they might in turn elicit hatred, envy, resentment, or jealousy. The feelings associated with love triangles can be enlivening but also dangerous and usually need to be repressed or dissociated. How can we allow ourselves to feel hatred or envy towards those we love? The coexistence of love and hate is seldom peaceful and often disavowed.
If we consider that the central element of a “love triangle” is a relationship we are not part of - the relationship the object of our love or desire has with someone else - we can see that a love triangle does not really need an actual third “person” to be impactful. The third party, in addition to the child and the parent, can be the parent's work, interests, or activities outside of the relationship with the child. Experiences of neglect and ensuing feeling of rejection, abandonment, loneliness, and anger, can be experienced when the parent is almost fully absorbed by something else. This “something else” can range from a very demanding job to the parent’s deep depression. In both cases, the child can feel excluded, unseen, or uncared for. The triangle, from the child's point of view, is defined by the presence of something or someone else with which they need to compete in order feel loved.
Even in the absence of parental neglect or mental health issues, a triangular configuration is always present during our early development: the one defined by the relationship between the child, the parent as experienced by the child, and the parent’s own inner life, including their own needs, wishes, hopes, and fears. Different psychoanalytic authors have emphasized the developmental task, always riddled with challenging and overwhelming emotions for the child, of becoming able to see our closest parent or caregiver as a separate subject, not as someone we control or define. Initially, the parent can be seen as an always responsive extension of ourselves; confronting the reality that they are their own person can be extremely difficult but is necessary. This process will ideally involve the recognition that the parent has their own experiences, separate from how we perceive them, an inner world that we can hope we are part of, but that belongs to the parent’s own mind.
If that process is undermined or compromised, for example if the parents themselves impose their own narcissistic needs limiting the possibility of individuation for the child, that may have deep and lasting consequences in adulthood. We may have a very hard time making room for other people’s needs and experiences, instead making assumption about who they are based on our own perceptions, fantasies, or projections. We might make up our own triangular stories in our mind, such as when we assume or imagine that the person we are interested does not reciprocate because there is someone else who is in some way better than us. Made-up triangles can, in this way, express and reinforce feelings of shame. The possibilities for understanding, intimacy, and mutual recognition can be seriously challenged. This may not be experienced as a complete inability, but a state we go back to whenever our sense of self and belonging feel threatened. In extreme cases, particularly when severe trauma has made it very dangerous to consider that others are out of our control, we can experience what some authors have called an “intolerance of triangulation.”
The Appeal of Triangles in the Media
Our attachment histories are filled with situations in which the hopes and fantasies of being wanted, desired, and chosen were at the forefront of our experience. This is developmentally important, as it is part of what allows us to develop a sense of self-worth. When we don't have the experience of being chosen over something or someone else, our sense of self can be diminished or shattered. In this sense, triangular relational configurations are a central part of our experience and therefore tied to deep-seated emotions, including excitement, anger, sadness, longing, fear, and joy. As a result, there is something really deep, even if unconscious, that resonates emotionally when watching or reading about love triangles in the media.
It is in those relational dynamics that we start experiencing desire (for love, closeness, sex, or else), which tends to intensify in the presence of an obstacle or a rival. That presence also carries with it the threat of rejection and loss, which can lead to intense fear and anxiety. A love triangle encapsulates this tension, holding within it the possibility of the excitement and aliveness of desire, and the pain and deadness of disappointment and rejection. That emotional tension can in itself be exciting even if unsafe, but feel unacceptable or unbearable in our real life. Seeing it portrayed in the media can give us a taste for it while keeping a sense of safety once we turn off the TV.
Because of the original turmoil that was involved in our early “triangles,” whether we dealt with traumatic experiences or not, love triangles speak to our internal conflicts, wishes, and tensions, projecting them onto external characters. We may unconsciously identify with the one who is desired, the one doing the choosing, the one who is left behind, or more than one character based on our own relational history. As human beings, we are all familiar with all of those positions, based on our past experiences or fantasies. Love triangle stories can externalize internal ambivalence about attachment, dependence, and autonomy. They can also represent our internal conflicts around different values and priorities, for example around an option that offers dull stability and another offering unpredictable excitement. As such, love triangles in the media may allow us to engage with these conflicts, for example between wanting closeness while fearing engulfment, in a way that feels "safe."
Along similar lines, a love triangle in the media can also portray feelings or decisions that we may not allow ourselves to consider, consciously or not (for example, wanting multiple love objects or leaving a dissatisfying relationship), and in that way they may provide a way to connect vicariously with parts of ourselves that would otherwise remain disavowed. In this sense, love triangles in the media may provide a culturally sanctioned space to explore feelings that are often considered unacceptable: desire for more than one person, envy, betrayal, or pleasure in being fought over. These wishes can be socially challenges and morally judged, but that doesn't mean that they cease to exist in the depths of our psyche. Channeling those wishes into consuming love triangles in the media can be considered a form sublimation, as it allows people to engage with wishes that would create anxiety and internal conflict for most, in a way that feels controlled, somewhat removed, and enjoyable
How Therapy For Relationship Issues Can Help
There is naturally nothing wrong with being drawn toward love triangles in the media. There is also nothing “wrong” when that happens in real life, even though in those cases it can have important consequences for our ourselves and others, as well as our experience in relationships. We might find ourselves in relationships in which feelings of jealousy, envy, or fear can be dominant, at times conflating intensity and intimacy. We might feel challenged in our sense of self or self-esteem, having them depend on our experience of being chosen or wanted. Or we might feel certain about other people’s intentions, wishes, or wants, leaving little room to consider different possibilities and limiting our ability to develop intimacy and feel grounded in relationships.
In all those cases, understanding the impact of earlier “love triangles” can be an important part of untangling the ways in which the past still lives with us. Therapy for relationship issues is not the same as couples therapy, but it can be done individually to address issues in romantic, family, professional, or friendship relationships. Even calling it “individual” is a misnomer, because the most important aspect of the process is the working relationship that, over time, can be developed with the therapist. It is in the context of this relationship where the possibility of understanding the deep and complex impact of the “triangles” we experienced through our life and still replicate in our minds and relationships. Through this exploration and understanding, new forms of relating can emerge. If you are interested in working through some of these issues with our Chicago therapists, please reach out today.
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Photo credit: Max Harlynking