After a revision of one of my story arcs I have been left in a bit of a quandary as to how far to take the relationship between my two main characters. They were originally romantically involved but I'm seeing less of that in my ideas. They are both quite damaged by their past (aren't we all!) so it makes more sense that they wouldn't rush into a sexual relationship. Only thing is I still want them to be in love but I'm unsure how to approach their relationship. It's more than a platonic love but less than standard relationship norms. Am I just over-complicating this? Are readers going to want to read about a couple like this or do I have to write them as friends OR lovers?
I think relationships like this are really interesting, and there are certainly examples of times when fictional couples have worked really well as intense friends and not nearly as well as lovers. Mulder and Scully are a classic example, for me. For the first several years of X-Files, they were really close, there was chemistry and tension, but they stayed platonic and it worked really well. I'd say go for it!
Go for it but ... Caution: it is very difficult to write! . Just had the (not dubious) pleasure of writing a whole chapter of that.
I do like BayView's example of Mulder and Skully, they made a great 'intense' friend couple. I guess another example could be Drizzt and Catti Brie. The characters start off separated then gradually become closer over years as she grows older. Drizzt at that point was close to thirty I think. There is always a little bit of tension, with Catti Brie's feelings not being quite as pronounced but, Drizzt's feelings(in my opinion)were very obvious. Its been a hot minute since I read the whole Legend series but, I do also recall a rather high amount of jealousy on Drizzt's part when Catti Brie and Wulfgar were set to be married. Even after Wulfgar disappears Catti Brie and Drizzt never get together. Instead they're close friends, training partners as well as monster slayers with strong affection in between and it was very successful. I think it boils down to how well you've thought out the relationship(which seems like you've done a thorough job)and how well you write it after that. I can only imagine the difficulty Bob probably went through writing those two during the Legend series. I personally am not super good at the romantic relationship aspect at all, let alone something platonic. I hope this helps some more.
It may also depend what length of time your story covers. I really liked the relationship between Ripley and the Michael Biehn character in Aliens, and I could have seen them getting romantically involved at some future point, but given the time frame and the situation, it totally made sense that they didn't. If the story had continued with them getting back to Earth and continuing to spend time together, though, I might have expected a romance to develop?
Yeah @Meteor you've been super helpful also . I do a lot of thinking about character relationship dynamics when I'm not able to write (like when I'm at work or things) so it's something I have thought about a lot and practically considered every outcome for these. I feel a lot more confident after reading everyone's comments, it's just writing it convincingly that's the next hard part!
This actually hadn't crossed my mind, thank you for this! Now that you've brought it up and I put some more thought into the way things played out I would agree they'd likely have formed a deeper relationship if the two had made it to Earth.
@BayView It covers the span of about 1 year but then there's a flash forward just to round everything off but I haven't worked out all the details for that yet.
