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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43886
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A story about someone ostensibly looking for love can resolve without them finding a romantic partner if it turns out that they were actually being driven by a motive other than to find love. There are lots of reasons people look for or invest in relationships besides the desire for a romantic partner. Some examples:

- **To feel validated**. People naturally have a strong desire for social approval. A relationship is way of confirming your value to others. If you're in a relationship, you've proved to yourself that you're at least valuable enough for someone else to be committed to you. A character's need for social approval might manifest as a search for love but can be resolved by them finding that approval through other means. Perhaps they realize the relationship wasn't actually what they needed and they find fulfillment by playing an active role in their community or some other group
- **To avoid facing their own problems**. Instead of facing our issues, we can justify them by finding other people with the same or similar problems. For example, a character with reluctance to establish discipline and direction in their life might just consider themselves spontaneous and carefree and be attracted to someone with similar qualities. As the story progresses and the character develops, maybe they realize they need to start making some hard decisions in their life and rather than being motivated by romance, they were attracted to someone else who made shirking off responsibility feel OK.
- **To conform to an incompatible role**. Lots of people end up in relationships because they feel that "I should be married by now". Or it could be expected from their family or culture that they're in a relationship by the current point in their life. This would cause them to seek out a relationship to avoid feeling like an outlier or a failure. This type of story could resolve by them realizing that their personal needs are more important than adhering to tradition or whatever other expectations they tried to meet.
- **As part of personal exploration**. Someone with little or no relationship experience doesn't know how having one will affect their life. A character might date or be in a relationship that ends but still achieve resolution by gaining insight into how a relationship fits into their own life. It could turn out that that they're not prepared to sacrifice some of their freedom yet or to have someone else intimately affected by their actions.

Another possibility is that the relationship leads the character to realize something about themself that allows them to pursue something more personally valuable than the relationship initially was. For example, Joe might be a typical starving artist - full of talent, but unable to catch a break. Perhaps the reality is that he has every opportunity to succeed but is actually the one holding himself back. Joe's romantic partner might be the only one who can reveal this to him, either because they're the only one Joe trusts enough to believe or because they're the only one close enough to him to realize it.

Original score: 9