The Everlasting Trope: Enemies-to-Lovers

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the trope I’ve been avoiding like the plague. Not because I hate it, mind you, but because I hate that our collective obsession with it causes many of us to accept some very dumb plots/events/behaviors that we would never otherwise tolerate. Contrary to popular opinion, a sexy knife to the throat does NOT actually cover a multitude of sins! Broodiness is not depth! True enmity is not so easily resolved!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Best stick to the formula.

What is Enemies-to-Lovers, other than the obvious? Let’s tackle this behemoth.

Please, Define Your Terms

Enemies-to-Lovers: Two characters, opposed to one another, in a deeply antagonistic relationship–opposite sides of the conflict of your choosing–slowly develop feelings for one another. Anger! Angst! Woe! Drama!

Danger, probably. Banter, almost certainly.

Some point to Pride and Prejudice as a classic origin of this trope. It is valid enough. He holds her family in contempt, and she hates him for his arrogant and offensive behavior. She believes every malicious word she hears about him. He actively tries to stop his friend from marrying her sister, devastating her hopes.

Or Merlin and Nimue? He falls in love with her but she traps him in a cave for centuries. Perhaps?

Samson and Delilah? That doesn’t end well. Regina Spektor thought it was an opportunity for romantic exploration, and penned a tender, aching what-if about it (a gorgeous song) but brass tacks reality is as follows: Delilah is relentlessly malicious and Samson is shockingly stupid. Not a great start for the trope.

We must quickly differentiate this from star-crossed lovers (I did that trope here). Star-crossed lovers are not at odds with each other. They love each other. It is outside circumstances that keep them apart, not some personal enmity.

So. Knives-to-throats, be they literal or metaphorical, and yet they fall in love. Got it.

Without any further ado, on to our questions 3:

1. When does it fail?
2. When does it work?
3. And why does it resonate?

No. Wait. You know what? We’re doing it in a differently this time. Because the truth is, the “succeed-or-fail” of this trope is by far the most obvious and least interesting thing about it.

The answer to those first questions can all be summarized in a few sentences. It’s a bad job when they were never really enemies to begin with. It’s obnoxious when the obstacles they have to overcome are fake, conjured out of thin air and likewise evaporated into thin air. It’s exasperating when it’s insta-love or insta-lust. When the plot behind the romance is paper-thin. When it costs nothing. So on and so forth.

But we know all this already. As with all tropes: deep characterization, good writing, and honesty will do the trick. The author must use restraint, and not get over-excited and jump the gun with the swoony bits. The flaws and conflict must have meat. We get it.

But how often do you see this trope done WELL? Not very often. How often do you see the same dull cliches played out? All the time. “Oh my goodness he’s my enemy, but he’s so haaaaandsome!” “I’m supposed to assassinate you but I. Just. Can’t!”

I roll my eyes. I shake my head. I tisk my tongue. I want to wash my hands of this nonsense.

And Yet…I confess, I still want to see it. In spite of this.

The trope is astonishingly resilient, isn’t it? Surviving the most atrocious usage. Indeed, “Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore the traces of his divinity.” The trope will be savaged by a stupid story and terrible writing and people will say “you know what? I don’t care, give it to me anyway.” Snag one smoldering screenshot from an arguably terrible Star Wars movie and you birth a million Reylo fans. [Rey and Kylo fans]

Why is that?

Why do we like this trope so much? WHY?

I am not the first person to try to analyze why this trope makes so many people jump and leap and swoon, go all googly-eyed and lose their common sense.

Let’s start with the surface-level explanations and work our way to matters of cosmic significance. Yes. Cosmic. Something doesn’t get its hooks in you like this unless it has to do with life and death and eternity.

Reality Reversal

I think Elizabeth Wheatley cuts small chunk out of the question HERE. She essentially claims that part of the draw of a “bad boy” or “enemy” love is that they have already shown you their worst, and it turns out they are better than you thought, and they grow in your estimation as opposed to a man who shows you his best at first, and steadily deteriorates from there, turning out to be horrible.

I think that’s a valid point and a pretty good place to start. A beginner’s slope, if you will, for enemies-to-lovers. Pride and Prejudice is an excellent template for this notion. Darcy starts out like a jerk, but turns out to be really honorable. Wickham seems fun and friendly, and turns out to be a dastardly fellow and a predator.

But this barely scratches the surfaces of the appeal of this trope, dealing with it in only its mildest and most pragmatic form. I think there is something far deeper going on here. The appeal seems to be about so much more than a reversal, and more about the high and grand drama of it. The danger of it. The dire threat of it.

A Certain Flavor of Tension

Most romance necessitates tension. Even if it a sweet, shy, nobody’s-about-to-die romance, there is usually at least a little tension. Some uncertainty. Some quiet hopes and fears. Some moments of almost before the moment of culmination.

Enemies-to-lovers cranks the tension up past 11, by piling question on top of question. Not only is it “Do I love him? Does he love me?” but “Do I kill him? Will he kill me?” “What will be sacrificed? The lover or the objective?”

[Note to self and to reader: Why, pray tell, am I saying “I” all of a sudden? Why am I inserting myself into the narrative. INTERESTING. Don’t worry. We’ll get to that. It’s all part of the desperate gut-level appeal of this trope.]

The tension is the fun part for most people. So why not add as much as possible?

I definitely thinks this is another facet of the appeal, but I also think we have not yet got to the core of it. You can get tension anywhere. You can grab tension in bulk at Costco by adding a war or a wound or a second love interest. Get some fine boutique tension by making it a second-chance romance, or some heavy-duty Home Depot tension by hiding a mad wife in the attic or a severe class disparity, you know what I mean?

So that can’t be the whole answer. It just can’t be.

Love is Stronger than Death

Now we’re getting closer to the beating heart of this trope. Something more along the lines of Love Conquers All. It conquers even the souls of enemies. But why should we want to conquer the soul of our enemy? Or for our enemy to conquer our soul? What is the meaning of that?

This is where we must talk about the self-insertion aspect. This trope, arguably more than any other romantic trope, seems to lend itself to self-insertion. WE WANT TO EXPERIENCE THIS. The readers imagine themselves into this situation where we are a captive prisoner, or a rebel soldier, and the enemy first shows us ferocity…and then, shockingly, mercy. Then, still more shocking, desire. Longing. The enemy is zealous for me? Me??

If the conflict and enmity was REAL and well-written, this will be a gorgeous moment for the reader. Love has consumed hatred. Obliterated it. Scrambled over it with bloody hands. Wrought the grief and harm of it into something beautiful that pierces the soul. We (for, lo, we have inserted ourselves by now, haven’t we?) we are worth the overturning of the earth. We are worth sacrifice and loss and yearning.

But are we really worth it? What if…we’re not?

You reach this point in the story sometimes. He sacrifices his kingdom for the enemy he loves. Who would do that? Very impractical. Give up everything? Really? For her?

The Cosmic War

This is why we must acknowledge the psychology of wanting a seemingly harsh enemy to turn into a good lover…then keep walking.

Acknowledge the visceral desire for tension. And keep walking.

Acknowledge the desperate longing for personal worth, for love-conquers-all, and still keep walking. For by then we have nearly crested the final hill.

We want to see that someone, while they were still an enemy–before they were good, before they deserved it–was loved. In spite of themselves. And in spite of circumstances that made such love seem impossible and irrational.

It wasn’t Samson and Delilah we should have been looking at. It was Hosea. A man who married a prostitute for the sole purpose of modeling the original enemies-to-lovers as it stands on a cosmic scale.

A God who chose a people, not because they were great, but because they weren’t.

A great sacrifice made not because the lover deserved it, but because they didn’t and never could.

In the stories, these are the best ones: While she is still his enemy, still against him, would still kill him, he would give his life for her.

So then…we are the enemy. And He is the lover. And there is nothing we want more in all the world than to be loved like that.

That is why we love that Darcy moved heaven and earth for Lizzie even after she’d utterly rejected him.

It was why, despite the tremendous weakness of the movies, people still were moved by Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy, if nothing else. “You are no one. Nothing…but not to me.”

If you are not religious, this conclusion might not please or satisfy you. You just wanted to explore the tantalizing elements of a trope you love, not have someone tell you “It’s about God, actually.” But…it is about God actually. Everything is, whether for or against or at an oblique angle. It’s about the fate of the soul. Whether you merely believe in “The universe” or in nothing at all, this question and longing will still arise in the soul and haunt it. If the enemies-to-lovers trope is all it can find, it will hunt it out and eat it a thousand times, well or poorly made, hoping, yearning to be sated by something otherwise ineffable.

Take it from dear John Donne, who found his way from writing erotic poems about women to writing romantic poems about God.

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betroth’d unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”

[If you want more trope deep-dives, here is the trope master list]