Unpopular Fannish Opinions: The Established Relationship Story

Here is my main problem with established relationship stories: most of them don't have enough relationship stress. It is as if the author fears any tension between the characters, and so they make it clear right on page one that the couple is together and will be together forever and ever amen. Mean and nasty external forces might come to bear on the favored couple, but it never shakes their faith in each other and their commitment to one another. They may sigh and fret and bemoan their lover's fate, but ultimately, they know their commitment will win out. Frequently, these stories are labeled as angst, but to me, there is little angst in them; I already know how it's going to turn out. Nothing moves or changes emotionally for any of the characters involved. They can--and do--frequently go through hell, but that refining fire does not change or reveal anything about the characters at all; they end up in exactly the same place as where they started, in their close, committed relationship, both of them unchanged.

It's a story I want to read only when I have major PMS or when other traumatic life events swirl around me. While I get that we all need comfort fiction occasionally, does there have to be so much of it?

Seriously, why read the story when nothing really happens to the character, where there are no repercussions and no impacts? Why invest my time and emotional energy when the characters can survive being burned, frozen, separated from their families and friends for years, prostitution, drug addiction, ritual torture, etc. and come out without any emotional scars? When the characters and their relationships are made of Teflon? I 've read a lot of these stories lately, many of them highly recommended, and I just--well, I guess--I get annoyed. Really annoyed. I get downright peeved in fact.

The lack of consequences in an established relationship story frequently leaves me vexed.