The art of the breakup.

I tend to think of this as a problem with the American-episodic system. And more importantly, the multi-author nature of that system.

Different writers write different episodes and they act as if they have lists to work from to describe the characters.

"Character X, is brave, like playing poker, and has previous romantic history with character Y. They can't get together because Character Y needs to be able to have romantic tension with bit characters encountered in each new episode."

And then the writer goes to the appropriate supervisor and says "Hey, could we do a special episode where Character X and Y get together?"

And the supervisor says "Well, alright. But they reset to normal at the end of this story-arc."

That's how I picture it working anyway.

Booth and Brennan on Bones might be the closest to Nick and Nora that I've found.

Wrong genre, but I'll throw in Barbara and Tom Good from the 70's British comedy _The Good Life_ as a shining portrayal of a married couple managing the Happily Ever After.

I was going to comment on the effect this has on real people, and how they think about/pursue relationships, but it wound up being it's own post.

http://ash-of-roses.livejournal.com/45499.html

On our train home today me and my fella sat next to this lovely old couple. They where on thier way down to london to celebrate 201 years. She had just turned 80, he had just turned 71 and they had just had thier 50th wedding annivercery :). They where funny and interesting, she called him her toy-boy and rolled her eyes when he told us about the history of fencing, he went off to get her a coffee and brought back extra milk because he knows that train coffee is stronger then she would normaly have it.

Anyway, it was a pretty great thing to see...

Also, this gives me hope that Toby will get some flow-chart action at some point!

I think I really haven't seen couples who are loving romantic couples (not just married) AND something else since Hart to Hart, with Jonathan and Jennifer, those rich, jet-setting folks solving mysteries back in the seventies.

Frankly, inability to write married romance is a sign that the author doesn't really know how to handle realistic romance. (Or if they think it is realistic, they may have serious real-life relationsihp issues).

"What I don't want is the sort of breakup that could be resolved with thirty seconds of conversation and maybe a flowchart" -- this is considered bad romance writing over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. (Love a romance review site where Nora Roberts regularly turns up to comment on the entries!)

Other people have pointed out some of my favorites at writing successful, married romance:

- Nora Roberts's "In Death" series (Eve & Roarke)
- Elizabeth Peters's Emerson & Peabody.
- Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga.

I'd like to also mention Beatrice Small, whose "Heiress" series is a multi-generational historical story about a remarkable woman and her equally remarkable daughters and their husbands. Their mother is still happily married to her last husband and lover by the time we get through the story of the third daughter, and the senior daughters are still happily married in the later daughter's stories, usually with kids and are in and out of the stories as secondary characters.

Damned straight. This bothered me in Buffy (over, and over, and over again) and it bothered me a bit in B5 (though at least they managed the Sheridan/D'Lenn relationship right). I'm fine with not all relationships last -- that's normal. But their lifetime in TVland is just ludicrious, apparently because the screenwriters only have one story (in that region, anyway) to tell.

As for me, I like happily married couples. And I don't really like infidelity in stories, as too often it turns into 'oh my wife/husband is soooo boring, I think I'll have sex with this guy/girl instead'. Honestly, there was one book I read that was supposed to be about interracial friendship, but the adulterous love story the main character was having with her brother-in-law took over the whole thing. Not to mention the fact that she complained a lot. And she was forty-one and he twenty-nine.
And I have at least three stories planned that don't really have any romance EXCEPT between already-married people.

I've read only one book about them (Men at Arms), but Sam and Sybil Vimes from Discworld have been happily married for quite a few books now.