If so, you are not watching a romance. You are watching a treadmill.
Let us retire the "anty relationship." Let us demand storylines that aren't afraid of the word "yes." Because in life, and in art, a love that never arrives is not a love story. It is just a long, painful delay.
The audience backlash is not because viewers are impatient. It is because viewers have become literate in narrative structure. We can see the writer’s hand on the scale. When a couple almost kisses, gets interrupted by a cell phone, almost kisses again, gets interrupted by a villain, and then stops talking for three episodes—we know we are being manipulated.