Love the one you can't escape

Trope Tasting #1 | Forced Proximity

Jan 24, 2025

Hello lovers,

Welcome back.

Today, you are cordially invited to a Trope Tasting event.

We hope you enjoy the vintage, hand selected by The Romantic for its intoxicating bouquet, featuring notes of mild claustrophobia, unresolved sexual tension, and as-yet-unpeeled onion.

Before you take a sip, please join us in a brief visualization exercise designed to heighten your tasting experience.

Picture it: A modern workplace, adorned with workplace furnishings and infused with the aroma of industrial strength coffee, the hum of office technology, and the palpable prickle of underling anxiety.
An ambitious woman, dressed for the job she wants, sits hunched over her keyboard, furiously typing against the clock.
In the neighboring cubicle, peering condescendingly over the partition and down her shirt, stands her male co-worker/project partner/company rival/guy she’ll never admit she had a recent sex dream about. His mere presence raises her blood pressure (and lowers her confidence) to dangerous levels, but whether she likes it or not, she’s stuck with him until the “project” is complete. A project she can’t finish without this help, and one that will decide her fate regarding a long overdue promotion, and coveted private office accommodations, several floors away from ....
“Hungry?” he asks, now perched presumptuously in the doorway of her four-by-eight sanctuary.
She sets her jaw, intending not to answer him, but her stomach growls defiantly, and loudly enough to reach his ears and send blood rushing to her cheeks.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says with shit-eating satisfaction. “Meat lover’s pizza good with you?”
“What? No, I’m …” She spins around to find him out of earshot, phone against his inflated head, placing his order, proving he had the pizza place on speed dial and no intention of waiting for her to weigh in on dinner before he made the call. “Vegetarian.” Not to mention lactose intolerant. And allergic to wheat.
She sighs and pulls a vegan energy bar from the store under her desk. She tears it open vengefully with her teeth as her nemesis gives the pizza guy an earful about the drag of a night he has in front of him.
She hastily wolfs the energy bar in its entirely and helps herself to another.
If she wants to avoid adding “murder” to her resume, she’ll need all the energy she can get.

Salud!

About the trope

The forced proximity trope involves placing two (or more) characters in a situation from which they cannot (for various reasons) escape. These characters may start out as friends, enemies, lovers, acquaintances, or even strangers. The promise of the trope is that whatever the nature of their relationship is when they’re “imprisoned,” it will be forever changed by the time they’re “released.”

For better or worse.

Pairs well with …

Enemies to lovers

Ticking clock

Fake relationship

Fated mates

Where you’ll find it

Forced proximity is the predominant trope/plot device in the 1985 film The Breakfast Club.

Five hard-wired, incompatible archetypes walk into Saturday detention.

Two fully-charged romantic couples, and one confident fifth wheel, emerge hours later.

It’s also deployed as a catalyst for other (soon-to-be-tasted) tropes in the 1989 romcom classic When Harry Met Sally.

Two friends-of-a-mutual-friend share the close confines of a station wagon on a lengthy road trip from Chicago to New York before parting ways.

Until they meet again.

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy dumps the (respectively) frigid and thirsty Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark into multiple mass murder arenas, to off each other (or get off with each other) as their ~~libidos~~ circumstances demand.

TV sitcoms have their own spin on this trope with something known as a “bottle episode.” While this hack is generally pulled out as a means to scale back the show’s budget temporarily, it has the added benefit of providing the audience with a burst of forced proximity fireworks. There are far too many examples of this to mention,1 since you can pretty much pick any sitcom and point to an episode where two (or more) cast member(s) become stuck/stranded together— in an elevator, or a locked room, or on the side of the road, or in a hotel room with only one bed … for only one night.

Why you love/hate it

An essential element in any story, romantic or otherwise, is tension. And what better way to whip up a whole mess of tension than to put two hormonally agitated animals with hair-trigger defense mechanisms in a cage and see what happens.

It’s the painstaking degradation of those seemingly impenetrable defenses, combined with the trickling admission of secrets and slow unpeeling of a character’s true ~~onion~~ nature that make this trope so irresistible. Throw in a hitherto undisclosed crush, undeniable chemistry, the threat of a purely situational indiscretion, or the reopening of an ancient relationship wound, and we simply. cannot. look. away.

Real world/craft application

Imagine yourself thrust into a challenging situation with another person (friend, enemy, or “other”) for a longer-than-comfortable amount of time in a tighter-than-comfortable space. If that doesn’t stress you out enough, add more tension by taking something away that would make the experience easier for both of you (food, water, phones, windows, privacy, a toilet).

How would that experience affect you physically, emotionally, psychologically?

Might it reveal something about their character?

Might it reveal something about yours?

Could it bring the two of you closer?

Or would it inevitably push you farther apart?

Could the two of you work together to get out of your situation?

Or would you fight to the death to avoid a compromise?

Can you see how this might be a valuable exercise for developing character?

Fictional or otherwise? 💕

You’ve been reading The Romantic! Did you have a good time? If so, please share this post with the person you’d most love (or hate) to serve Saturday detention with.

Feedback, please!

I hope to make Trope Tastings a recurring segment and would love to hear how this first edition landed with you. Is there anything I could do to improve your tasting experience moving forward? Let me know in the comments!