friends-to-lovers trope ft monica mccallan (Patreon)

I think if you are here, it means you read my books. Which means it should come as no surprise to you that I love the friends-to-lovers trope.

I’ve always gravitated towards writing it, though it’s never been my personal life experience. Fiction and all that :)

And still… I love the entire idea behind it. I love that you can know someone for years and get to see who they are. And the stakes! Don’t even get me started. There is so much more on the line, in a way that’s equal measures terrifying and exhilarating. Can you admit that there is something else happening that you've been unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge before? Are you going to make the leap into changing the dynamic that you both rely on? To me, that’s the definition of a life-altering, heart-palpitating story.

It's the biggest risk I can imagine taking in this life.

But then you have the prospect of the reward, too. You can see it in Sutton and Charlotte, Hannah and Caroline, Brooke and Taylor, Ellie and Mia - it's that the potential payoff would be incredible. Because this is someone who already knows the whole of you.

They know the dubious decisions you've made and the things that make you cry and the way you snort when you laugh. They’ve been there from the failed relationships to the life wins, always at your side. The most beautiful thing about friends-to-lovers is that you go into it already knowing the whole of who this person is - all of the messy, complicated bits that make them so vivid to you - and you still want to choose them. Because you already know and love the flaws and the quirks and you want to throw your lot in with theirs regardless. Maybe because of.

All of this to say that my most recent personal life update is that I'm living my own personal friends-to-lovers, with the person who’s spent three years becoming one of my best friends and biggest support systems.

Three years ago, almost to the day, I published Those Who Wait and felt... completely unsure of how to try to become a part of this community. And I don't necessarily ever know how to break into a social setting or a world that I feel on the outside of. There was one person who reached out to me and was determined to pull me along into this community, even if I didn't know where to start.

It all started with books. With writing and mutual admiration over each other's work. With wanting one another to succeed and offering bits and pieces of help with that. Over months of talking regularly, it became deeper (her doing; she's much better at being open than I am), and a real friendship, where we talked about our actual lives started to bloom.

It's crazy to think about how it evolved, when I look back on it—in that it made so much sense that I didn’t even realize it was happening. From short phone calls to sharing little stories and life updates, to hours-long conversations about anything and everything. It's crazy to know how we've been the person each other has turned to throughout the many ups-and-downs over the years and how it's only ever made our bond stronger. From 5am phone calls to sending little gifts to cheerleading each other's writing docs and being there during the absolute worst of times to make sure we knew the other one wasn't alone.

What we built was the foundation of one of the strongest friendships I've ever had. I realized recently that it also had the potential to be the foundation to something so much more.

Monica may be known as lesfic's tweetheart, but she is also undoubtedly a top tier human and, in a totally biased way, my favorite one.

Explaining what it means to have gotten here is more words than I could fit in a Patreon post, though looking back, it feels inevitable that this is where I landed.

But what I will say… is that it's just as good of a trope in real life as I always thought it was in a novel.