This past July, the final season of the teen romantic drama show entitled The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP)—featuring a conflict-ridden but nonetheless endearing summer love story—left a monumental impact on the mixed-media world. By the series finale in September, the show had not only allured 70 million viewers, but imposingly became the most-watched season ever on Amazon Prime Video among young-adult women (Hailu, 2025). Albeit impressive, viewership statistics only speak to part of its impact. Throughout the months it aired, TSITP reigned in thousands of videos, comments, and arguments from fans—and shockingly NFL teams like the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings—weighing in on social media. Most of the content centered around which male love interest—brothers Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher—should end up with Belly, the female lead (spoiler: #Bonrad (the pairing of Belly and Conrad) won at the social media polls and on the big screen). 

So how does a seemingly simple coming-of-age story—marked by a young woman’s inability to choose which brother to give her undivided love to—become so polarizing and garner so much attention? Our answer is simple: the love triangle. Well-understood by its name, the love triangle occurs when a female lead (i.e., the key point) has to choose between two rival male love interests (i.e., the end points). In such a competition, there is a renowned victor (in this case, Conrad), and the poor, sodden loser (the unfortunate Jeremiah). Thus, TSITP’s perfect execution of the tried-and-true trope taps into our well-known love—and need—for competition, the search for power.

TSITP highlights what we would call a fundamental id. Dating back to 1923, Freud coined the term when breaking down our human psyche; we are composed of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. Our id, or our basic desires and instincts, represent what we are inherently drawn to. This includes beauty, wealth, and power—and what better way to convey power than through competition? Nothing about us as humans, the apex predators that we are, are accustomed to losing. So, hits like Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, The Hunger Games, and of course TSITP, have all employed the love triangle to elicit our cravings for winning, and to keep us engaged in the media we consume. Fans can’t help but to avidly root for their favored male love interest; even becoming rabid enough to bat for them as though they have a personal stake in their fight for true love. 

But besides our fundamental need to win, why do love triangles seem to spark such interest in fans? From a social psychology perspective, we have several theories. First, the love triangle seemingly operates on the formation of parasocial relationships. Put simply, parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships that individuals form with media entities, whether that be a celebrity, an influencer, or a fictional character. These one-sided relationships can be used to satiate one’s need to belong, and commonly occur with entities one admires or feels similar to (Derrick et al., 2009).

Recent literature has explored parasocial relationships further, in a more specific context: through a romantic lens. Romantic parasocial relationships (RPSRs) differ from the typical parasocial relationships because they add the element of intimacy. In short, RPSRs occur when a viewer feels a strong, long-term, and one-sided (i.e., unreciprocated) love connection with an admired media figure (Tukachinsky, 2011). Extreme fans of TSITP likely had involved RPSRs with the boy they thought Belly should end up with, maybe even going as far as imagining scenarios of themselves in Belly’s place. This plays into other psychological concepts of interest, such as theory of mind (i.e., how well do fans understand that Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah are not them, and therefore do not share their life experiences and decision-making). 

At its core, parasocial relationships thrive on one key component: perceived similarity. Naturally, we are more drawn to people we feel most similar to, and that is still the case within fiction. Our investment in media has always focused on our empathic concern; we are often more likely to have empathy for something we can immediately relate to. So, when fans feel similar to Belly, and feel that Conrad or Jeremiah is someone they would personally want to be with, a couple of things happen: (a) the challenging mind game of how much a fan can discern between Belly as a person and they themselves, (b) their own similarity and attachment to her love interests, and (c) toeing the line between what they personally desire in a romantic relationship, and what is “best” for Belly. Because to see her and to invest time and energy in her is to truly know her, right?

It would be remiss if we did not also comment on fans’ remarkable ability of evaluating personality traits for the characters they love. Research on the Game of Thrones fandom found that they achieve great consensus when rating personality traits of the show’s characters, suggesting that fans, to some extent, really do get to know the characters they see frequently on TV (Webster & Campbell, 2023). Preliminary findings of our own research on fans of TSITP demonstrate that they too can agree on Conrad and Jeremiah’s conscientiousness and emotional stability. Arguably more interesting, fans find them to be stark opposites—Conrad is perceived to be more neurotic and less organized compared to his brother, which might be attributed to his inability to function without Belly’s love. This is quite exciting as it just may be that fans also take into account personality traits when making the decision for which Fisher brother to go to bat for in TSITP. 

The love triangle is tried and true, and no matter how much people claim to hate it, they cannot seem to avoid it. For such a simple trope, it complexly taps into what we desire so much as humans: competition, hunger for love, and connection. Love triangles, while creatively used in fictional media, are not limited to only characters of our imagination. Reality franchises such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette raise the stakes, and pursue their viewers’ inclinations for parasocial relationships with a vengeance. With meticulous and poignant editing, and creative ways to involve the audience directly, fans find themselves truly believing that they know the people on their screen; moreover, that they not only have a chance to be their friend, but to be with them. TSITP was not the first show, and it will not be the last, to employ the love triangle and trap fans into a world of inescapable competition and pleasure. The next time we see a piece of media “break the internet” with a simple story of two hopelessly romantic men pining over a lovely woman, we can confidently say, at least in part, that we know the psychology behind why.

References:

Derrick, J. L., Gabriel, S., & Hugenberg, K. (2009). Social surrogacy: How favored television programs provide the experience of belonging. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(2), 352–362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.12.003 

Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923 – 1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, 1-66

Hailu, S. (2025, October 9). “The summer I turned pretty” season 3 reaches 70 million viewers in 70 days, up 65% from season 2. Variety. https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/the-summer-i-turned-pretty-season-3-ratings-viewers-1236544365/

Tukachinsky, R. H. (2011). Para-romantic love and para-friendships: Development and assessment of a multiple-parasocial relationships scale. American Journal of Media Psychology, 3(1/2), 73-94.

Webster, G. D., & Campbell, J. T. (2023). Personality perception in Game of Thrones: Character consensus and assumed similarity. Psychology of Popular Media, 12(2), 207–218. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000398