chirart:

1. both parties are full rounded characters
   
   
2. they each have their own personal motivations, wants, and dreams
   
   
3. they both want to kiss each other’s face
   
   like
   
   a lot
   
   
4. codependency!!! from functional to dysfunctional (as long as it’s sold as dysfunctional and embraces the problems that go with it because that makes it so interesting), physically or emotionally or WHATEVER. I love codependency. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Not the sort of formless blob where both character A and B literally do not have a personality beyond their relationship, that is boring and dumb, but all the sort of helpless attraction and chemistry that brings people together, that is what I am talking about!! The chemistry that makes it very hard to imagine a life without the other person in it, that the other person is the missing element that doesn’t make your life worth less without them there but worth everything more which is what makes the pain of losing them so acutely awful. Sometimes it brings the most compatible people together and I can’t help but just bask in the feelings they have for each other, and sometimes it brings together people who are so incompatible and sometimes even unhealthy but somehow their lives have gotten entangled with each other beyond understanding. It is something bigger than who they are, but it isn’t “destiny,” it’s a clash or melding of personalities that’s more addictive than any drug life can provide and it’s what makes stories worth telling, over and over, since the dawn of time.

See, simple.