In 1970, Love Story—a film about two Ivy League lovers separated by a terminal illness—grossed over $100 million and became Paramount’s highest-grossing release at the time. Fifty years later, Normal People (2020) became Hulu’s most-watched limited series, with audiences fixating on the miscommunication and class-based suffering of its protagonists. Between these two landmarks lies an unbroken lineage of romantic dramas— Terms of Endearment (1983), The Notebook (2004), Blue Valentine (2010), Marriage Story (2019)—that share a counterintuitive premise: audiences pay for pain.