Can these characters just get together already?

 Not gonna lie; I'm an incurable romantic. Truth be told, I don't want to be cured. It's not that I live in a fantasy world filled with ne'er a struggle. I don't. I know "happily ever after" (if that means constant, uninterrupted bliss) does not exist, if the two individuals involved are humans, that is. Nevertheless, I do love a love story. I love it because, even through the inescapable struggles, I'm convinced our truest happiness comes through our relationships. So when I watch a TV show, and I observe two people interacting, and I sense their chemistry week after week after week, yes, I want them together. And I'd rather not wait an entire season, or six or seven, for it to happen.

But wait I must, all too often. For some reason, writers like to make me wait. They take pleasure in my pain. In perhaps my favorite TV show of all time, The West Wing, I waited seven seasons (yes, I did say seven!) for Josh and Donna to finally get together. Patience? Ya think? More recently, as I pushed my way through three seasons of The Killing, whose dark, despairing plot is like the train wreck you can't stop watching, in literally the final five seconds of the final episode of the final season, hope is restored as Linden turns her car around and returns to Holder. Ahhh!

A couple nights ago I watched the 16th episode in the 3rd season of Nashville, and finally, finally Rayna and Deacon face their honest feelings for each other. Of course, now he has a terminal illness, so they can't just be happy for heaven's sake. And then there's Scandal, ah Scandal, where week after week, we watch Fitz and Liv in the most frustrating epic of ill-fated love ever. For just about every imaginable reason, they cannot be together, yet at the end of nearly every episode, those dang writers tease me, just a little, and extend my hope one more week.

Now I understand literary drama. I get the need for conflict. If there is no conflict, there is no story. But I don't have to like it. It isn't easy for us viewers who feel like we know these people. When their lives shatter, our hearts shatter just a little.

Am I alone in my distress? Any other romantics out there? What shows make you crazy waiting?