See, this explains a lot, it really does. (and wow, I appreciate your frankness, I get a lot shyer talking about such things online! but it does help to see where it's coming from.)
I was raised by an unusually happy married couple, so I'm coming from the completely opposite angle - romantic love isn't the be-all to me, but family is. Really, I'm not fundamentally a slasher or a romantic - rather, it's that I have a family kink approximately a million miles wide. Marriage is part of how families are created. And for me, "true love" isn't about sex or flirting; it's about settling down with someone, having someone to come home to and share stories with, knowing someone is always there for you, knowing you're there for someone.
I tend to follow the romantic lead because in modern society, a sexual relationship is about the only such relationship that is accepted in the long-term. Roommates or teammates don't usually stay together forever (the "forever" thing is a kink of mine that I can't explain, but considering the cliche of "happily ever after" I'm not alone in it.) If they can, I'm totally happy with them like that; I don't need to have sex to bond them. But with most people - fictional characters and in real life - the expectation is that however close friends they may have, eventually they're going to find love and settle down.
Back before I slashed, I used to get very upset about romance that "broke up" my favorite friendships - in, say, The Sentinel, the idea that Jim or Blair might eventually marry the right girl and move out of their apartment and stop sharing their lives broke my heart. But by most society standards, if they didn't eventually marry and settle down they'd be something of misfits, rejects, and considered to be lonely and unhappy. Slash provided a neat solution to the dilemma; it gave them the fulfillment of a romantic relationship that didn't break up the friendship.
And SGA appealed to me because most of the show seemed to be about how family and friends can be as fulfilling as any romantic relationship. The characters had a family in each other, marriage/slash optional. Now s5 is flying in the face of that. If Rodney didn't have anyone else important in his life, if he didn't have any other kind of love, then I'd be totally fine with him getting romantic love and finding it life-changing. But he's getting family love and friend love, and that Gero would think that utterly unimportant - it burns!
Re: Comment got too long, oops! (edited)
I was raised by an unusually happy married couple, so I'm coming from the completely opposite angle - romantic love isn't the be-all to me, but family is. Really, I'm not fundamentally a slasher or a romantic - rather, it's that I have a family kink approximately a million miles wide. Marriage is part of how families are created. And for me, "true love" isn't about sex or flirting; it's about settling down with someone, having someone to come home to and share stories with, knowing someone is always there for you, knowing you're there for someone.
I tend to follow the romantic lead because in modern society, a sexual relationship is about the only such relationship that is accepted in the long-term. Roommates or teammates don't usually stay together forever (the "forever" thing is a kink of mine that I can't explain, but considering the cliche of "happily ever after" I'm not alone in it.) If they can, I'm totally happy with them like that; I don't need to have sex to bond them. But with most people - fictional characters and in real life - the expectation is that however close friends they may have, eventually they're going to find love and settle down.
Back before I slashed, I used to get very upset about romance that "broke up" my favorite friendships - in, say, The Sentinel, the idea that Jim or Blair might eventually marry the right girl and move out of their apartment and stop sharing their lives broke my heart. But by most society standards, if they didn't eventually marry and settle down they'd be something of misfits, rejects, and considered to be lonely and unhappy. Slash provided a neat solution to the dilemma; it gave them the fulfillment of a romantic relationship that didn't break up the friendship.
And SGA appealed to me because most of the show seemed to be about how family and friends can be as fulfilling as any romantic relationship. The characters had a family in each other, marriage/slash optional. Now s5 is flying in the face of that. If Rodney didn't have anyone else important in his life, if he didn't have any other kind of love, then I'd be totally fine with him getting romantic love and finding it life-changing. But he's getting family love and friend love, and that Gero would think that utterly unimportant - it burns!