Fox Weber says: “We have romanticised vulnerability and think that love means sticking with people through thick and thin, which can justify all sorts of wild behaviours. Depending on someone’s sense of self, there can be a pull to someone not just despite their personal problems, but because of them.

“You might think that you can save the person you love, or that you’re lucky to have the person in your life, no matter how burdensome. You might even think that the problems and obstacles in your relationship are part of the love story – there’s a certain poignancy in overcoming issues and redemption and recovery. We can end up hoping against hope that someone will be their best self one day. Even if most days are misery.”

It was only when I started writing romantic fiction myself that I realised that in order to keep a book interesting, you have to place obstacles in the way of your characters and you have to make them behave badly towards each other. Otherwise, it’s boring. And in a book or a TV programme, boring isn’t good. But in real life, when it’s the person you come home to at night, the person who pays half the council tax, boring (or at least predictable) isn’t just good; boring is great and high drama should be contained to the screen.

I still love One Day as much as I did when I was an optimistic teenager who believed that Emma and Dexter were star-crossed soulmates. But I love it differently now; I love it firmly, resolutely in the context of fiction, and not as some kind of proof that bad relationships can one day come good. It might make me less of a main character, but I’m now officially of the opinion that if a romantic relationship would make an interesting novel, I don’t want anything to do with it.

Images: Netflix

“Like Emma in One Day, I spent years waiting for a man to change – it was a mistake”