Team Demelza or Team Elizabeth?
What can make a down-to-earth, intelligent person lose all decorum? Love, of course. For five seasons the British historical drama Poldark (2015-2019) enraptured fans with the tumultuous, passionate relationship of Ross Poldark (Aiden Turner) and Demelza (Eleanor Tomilson). At the beginning of the series, Ross returns from fighting in the Revolutionary War to his beautiful Cornwall only to discover his sweetheart and first love Elizabeth (Heida Reed) was engaged to his cousin Francis (Kyle Soller). Elizabeth had believed Ross was dead after two years of no contact and was pushed into marriage by her family who were bound by the gender roles and mores of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Still pining for Elizabeth, Ross met Demelza haphazardly at a dog fight in the public square. Demelza, diminutive and roughly dressed, was first mistaken for a boy. Ross saved Demelza’s dog from a crowd of attackers. Afterward, the two formally introduced themselves in a pub and Demelza accepted Ross’ offer to be his scullery maid. Over time audiences witnessed Ross’ utter disappointment at Elizabeth’s resoluteness to marry Francis while his relationship with Demelza blossomed from pity and compassion to respect, then admiration, and then passionate love. Despite his marriage to Demelza in the first season Ross continued to pursue Elizabeth which produced unimaginable consequences for everyone. This led to a powerful wave of fan reaction that still exists. Love moves us.
Fake Romance Real Connection
Over the series run viewers were treated to many relationship twists and turns with Ross and Demelza and other characters. The Ross-Demelza (and Elizabeth) relationship is still fiercely discussed on social media to this day, even though the series ended in 2019. Some would dismiss this show as mere soap opera dressed up in the gilded age for modern audiences. However, to psychologists, Poldark offers an excellent example of how people can be socialized through romantic involvement with media figures. In short, positive romantic connections with fictional characters can help us better navigate real-world relationships.
Building off the foundational idea that people can form romantic connections with favorite fictional characters or celebrities, in 2011 Dr. Riva Tukachinsky of Chapman University introduced the concept of parasocial romantic relationships (PSRR). PSRRs are usually first observed in adolescence when young people start to explore their sexual identity. Seeing teens develop crushes on their peers or other real-world figures is accepted as part of normative development. Tukachinsky’s research showed that adolescents often begin their exploration of sexual and romantic identities, not so much in the “real-world” but with characters and celebrities they encounter in media. Books, TV shows, movies, and TikToks can all provide a bevy of parasocial romantic partners.
PSRRs can seem trivial to the casual observer. However, Sarah Erickson (2025) of Trintiy University reported that at their stage of development teens can use their romantic connections to media figures to enhance their understanding of their own emotions and to help form positive relationships with future romantic partners. By processing love, attraction, passion, sex, and other related themes through the fiction they watch or connections they make to favorite social media content creators, young people can help define their own identities and begin to understand romantic attachments.
One of the greatest advantages of PSRRs is that they provide access to available partners. Media offers no shortage of characters and personas to find attraction. In the real world these options would be off limits. But parasocial phenomena makes them accessible. A second advantage to PSRRs is that they are socially safe, in that rejection is virtually impossible. This allows for experimentation and learning without the threat of a relationship ending from one false move or something said in the heat of the moment. PSRRs can function as a romance laboratory where we can experiment, learn, and grow in relating to others.
We Can All Learn from Fictional Couples
Learning about romance from TV and movies is not just for teens. Fictional relationships such as Ross and Demelza’s love affair can help adults navigate their own romantic lives as well. In a 2024 study on fans’ parasocial connections to the Jim and Pam relationship from The Office (US), Drs. Perry Reed, Karen Shackelford, and myself found in qualitative interviews that viewers used the characters’ romance as a template for their own romantic lives. This was not PSRR but rather viewers reported having a parasocial relationship to the couple as friends with no romantic attachment themselves. Many admitted to identifying with the couple or taking the perspective of either Jim or Pam at various stages in their relationships. Fans discussed how watershed moments in Jim and Pam’s romance mirrored their own and how they used lessons from Jim and Pam’s fictional relationship to deepen or enhance their love lives. One interesting observation was that the fans’ romantic attachments did not need to resemble exactly what they saw on the screen for the fiction to be effective at providing a safe space to examine emotions and explore relational identities and other themes. So, whether it’s Jim and Pam or Ross and Demelza, people can learn about themselves and others from the fictional romance that they watch in TV shows and movies.
Not all connections to celebrities or fictional characters are healthy. While most PSRRs and parasocial learning is normative and beneficial a small number of exceptions occur with those that either have a mental illness or develop an obsession. For example, those that decide to stalk an actor or artist are not doing so because of parasocial connections.
Who is your parasocial romantic crush?
How have your real-world relationships mirror those you’ve seen in TV and movies?
Who have you been shipping (wishing fictional characters to become romantic with each other)?
Partial Reference List
BBC. (2019, September 1). Ross ❤️ Demelza OTP: Their entire epic romance 😍 – BBC Poldark [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8FTeJ28mgs
Erickson, S. E. (2025). PSRs in adolescence. In R. Tukachinsky Forster (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of parasocial experiences (pp. 190-109). Oxford University Press.
Reed, P. A., Shackleford, K. E., Cohen, J. D., & Robbins, M. J. (2024). Qualitative and quantitative investigations of Office fans’ connections with fictional and celebrity couples: Identification, parasocial relationships, and beyond. Psychology of Popular Media, 13(4), 729–740. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000552
Tukachinsky, R. (2011). Para-romantic love and para-friendships: Development and assessment of a multiple parasocial relationships scale. American Journal of Media Psychology, 3(1/2), 73-94.