"Characters going from a more distant to a closer relationship" is one of my favorite things to read, and I enjoy a number of m/f romances in media where romance isn't the main focus. So every couple of years I think, "gosh, there's a whole genre and publishing industry premised around this thing I like! If I turn out to like m/f romance novels, I'll never run out of pleasant things to read!"

...And then I try m/f romance novels, and they are almost never the thing I want and almost always a point-by-point recreation of tiresome gender stereotypes and patriarchal power dynamics, and then there's marriage and children. Turns out the genre is not built around ships like "strange woman/sad wet rat man" or "two hot conflicted badasses circling each other forever but also it's het." I find this alienating and, also, inconsiderate. And yet every few years I keep trying.