Not too long ago, on a rainy night when there wasn’t too much going on in my own life, I entered another world. The world of “Dawson’s Creek,” that is, to watch Pacey and Joey’s first kiss in an old episode on YouTube. I’d seen it before. I knew it was coming. I even knew they were going to end up together. But I still got that fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach to be a witness to this perfect moment, after almost a full season of buildup. It was the same for Seth and Summer, Chuck and Blair, and Ephram and Amy.

In real life, first kisses are rarely so perfect. They come from someone you’ve known for a little while and have been flirting with, after a night of pizza or a movie or a party, and that fluttery feeling in your stomach is there, certainly, but you’re too busy analyzing what the kiss means and what your next move should be to just relax and experience it. And this is a best-case scenario. Sometimes it’s just awkward and wet and anticlimactic. Sometimes you bump noses. Sometimes you misjudge the situation, and he pulls away.

None of this happens in a teen soap opera. Oh yes, there’s drama of all shapes and kinds. There are angsty, subtext-wrought conversations to be gotten through. Both parties will be negotiating parental divorce, drug abuse, failing classes, pregnancy scares, jealous exes and death (it doesn’t particularly matter whose, so long as it’s someone close). All this will happen in a month. And then it will happen again, to different people and in a different order. But when that crucial moment comes, after all the waiting and angsting, everything will be just right. They will immediately and very articulately declare their love for one another and commence an intense relationship that will last about a week before a teary breakup scene. After all, no one is allowed to be happy until the show ends. But you, the viewer, can sit back and comfortably watch the drama, knowing the characters will get through it all with plucky determination and end up with the person they’re meant to be with.

This guarantee, so clearly lacking in real life, is what keeps me coming back to teen soaps. Regular soap operas, with their evil twins, comas and alien babies, almost have to be overwrought and melodramatic because they thrive on the cliffhanger. Teen soaps thrive on that moment when it all comes together, because in high school, everything really does feel that dramatic. Your first love is the only one you’re ever meant to be with, and your first breakup is the end of the world. Teen soaps make it all come true in a more literal way. They feel more raw and real than anything in real life. And no matter how jaded you want to be, it’s impossible to completely close yourself off to the vicarious thrill of the happy ending.