Love is often rejected or even if requited, other factors come into play which prevent an easy fulfillment. Desires are often out of reach. Despite what the ramifications are of playing out such drama, it will still be followed because to not do so would be an even greater emotional loss. When all is said and done, the drama must end as all things, in death. It is the final culmination of life and the point which all history is written in stone and unchangeable.
Spurned lovers seek to die, lovers seek death to seal their emotions for eachother.
It is the one thing that is the hardest to overcome. Perhaps this is the reason that death plays so predominantly in gothic culture, because if one can over come that, one can overcome anything. Thus we have our formula for what is goth. Drama based in love which must end in or conquor death. How these are played out, tell us how the romance should be judged.