My opinion is that the OP was setting himself up for disappointment if (in his words) "the only reason" he played the game was for a scripted love story with only trivial hardships involved.
This is The Walking Dead. Everything is ALWAYS going worse than it seems. Especially if it seems like it's going good.
Frankly I don't know why people have gotten so clingly just for Carley. She only had some small windows of time to get into peoples hearts and yet she managed it. She was relegated to being a minor character from the point you chose her over Doug. Absent for the main portion of Ep. 2, killed off fairly early in Ep. 3.
I'm not normally the type of person to say such a cliche thing but: I think some members of the community could do with a bit more female contact to strengthen their emotions a bit.