A trope that is extremely common in romance as a genre is that more often than not, either the MC is extremely dense/oblivious or the love interests are. However, it’s also common place for this also to occur in family dynamics as well, such as villainess isekai’s and such, where the MC never truly realizes that her father (usually always the father) loved her or her father never realized HE loved her. To be honest for a little while I was throwing around the idea that this was one of the many forms of escapism that tends to become tropes, such as “Oh, they didn’t really hate me, I just never noticed” or “He does love me, he just didn’t know he did” that could in theory then be applied to real life. However, reading romances are my side-hustle in the webnovel business so I was wondering if there was any validity in my hypothesis of the appeal of this trope.
I think your hypothesis makes sense. I don't have anything concrete to back it up but it passes the smell test.