Cat Marsters emailed me a very interesting question, one that I hadn’t considered: what romances do you know of that feature sane exes?
Usually, the ex is a horror show, either a monstrous vindictive batshit crazy lady with an array of romance shorthand markers for shallowness, such as an obsession over nail polish (read: claws/talons), an over-attentive focus on her looks (read: vanity) or just a cold, calulating beauty (read: she’s evil).
As Cat puts it:
Why is the ex always a) a thousand times more beautiful than anyone else, including the heroine, and b) why is she completely evil? Not just I-hate-you-after-the-divorce angry, but totally-unhinged fount-of-all-evil-since-dawn-of-time eeevill!!
Quite apart from my total pet peeve on the hysterically jealous beautiful = eeevill!! equation (so you hate her on sight because she’s prettier than you? Gosh, what a mature, well-rounded adult you are), I’m getting really fed up with the automatic shorthand of ex = eeevill!! It’s just rent-a-villain. If she was so damn evil, why was he engaged/married/shagging her rotten in the first place? Are we to believe this paragon of manly virtues is really that susceptible to a pretty face? Especially when our heroine is less attractive than the ex? Yes, it’s realistic he’s dazzled by the red lips and giant bazoombas, but I’m sorry, but I don’t buy him as wonderful hero material. I buy him as a shallow jerk (now that’s realism). And what about our heroine whose horrible-but-gorgeous fiancé was screwing her over? Couldn’t she see he was just a giant ass with a pretty face (I’ll let you enjoy that image).
Aren’t there any books out there that have a hero (or heroine) with an ex who isn’t 100% evil? Dead spouses don’t count. Can’t we have a mature ex-girlfriend who doesn’t wish painful death on her replacement?
While I was typing up this entry, Cat emailed me back:
OMG! I just remembered. Jill Mansell can do this. She writes very complicated used-to-be-married but-then-fell-for-your-brother whose-daughter-I-adopted then-she-married-your-new-wife’s-son type relationships, which take some keeping track of, but the exes in her book tend to be more…well, sane. Sometimes they’re even friendly. In one, there was a Jerry Hall/Mick Jagger type next-door thing going on, and the ex ended up with the heroine’s sister.
It’s rare, isn’t it, the normal, we-broke-up ex? There’s not much drama in it, and it forces the tension and potential antagonism to find another route since that easy shorthand of “beautiful ex = eeeebil” inaccessbile.
Sometimes that shorthand is used to build the nobility of the character, who despite the relationship being over, still cares for or takes care of the ex in question. There was one book I read a while back wherein the hero is constantly taking care of his ex-girlfriend, who is beautiful but utterly mentally unhinged and keeps taking her clothes off in his backyard. Of course, now I’m wondering what book it was. (I’m one big HaBO I swear.)
The Mentally Stable and Not Evil Ex is a rare find in romance, in my experience. The stable ex means that the hero/heroine has had sex with someone else, has had a healthy relationship with someone else, and has ended that relationship for whatever reason. Does stability in a protagonist’s past relationships, and the fact that those relationships fizzled, somehow cast doubt on the S/He’s The One-ness of the relationship detailed in the romance? Is there such thing as enough reassurance in the “we’re just friends” and “you’re the one for me” departments such that it satisfies any doubts on the part of the reader? Or do readers by and large prefer as much as possible a virginal sexual past for the heroine, and a virginal emotional past for the hero?
What about y’all? Have you read or enjoyed a book wherein the ex was normal, functional, and maybe even casual friends with the hero or heroine? Or does the idea that either the hero or the heroine may have had sex and a stable relationship with someone else who is potentially likeable turn you off as a reader that you prefer your protagonists to have either an unstable ex history or no ex history at all?
I like the idea of a sane and stable ex, because maybe I’m strange but I think it reinforces that One True Loveness of the hero/heroine relationship. Yes, there was a normal and perfectly nice person in his/her past, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that person. Maybe there were even multiple perfectly okay people in the past, but the hero/heroine have that something special that goes beyond being just another perfectly nice relationship into The Luuuuuuuuuurve territory. I also have to agree that who they associated with in the past speaks volumes about who the hero/heroine is as a person. If the exes are good people, then it kicks up my estimation quite a few notches.
I wonder how much of it is down to influences authors picked up while they read the classics – I mean, Jane Eyre and Rebecca both have heroes with some howlingly scary exes. Rebecca’s so terrible that she can exert her malign influence over the heroine even though she’s upped and joined the choir invisible.
I suppose the hot bunny boiler ex is a plot device for conflict, but I agree that it’s so often badly done and doesn’t say much about the hero’s taste in women.
One book I recently read with an ‘ex’ (Her claim was pretty spurious, but I won’t say more because it’ll trash the plot.) who seems somewhat crazy but is eventually sympatico with the current girlfriend was ‘Salem Falls’ by Jodi Picault. Brilliant read. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who likes awkward, realistic love stories.
But surely that was the whole point of Rebecca! Besides, she was always much more interesting than the 2nd Mrs De Winter.
The Evil Ex seems to be just as you said, Anna, a plot device—mainly used to show how wonderful the new hero/ine is in comparison!
And Nikki, I take your point completely about reinforcing the new romance. And it does make him/her seem like a better person, too.
Susan Wiggs’ last two have featured a divorced couple with two kids and their new romances. She has a very deft and realistic touch with these types of adult situations (adult in the sense of mortgages and real relationships, not whips & chains).
RE: Susan Wiggs.
The divorced couple have romances, not the kids. More coffee required.
Spoilers ahead.
Gone with the Nerd starts out with the hero and heroine both involved with other people. The hero’s relationship is reasonably serious; the heroine’s is strictly for PR purposes but she thinks the guy may want to make it serious. Neither of their original significant others is insane, although they wonder about if one of them might be over the course of the book, and at the end the two now-exes get together and everybody remains on good terms. I’m not sure I really like the “But it’s ok if he cheats, because now he realizes that his girlfriend isn’t the one for him, the heroine is!” theory, but both hero and heroine have former relationships with people who just happened not to be right for them.
Then of course there’s Brighid’s Quest, and its hero and his late ex had a positive relationship which was a major subplot in the book before it.
I have read stories that have very nice exes in them and I found I actually prefer them. The crazy/beautiful/evil ex drive me nuts as the hero was supposed to be in love with them first but who in their right mind could be?
As to the immature male exes who are either bullies or womanisers they are not to my liking most of the time either. If the woman is supposed to be in love with them originally shouldn’t they have some redeeming feature other that looking pretty?
Hey everyone what about Judith McNaught? I can’t remember the title but when I do I’ll post it. You have picked up all the ones I thought of plus more.
Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s Don’t Forget to Smile had a normal ex-wife. She and the hero had very different outlooks on life and that’s part of why their marriage ended. The biggest conflict between the exes was that the ex’s new husband was out of work and the hero found out that they were scrimping on food to pay the bills, so (I think) he increased his child support so his kid could eat like he should.
I love KGS. Her characters always have interesting backstories that are totally believable.
There are some REALLY evil exes out there!
The Top Ten Signs that You’re Being Stalked by Martha Stewart
10.) You get a threatening note made up of letters cut out of a magazine with pinking shears, and they’re all the same size, the same font, and precisely lined up in razor sharp rows.
9.) The telltale lemon slice in the dog’s water bowl.
8.) On her TV show she makes a gingerbread house that looks exactly like your split-level, right down to the fallen over licorice downspout and the stuck half-open graham cracker garage door.
7.) You find your pet bunny on the stove in an exquisite tarragon, rose petal and saffron demi-glacé, with pecan crusted hearts of palm and delicate mint-fennel sauce.
6.) The unmistakable aroma of potpourri follows you even after you leave the bathroom.
5.) You discover that every napkin in your house has been folded into a swan.
4.) No matter where you eat, your place setting always includes an oyster fork.
3.) Twice this week you’ve been the victim of a drive by doilying.
2.) You wake up in the hospital with a concussion and endive stuffing in every orifice.
And the Number One Sign You’re Being Stalked by Martha Stewart…
1.) You awaken one morning with a glue gun pointed squarely at your temple.
hours18—how long it takes to read all the comments on DEVIL’S EMBRACE
Susan Elizabeth Phillips has done some sane exes, for example in Fancy Pants. And one of the Calebow books has an ex, while she enjoys roleplaying and a bit of S/M, seems to be quite sane.
Not a true “romance” novel – but the The Catsitters
MRS DREW PLAYS HER HAND ( I can’t remember the author’s name.Carla Kelly maybe?)features a heroine who is a widow and really, really enjoyed sex with her late husband. It made a nice change from all those widows who were not technically virgins but who had only had sex with an inept or brutal husband.
Freya Bedwin’s behaviour in A SUMMER TO REMEMBER established her as having boorish manners and a wide vicious streak. My favorite scene in the book is the one in which Lauren Edgeworth puts her very firmly in her place, all without raising her voice or uttering an unladylike word. Way to go! I disliked Freya so intensely that I couldn’t really buy her as the heroine of SLIGHTLY SCANDALOUS. That’s one of the two of the SLIGHTLY series that I didn’t keep. The other was SLIGHTLY WICKED, because the hero is a supposedly experienced rake who never notices that the woman he is having marathon sex with is a virgin and the heroine is a doormat who allows herself to be abused by literally everyone she meets. They keep saying she’s a brilliant actress, so why didn’t she run off with a troop of strolling players? I would have had some respect for her if she had.
MplsGril –
That’s Midsummer Magic by Catherine Coulter – I love that book!