If some guy said to you, “A Jewish guy cut me off while driving on the highway, so I hate Jews,” you’d think he was a complete bigot and a tool. We certainly wouldn’t think he was romance hero material.
So how is it a justifiable plot point that a guy is unwilling to commit because one woman, ONE. JUST ONE WOMAN broke his heart, dumped him, slept with his best friend, or committed some other act of douchebaggery?
I realize asking these questions may undermine the emotional tension of 65% of romance plots, particularly those in the category category, but COME ON NOW AND I MEAN IT. Unless the woman in question is his mother, and mommy issues are a whole lot of mess that we can discuss ad nauseum, how in the world can one bad experience with one person paint that person’s entire gender with such negative possibilities that a man becomes convinced that every woman walking is out to get him?
Seriously, can’t that one person just have been a douchebag?
Or is it too much to ask that actual issues be present for emotional conflict? Must we grab the Giant Broom of Judgment and push all potential mates, of the same or opposite sex depending on the romance, into the Trashbin of Plot Conflict?
I find this oddity exists in so many different subgenres, and holy pu pu platters, am I tired of it. And it happens to the heroine, too: one guy betrayed her, humiliated her in the worst way possible and caused her to doubt herself for years. It’s awful. Engagement broken, marriage shattered, presents returned, cold reality dunked into. Let there be sweeping judgments, and eternal penalties for his early withdrawal! Either she will be convinced it was entirely her own shortcomings that caused him to leave her, or she’ll suspect every man with the same color hair, or the same career, or the same history of having dated more than, say, four women in his adulthood of being just as feckless and shitful as Mr. Assmonkey. With heroines, it’s either all her fault, all men’s fault, or both. With heroes, The wimmins iz evilz. Heroes can’t be doubting themselves or their manly manful manhoods, obviously.
I understand having someone’s behavior cause you to question your own ability to gauge people for trustworthiness. I think everyone’s been there at least once in their lives. I know I’ve had to confront the fact that someone close to me wasn’t who I thought s/he was. But I don’t automatically ascribe the same behavior to all people who bear even the slightest similarity to the toolius originalis. That would make me a mighty, mighty asstool.
But in a romance, heads up: if one person acts like a tool and fractures the heart and confidence of a hero or heroine, four out of five dentists agree that a romance protagonist may therefore ascribe that behavior to the entire opposite sex for plot tension. Because that totally makes sense. Right.
I’m not even sure what to call this sweeping prejudice as plot point – nonheroism? Douchbaggery Judgmentalitis? Lame? I’m about ready to stop reading the minute Sweeping Judgment as Plot Tension rears its silly, overused head. Does this drive you bonkers, too?
I get irritated with all manner of self-doubt being the obstacle to romance. As well as, I-doubt-you-because-someone-else-was-an-ass plot. I think it’s a big reason why I’ve drifted from romance and into strong urban fantasy (we’re talking series with 3-7 books without a single moment of sexual satisfaction here! And I used to read erotic romance as much as regular romance!). Think Ilona Andrews (I swear, if Curran doesn’t get nekkid in the next book, I may cry).
What I’m just sick of in general is the Mysoginy!Angst! Oh woa is me, I think woman are good for nothing (except, maybe sex). How tragic for me, that I think this!
Basing the ENTIRE emtional arc around ‘The Hero Hates All Woman’ just turns me right off. It seems (to me) to be sloppy storytelling, and though sometimes – like in real life – a really good backstory is added… you know, still? I’m so over it.
I just don’t care. It still feels sloppy to me, because I feel as if the author just wanted to make the person a woman-hater, and then made up a backstory to justify it—instead of having a backstory for your characters, and then figuring out how this history would motivate their beliefs and behavior.
I’m sick of reading about heros who think all women are (a) whores, (b) stupid, (c) useless, or all of the above. And then they meet the One Woman who’s different from all the rest! Enough, please! It’s still creepy, and I totally distrust the HEA because I’ve met tons of those madonna/whore complex guys, and you just know the hero’s gonna flip that around on her later on.
Omg yes! I hate these plot device in romance novels. Or any novel, really.
I’ve begun to cringe when I learn that a hero was wronged by a woman in his past (usually she cuckolded him) because almost always he ends up suspecting the heroine of being exactly the same and that’s the cause of the big mis in the novel. I hate those books.
I feel your pain. It makes me wonder if they ever studied logical fallacies in English class and if they apply sweeping generalizations to everything else.
The dentist bit made me snort water out of my nose. Thank you.
I told my eldest—in a completely different context, but it applies—“Whatever you feel is perfectly valid. It’s how you deal with how you feel that is the question.”
The hero once loved Cruella with all of his tender heart and soul and she toyed with his affections before dumping him for an 80-year old billionaire with one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel and now he feels that women are money-grasping, puppy-wearing hos? Okay, he’s allowed to feel that, but what does he do with it? Does he hold himself in reserve and find it difficult to trust someone enough to really love her? Okay. We can work through that with the plot as he grows and comes to the realization that he has some major logical fallacies going on—and “C is an A/C is a B/All A are B” is one heck of a logical fallacy—as he simultaneously realizes that, despite his experiences, he loves the heroine. However, does he insult, taunt, debase, and use every woman he comes across, including the heroine (until her magic hoo-hoo binds him to her forevah), and rationalize it with his sad sad past? Far from okay and there is hardly enough groveling that this guy could do for me to come back from that. Some difficulty letting go of the past is fine but using the past to justify treating everyone that dares to try to care for you like shit is not.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been on the receiving end of the “I’m sorry I’m such an asshole but _____ hurt me so bad, I just can’t help it.” behavior. In my opinion, using your sad sad past to justify delivering emotional beat-downs and verbal stabbings to someone (whose only crime is trying to be in relationship with you) is just a bullshit excuse meant to give you a free pass to act like a shit and “I’m sorry” loses its meaning upon endless repetition. Consequently, I find my tolerance for reading about it set at “nil”. If I wanted to watch people being mean to each other for no good reason, I could turn on Maury or Rock of Love.
Heroes should act like heroes. Heroines should act like heroines. They should grow over the course of the story, treat others appropriately (ie, as they deserve to be treated), and be better for being together.
beggar1015 stole my comment! I was reading this post, thinking of all the books I know that fit this rant and trying to think of some that could have but didn’t. Carolyn Jewel’s Scandal was the first one I thought of.
I read a lot of books with older, experienced heroines. While many of them are wary of men, that’s mostly about fearing the loss of independence and power that comes with marriage—more so for women in historical and some fantasy setting, but to some extent even in contemporary settings. Even the ones who had bad sex (or no sex!) in a previous relationship don’t usually hate men; they may be uninterested in sex, if their only experiences were not good, but to me that kind of specific distrust is believable.
When it becomes too broad a brush, I can’t buy it. As others have said, most people have experience with other members of the gender that would balance their views somewhat. Even just seeing others in happy marriages or strong romantic relationships should go some way towards reasoning that obviously not everyone is a user/destroyer. Shutting out all but the one experience suggests a capacity for self-deception or playing the victim that I do not want in my heroes or heroines.
Well developed characters with genuine fears of commitment or intimacy are a staple of the genre; trying to shortcut the development part rarely works for me.
And this was always one of my biggest, earliest beefs with Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, even the first eight titles that I really liked: Anita’s fiance broke her heart in college—something about having teh sex and he, what, laughed at, scorned/threw her over, I can’t even remember now or care—so she had issues, excuse me, issues with all men. Bleh. Lick your wounds, pull up the big girl panties, and keep that particular plot device out of my books.
That’s just an excuse for him to use her for sex and then claim he “just can’t” commit. Le Whiiiine.
I think what bugs me the most isn’t the unwillingness to commit because of one bad woman in his past (I see it often in the reverse-with the woman making the assumptions about men)- it’s the willingness to use other women as sex objects because he has a vendetta against the entire female race (except for his mommy and relatives of course)
I can be more sympathetic if he has had a bad experience and decides that he doesn’t trust women enough to commit to them so he only seeks out no-strings relationships (fine, be a boy and play around forever) with ……but I don’t like it when these guys have some sort of agenda to sex as many women as possible and then throw them away like used tissues.
Really, really hard. Damn hard.
Hey, he was nekkid in the first book! Granted, he was in a vat, healing from 3rd degree burns, but still…
I find it interesting that few people here have brought in their own personal experiences as proof that this kind of plotline could be true. But, (and forgive me if I didn’t read the responses correctly), it seemed like in those cases what happened was a recent event, was very abusive, and/or was a long term relationship where trust was completely betrayed. I of course understand that in those circumstances, you would hate all men (or women) for a period of time. Maybe a long period of time.
I guess where this plotline irritates me is in situations where the hero or heroine was betrayed more superficially, especially when they were very young, and now it’s a decade or so later, and they’re still not over it. I just don’t find that believable in the least. One story I read recently had the heroine admitting (only to herself, of course) that she’d understood exactly why the breakup that caused her heartache happened a decade previous, that it actually was the right thing to have happened in hindsight, yet still couldn’t trust the hero now in the present, again, a decade later. So, you get that you were too young at the time, you get why the guy broke up with you, you see that it was the right thing for him to do, yet now, many years later, you still have trust issues because of him? I don’t know…it just didn’t ring true for me.
If this trope shows up in another genre, we’d have less trouble with it because it can be ascribed to a medical condition and treated. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an accepted plot device in any drama or melodrama where one can point to an event – serving in ‘Nam/Iraq/Quwait, a car accident, a ship sinking, hostage taking, murder in front of their eyes – so why not in a Romance? Getting your heart broken can be as traumatic as getting shot at, can’t it?
It isn’t whether the trope is cliched, it’s whether the author can sell it. Havy Susie return your engagement ring sells nothing, Catching her in fragrant delmonicos with (in order of increasing horror) your best friend, your brother, your son, your dad, your grandpa, your sister, your mother, your best hunting dog…
Maybe those might sell it. You gotta get struck with a post full of stressful trauma, see? It can’t simply be that he’s cheating – he has to do it with your mother and your sister just when you were bringing the minister by to discuss wedding details.
Otherwise it’s just an overused cliche, as you’ve said.
I know that in fiction it’s merely a convenient plot device, but it’s been my observation IRL that what usually happens when someone gets the snot kicked out of them, friends/acquaintances/passersby seem to come out of the woodwork to share their own stories of Betrayal and Deceit. And when that happens, the logical reaction (okay, maybe not logical—emotional?) is to say “See, all men/women suck!” Attitudes like that can last forever, or at least until someone comes along and proves otherwise!
It’s extremely annoying and quite frankly, dulls my enjoyment. I mean who really wants to read this kind of plot contrivance ad nausea?