I’m still at work on the in-progress “Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels,” and I wanted to again humbly ask for your help and your perspective. You are among the smartest folks I know, anyway, so how can I not come begging? (I am almost done and promise not to do this in neverending annoyingpants fashion).
I’m currently working on how romances influence readers, and want to ask you:
Have romance novels helped you with real life relationships? How? Or, in the words of my least favorite essay questions, “Why or why not?” Which books left an impression on you for that reason?
From the book title, you can pretty much surmise my thesis. If I hadn’t learned anything, it’d be a really short (and very easy to write!) book indeed. But you are always welcome to disagree with me.
I’d love to hear what you think, about whether reading about courtships has perhaps changed the way you think of your own relationships, and whether romance has given you tools to improve yours.
Note: I absolutely mean to include sex in that question, so whether you want to discuss romance, sexual agency, sexual satisfaction, and your newfound love of wearing a beaver suit while hitchhiking to meet hot guys, please bring it on. I know that it’s very easy to skirt (ha) too close to the “romance is just porn” accusation because of the sexual explicitness of some romance, and discussing reader response to erotic content can get … oh, pick your favorite: hairy. sticky. tricky. concupiscent. turgid. banana hammocky.
Seriously, I absolutely think that reading about women and men experiencing sexual honesty along with their sexual agency is a very powerful (and subversive) thing. But if you disagree with me on that, I’d love to hear why.
As with my prior entry about the book in progress, please let me know if I can quote you, and under what name you’d like to be quoted. As of right now, I’m using the handles and usernames and not real names unless they were provided, but if the editor gives me a big ol’ WTF? on that, I’ll come back to you about it.
And as with my prior request for your opinions as I work on this book, thank you, thank you, thank you. You rock my world, my casbah, and the entire tri-state area.
yes.
This is All I Ask by Lynn Kurland is the first romance I read in my adult life and it really did change my outlook on relationships.
It’s ok to be traumatized. It’s ok to have PTSD. It’s OK to have flashbacks. It’s OK to be broken. It’s OK to be afraid of life. And it’s OK to not be able to change these things on your own. It’s ok to question your motivation for loving another person. It’s ok to question why that person loves you.
And the person you end up being with doesn’t have to be ‘normal.’ Sometimes you can only trust people that have been through what you have, and you end up growing strong together instead of having to go it alone.
In my teens, romance novels helped me deal with my disappointment in and sadness surrounding my parents’ divorce and continued unpleasant relationship. They helped me believe in the possibility of a HEA, and escape from the disasterEA I was part of.
Since growing up and marrying, romance novels continue to inspire me to strive for the HEA, to work on my marriage and to expect dedication in return. They also give me fantastic ideas for the bedroom.
You know that first brain-consuming intense love and the frantic pain that happens when it crumbles? Yeah that. A romance heroine has enough backbone to say “Okay, I am worth more. I won’t grovel for scraps.I deserve the whole plate.”
The ones who grovel, beg and resort to stalker-like obsession? They become the villianess, the other woman the hero needs to escape. I learned never to sink to that level of desperation.
Heh. What I learned from romance novels is probably a little weirder than most… I learned I was asexual. Because I’ve never felt any type of attraction for people, I’ve just thought they were pretty. It wasn’t until reading all those books that I realized what the difference was.
Seconding everybody who said they learned the importance of communication. Although I’ve got Asperger’s Syndrome, which really underlined it very early on. I can’t read people’s actions and subtle cues, I don’t KNOW social norms and rules, so I ask. You’d be amazed how many people get offended.
Two important things I’ve learned through reading romance novels:
1. The man’s perspective on sex. I always thought an emotional attachment was one-sided in sexual encounters, and now I know better.
2. Enjoying sex is absolutely, 110% perfectly normal for a woman. Even the shy ones.
I didn’t start reading romance until college, which is just about when I needed it. Romance was a huge confidence builder for me in the sex department (it’s okay to experiment, it’s sexy to talk, if a guy is into you he’s going to find you sexy even if you don’t quite know what you’re doing, etc.)
It was also a huge confidence builder in the be-yourself department, as I read about a greater variety of couples finding true love, and especially when a hero had a friend who was crazy about a completely different kind of heroine. That was enormously refreshing after the homogeneity of teen magazines and media.
Finally, and I know I’m seconding many others here, the repeated “OH MY GOD WILL YOU JUST FREAKING TALK TO EACHOTHER!!!” reaction to the Big Misunderstandings encouraged me to be up front and honest about my feelings, both with myself and with my partners. Lo and behold, that led to the incredible romance, passion, understanding, and respect I have with my husband today.
Oh my, what a question… this is a journey that takes us all the way from Clan of the Cave Bear (truly a mind-boggling introduction to sex in fiction) at about age 11 to my present day massive consumption of nearly all forms of “crappy” fiction (romance, SF, fantasy, historical, mystery)… with some notable stops at rapey-land, everything La Nora has ever written, all the squeaky clean Heyer-style regencies, and the recent glut of ass-kicking, mate-scenting paranormals. If I’ve leaned anything it’s that I love Love?
In all seriousness, by the time I was 14 or so I was a heavy (if covert) historical romance reader, and I think it had something to do with the fact that this May I (finally) married my high school sweetheart after 10 years together. Somehow from all that romance I absorbed the conviction that there really was True Love out there, and when I fell for him (at first sight of course) I went for him with all the single-minded dedication of any romance heroine.
I think without that romance mist in my brain my natural practical side would eventually have taken over and said, at any of the rough patches in our relationship, “There are plenty of fish in the sea, you don’t believe in all that soul mate crap, get on with your life.” But on a deep level I must have been holding out for my HEA—in good romance novel fashion, some part of me had that bedrock certainty of “But I SLEPT with him! I LOVE him! It HAS to work out!”
Kind of kidding, but kind of not. Whether you think that’s a good thing or not is open for debate, but I’m pretty happy with my Prince Charming. 🙂 And quote away!
I’ve been reading romance since the early 80’s, when I was pre-pubescent, and the heroes were Strong, Silent and Rapey. For the most part.
I was fascinated by the sex, of course, and since I was a nerdy little bibliophile, I had research skills at my command to look up what “climax” and “bordello” and “erection”—using real books and paper card catalogs, no less.
Also, “tumesence.” Tumesence was very popular in the 80’s. (I didn’t learn the term “whiskey dick” until I was in college, and that was, alas, not from a romance.)
Point being, I knew a lot about sex, both from a fictional perspective and a facts-based perspective pretty early on, which has made me a woman who (A) knows how to research stuff, (B) separate fact from fiction and (C) be really proactive about my own sexual pleasure. It wasn’t a perfect learning curve, but it gave me so much more information about the possibilities for all kinds of pleasure inherent in sex than if I hadn’t been reading them.
About relationships—they made me set the bar high. Not all “Prince Charming” high, but through reading about all kinds of heroines and heroes (and they got a LOT better in the 90’s and 00’s), they let me analyze what I liked or didn’t like about a particular character, and transfer that analysis to my own RL relationships. Those later romance heroines made me think, first and foremost, what traits I valued in mySELF: intelligence, a sense of humor, quick thinking, the ability to stand up for myself and others, competence. And these are the traits I would look for in a partner. If those traits weren’t there, well…I had plenty of heroines who were just fine and dandy with living their lives by THEMSELVES by then. They didn’t need some cheeseball “You complete me” thing; they were independent and content in and of themselves. When romance came into the picture, it was an addition to their lives, not the focus of their lives.
I turned 38 this year, and astonished family and friends by finding and marrying my darling beta husband within a year. He’s totally not a traditional romance hero at all, but he’s perfect for me. (True story: I knew he was mine when he sent me an email with a link to a truly horrific bit of not-even-purple-but-black-hole-indigo prose romance novel, pretty early in our dating. All he has to say is “lady softness” to me, and I’m cracking up. Heh. “Lady softness.”)
Also, tearing through so much romance gave me a killer vocabulary, excellent (albeit antique) etiquette, and a solid core knowledge of history. And the ability to make my sister spit coffee all over the table whenever I say “Conn, Conn..stuff me till I burst! Take me like the stallion takes my mare!”
Every. Time. (Thanks, Bertrice Small!)
pseud is fine.
Romance novels taught me about bad boys and nice guys (and which one I would rather date), about romance, that a woman could be passionate and sexy without being trashy, and above all else that it was better to find a guy who loves and wants me as me instead of trying to change for a guy or expecting him to change for me.
(Feel free to quote if you want. Email me for my name if you do.)
I began reading romance novels around 10 or 11 years. My mother and her friends would buy boxes of Harlequins at yard sales and flea markets and pass them around. I tore through hundreds of them over the first 3 years or so.
For me, it was quite reassuring to read the “plain girl gets the guy” stories. I was just entering that very awful awkward stage with gaining weight in the wrong places, gaining in the right place but not being ready for it, pimples, and all that other stuff. I was not only an ugly duckling, but a shy, lonely duckling.
But I read books where the heroine was sometimes plump and plain, yet her intelligence and sweetness earned her love from a good man. It helped me to keep believing that even if I wasn’t the beautiful, vivacious prom queen, I still deserved and could find someone who loved me without a miraculous makeover.
You may quote me if you wish.
Well, I’ll tell ya, with all these freebies lately I’ve started reading erotica for the first time, and I FINALLY know what a butt plug is for.
We live and learn!
(Pseudonymous quote fine.)
OMG! I knew immediately what book you were quoting. Wow. The memory whipped back into my head with the sharp power of a well snapped bra strap.
Dang.
SEE, I TOLD YOU!!
Every. Time.
reading romance novels helped me to realize that sex is not a bad thing. my mom is a bit of a prude, and as far back as i can remember she drilled into me how having sex before you’re married is bad. there were times that she would point out how premarital sex “ruined” the lives of my aunts (she lived for dramatics—sex did not ruin my aunts’ lives). Even when i was in high school, she told me that the only way to be a “good girl” is to be like St. Mary and to wait until after marriage to have sex. (there were times when i had the feeling that she wanted me to be knocked up by the Holy Spirit.) She has eased up a bit since i graduated high school, but there are still times when i catch her looking at me as if she is trying to gauge whether or not i am still a virgin.
i absolutely agree. most of my friends were having sex way before they were ready, and i while i was just as curious as they were, i feel like the books gave me a peek at what was really going on behind closed doors, so i didn’t need to hook up with random guys. in a way, romance novels taught me more about smart sexual decisions than my mother ever could. Because she didn’t want me experimenting, she tried very hard to stop me from reading romance novels, which she thought would make me want to have sex before i was married. if only she knew.
I will toss my two cents in, even though many of my experiences mirror some of those listed above.
My parents were divorced when I was five and from that time on, every influential person in my life was divorced and excessively bitter. I also had some pretty extensive daddy issues due to my own father’s frequent absence. However, I started reading romance when I was probably 11 or 12 (in secret of course) and I truly believe that my obsession with the genre helped build my own belief in love and in the fact that not all men are dicks who should die a painful and prolonged death. I also believe that my desire to find this perfect love kept my from slipping into the cliched behavior of a girl with daddy issues (i.e. promiscuity, sex with older men, teenage pregnancy, etc. – and I had friends who were doing all of these things). Romance novels allowed me to imagine being loved by a man and thus to begin to see value in myself and demand that others see it as well. I grew up in a small town and almost all of my friends got married very early and now have lots of kids and a good number are divorced. I have managed to escape that life, find a profession that I love and which I am amazing at (I’m a librarian), and find the love of my life (we’ve been together eight years now). I attribute my success, my faith in myself, and my faith in love to my rabid reading habits in general and to the romance genre in particular. A little imagination goes a long way in overcoming most of life’s problems.
As far as specific books – I really think that the relationship between Jamie and Claire in Outlander had a profound affect on me. That was the first time in my life that I “met” a couple who not only fell in love but stayed in love through all the craziness that life throws at you. I will also say that the stories by Vicotira Dahl writes always give me ideas to steam up the bedroom …
Oh, I thought of something I did learn from romance novels, especially erotic romance. I learned what my kinks were! Before, I had no idea why some men would turn me on and other men, who seemed equally decent and suitable, did not. But after reading a lot of romance novels, some of which made me think, “Meh, this doesn’t do it for me” and some of which made me think, “Yowza! This does!” I have pretty much sorted out the kind of man I need. (And it has nothing to do with looks!)
Romance novels did have an influence on my relationships, and it was mostly a positive influence. My mom was open in talking about sex with me, so I knew all about it. And I’d decided that I was going to hold on to my virginity until I was married. And mom had made it clear that it was a boyfriend’s role in a relationship to push for sex and my role to say “no”. So you can imagine my surprise when *I* was feeling attraction. I hadn’t been prepared that *I* would want sex. I muddled through that mess on my own and decided that even though I was some kind of wierd sex-a-holic (I thought) girl, that it was ok to do it with my boyfriend, because we were going to get married.
I was in college by then, but didn’t have girlfriends who were having sex and sharing details. Then I discovered romance novels. And you know what? The women in the novels? They liked sex! They wanted it! I wasn’t a sex-a-holic, I was probably pretty darn normal. Go figure!
On the minus side, the romance novels that I was reading at that time reinforced for me that having sex guaranteed a happy marriage was down the road for me. All the heroines I was reading were virgins until they had sex with their man. Once that happened it was HEA, even if down a long and winding road. So, I pretty much considered myself married – we’d had sex after all! – and had a hard time recognizing things going wrong in our relationship. I was totally shocked when he dumped me and I was no longer engaged.
So, fast forward to now, when I’m happyily married to a different guy. (By the way, inspired by my new understanding of my sexuality, I decided to have a short term fling with him. We ended up married.) Now I’m reading romance and some erotica, and I’ve definitely learned a few things, been inspired to try a few things, and my reading has lead to some great communication about all things sexual. It’s an easy way to bring stuff up: “Hey, guess what I read…”
Over and above all of that, though, is the fact that reading romance is a drug for me, and it’s a good one. A definite anti-depressant. It’s a luxury I give myself to keep sane. There’s a lot of crap in my life and uncertainty for people I care a whole lot about. But in reading romance I can get away to a place where I’m assured it all turns out ok. And I laugh, and sometimes cry, but I head back to real life a little happier. I love it!
Oops. You can quote me if you want. But maybe you could make up a name for me if you do? Thanks.
To vary the subject a little. . .
(Almost) Everything I Ever Knew About the Napoleonic Wars Came from Romances.
Carla Kelly has taught me a lot about history, especially about the Spanish campaign during the Napoleonic Wars. I didn’t even KNOW that the British fought the French there. “With this Ring” has A LOT about medical treatment of soldiers during that time, as did her ”The Surgeon’s Wife.” You learn about the lack of social status of surgeons during that time, as well as the dismal lack of medical knowledge. Unfortunately, her depiction of aristocrats tripping through military hospitals for entertainment was true, but because Ms Kelly’s characters are so vivid, she teaches her readers the social impact of status, shame, ostracism, illegitimacy (“The Captain’s Proposal”) , and imbalance of power. I don’t think I will forget the searing description in “One Good Turn” of what happened when English officers during the Napoleonic Wars allowed their troops to rape and pillage the Spanish city of Badajoz, an event with which I was not familiar. If you want to learn about the long-term consequences of post traumatic stress, you don’t need to read about soldiers today. You can read about the horrors of being at sea without food and the awful decisions people have to make to survive and their later effects in her haunting, but hilarious “Beau Crusoe.” More importantly, you understand the emotions associated because of her vividness in writing, so that PTSD is not a dry subject, a list of symptoms. Carla Kelly should be designated as a national treasure—and I haven’t even mentioned her book “Here’s to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army” about life in the west during after the Civil War.
Another good source of “learning something” is Loretta Chase. Like most romance writers, she does an excellent job in portraying the social lives of people in the past. But in one of my favorites, “Mr. Impossible,” the reader learns A LOT about the exploration of Egyptian ruins and the cracking of hieroglyphs. Her “Miss Wonderful” covers the building of the canals in England, the predecessor to the trains that linked people and commerce.
But the real strength of romance novels is not the factual knowledge or the increased vocabulary one gains from reading them. Romance novels explore the emotional lives of men and women and the power of love to change lives. Because they have insured happy endings, they are a source of optimism and hope for millions of people who use them to relax and to reduce stress. After 9-11, the new genre of paranormal romances reflected our psychological yearning for safety, in their repeated themes of aliens and supernatural species that “look after and protect” our country and our world, without us even knowing of their existence. Romances always reflect the issues of the day, whether it’s sexual abuse, changing sexual values, materialism, the issue of weight with women, the desire (and maybe discomfort with) powerful women, etc.
You can quote me under my user name, if possible.
In all honesty, I have to say that I do not think romance novels have helped me with relationships—anymore than murder-mysteries (another of my favorite genres) have helped me with traffic tickets. However, I will say this: My husband’s non-snarky, non-judgmental attitude toward any of the reading material I choose is one of the many reasons why our relationship has been strong for almost 25 years. I have friends whose husbands often give them patronizing/condescending attitudes and sly (or not-so-sly) digs because they choose to read romance novels. Never once has my husband done such a thing. Perhaps he knows he’d get an earful if he did (ha-ha) or perhaps he’s just a keeper of a man who isn’t threatened by his wife’s reading material.
As several other commentors have noted, romance novels made me feel safe in my fantasies about sex before I was actually ready to “do it.” My mother was a nurse, and so she and my father have a very healthy sex life (something she consistently tries to tell me about to this day no matter how much I run around screaming, “lalalalalalalalalala,” with my ears plugged), so I always knew the dangers of sex (diseases, unplanned pregnancy, perceptions of sluttiness, etc.) and that sex with the right person is wonderful; however, apart from their teachings and example, romance novels helped me realize that, as long as I could explore sex in books, I did not have to have sex in real life no matter how much my friends talked about it or made me feel less “mature” for not experiencing because I was experiencing it, just not in a way that made me uncomfortable.
I know my mother worried that I would have unrealistic expectations about men, relationships, and sex because she introduced me to romance novels (in her mind) too early. Let’s face it, not all men are hung the way they are or can do the sexually dynamic things they do in romance novels any more than it is possible for a real woman to orgasam fourteen times in one carriage ride as they are wont to do in the pages of the books we love. But my mother needn’t have worried. In reality, the heroes and heroines in romance novels taught me that I could own my sexuality on my terms, that I could respect myself enough to wait to find the right person to do all the romantic and naughty things I’d ever read about, and finally, they gave me the hope to know that, no matter how many failed relationships came before, when I found the right guy it would by no means be easy, but it would be magical. I am far from being a virgin, but the lessons about waiting for the right time and finding the right one still resonate with me. And now, as I am getting married for the first time at 33 years of age to the love of my life, I can tell you that it was well worth the wait on both counts!
P. S. feel free to quote me – Joanna Shearer
My romance reading history was a lot of romance reading in middle school, mostly for the sex scenes, and then not reading it much until I was in my mid 30s. So I wouldn’t say that romance novels taught me much about relationships (crappy relationships taught me what makes better relationships), but they definitely taught me about sex. Romances told me that sex was supposed to be fun for me as well as him, that desiring sex was normal, and that great sex, while only a part of a great relationship, should definitely be part of it.
You can quote me, Castiron or my real name.
(became22—no, I don’t miss who I was when I was 22, but it’d be nice to have that body back….)
I like to think that romance novels fill in the places lacking in my romantic life. While I love my husband with all my heart and we are happy together I know that he can’t do the same things that heroes do in novels (most of the time). Sometimes life just isn’t exciting and instead of being passionate we are just comfortable. That’s not a terrible thing but it does lead to a lull. I find a way of fighting that boredom by filling it with the romantic adventures in novels.
While the events aren’t happening to me it does evoke a response from me. I find new things to think and talk about, a renewed interest in our sex life, and a way to shake off the blahs. It leads to a closeness and a way of feeling content with what I have. It may not be a thrill ride or dramatic adventure, but what I do have is real and just as special.
When I was a kid, I didn’t get the sex talk. I got the “this is how your reproductive system works” talk. Being 8, I failed to notice that, while my mother told me that sperm fertilized eggs, she didn’t actually mention how the sperm got there.
If it wasn’t for romance novels, both professionally published and amateur erotica, I would have been very confused my first time. Fortunately, I managed to muddle through and figure out how the parts fit together.
Feel free to quote me; using my handle is fine.
I was just watching Cash Cab. For the record, romance novels also taught me what a ducat was, and I would not have been kicked to the curb unlike those poor saps.
I’ve got a wealth of random knowledge and I’m pretty sure at least a third of it started with tidbits of information I explored because I found something interesting in a romance novel.
Romance novels absolutely contributed to my vocabulary! Whenever a word comes up that no one knows, I can usually correctly identify it. Pretty much all from romance novels. Plus, they pretty much got me through world history in high school. You name a time or an historic event and a romance novelist has researched it and spiced it up with sex.
I grew up in a very isolated rural life and a religion with very strict ideas of what roles women and men have in life.
I grew up in the pre internet / information age. Romance novels were where I learned women can be something other than submissive brood mares who do everything to make it easier for their man to be free to handle his role in life.
Granted in the late 70s most of the women in contemporary novels were stewardesses or secretaries but it wasn’t too far into the 80s when Dr’s, lawyers, pilots, ranchers and business women entered the plot lines.
You can quote me as Jill Q., if you want.
A lot of my experiences mirror what other people have already said.
I think what romances taught me that it was okay to feel and have positive emotions, to be an optimist not just about love, but anything.
I think romance, like all genre fiction, generally has a positive message. You can stop the evil overlord, catch the murderer, you can fall in love. Be proactive about your life and good things will happen.
I grew up as a teenager in the grunge era and I feel like having emotions (other than angst and despair) was viewed as very uncool. Getting emotionally attached to a guy was viewed as kind of silly or phony. Didn’t you know that lasting monogamous relationships were over? The really cool thing would be just to use each other for sex. Now, I have no problem if two consenting people want to do that, but I was never interested in that.
But I was getting another message from the media, from my friends, from everywhere it felt like (except my parents, they were good eggs). I wasn’t interested in waiting specifically until marriage or until I met my one undying true love, but I also did not want to just hop into bed with somebody I didn’t care about at all. I wanted my relationships to be more than just physical. Romances made me feel like it was okay to wait for someone who I cared about and who cared about me. And I did. And it worked out very well.
Also, I was a plain nerdy girl in a small town. The majority of the boys I met in high school were neither kind nor bright. I had to hold out hope that there were good men out there, not just for me but for the sake of the population at large 😉
The books I can remember meaning the most to me are Jayne Ann Krentz’s contemporaries that were coming out at the time in the early to mid ‘90s. In particular, Trust Me. I still love a brainy hero. I had read a few romances before, but that was the first one that “spoke” to me. I remember the female character had vibrator and it was shown to be a good thing and not a big deal.
Made a big impression on a 14 year old.
My answer to this could easily be an essay. EASILY.
Sex I learned from the streets, from my friends, from an Owner’s Manual. Relationships I learned from romance novels. I have always been a skimmer. In fact, some of the most meaningful books for me were the Signet Regency line – sometimes they barely held hands.
True story, like this isn’t long enough – my grandmother was widowed very early and never remarried. She lined ‘his’ side of the bed with Signets and gothics for the rest of her life. If she couldn’t have what she had, she didn’t want anything else. But she couldn’t sleep alone either – so she slept with two dozen books. The titles changed, but it made me think those were important somehow. That the difference between what she had and what I knew had to be in those pages. The first romance I read was not from her bed. I never, ever, ever took a book from there. Not once.
Anyway, violent, dysfunction, am I going to have to sleep with dad’s friends including that guy with no nose, etc etc and here I am a tween and a teen and a young adult with no idea how real people interact. I don’t want squalor. I want something good or nothing at all.
I studied all the characters like it was my job. Two that really jump out at me are The Fireflower by Edith Layton and a Lass Small book I don’t recall the title of (was the heroine Pepper?) where the abusive husband from the first book came back as the hero of the second. (Didn’t work for me). Both were complicated relationships with a lot of relative moral choices being made. Billie Green was very important too – so many others.
When I began, at 9 or 10, I just read books. Then I started to wonder why one book made me happier than the other – why one hero was more appealing than the other. Sometimes what the heroine wanted shocked me. Sometimes the hero explaining to the heroine how she’d been mistreated in the past was like someone speaking directly to me. Sometimes the heroine’s reaction to being mistreated enraged me. All of it gave me a frame to build my vision of what relationships should look like. Not being able to take anything from the people around me, I read grocery bag after grocery bag full of used books and decided what I wanted in my life.
My relationship is coming up on it’s 3rd decade. It’s as good as it gets, in my opinion, while still being one between two human beings. I don’t know how I would have appreciated it or built it without the tools for understanding it that genre fiction gave me.
Well, without getting too explicit, I know that romance novels have benefited my sex life. I’ve been with (carry the three, divide by 10…) one guy, the one I’m married to. So going into things, reading Nora Roberts at least gave me a frame of reference for some ways to try things. My then boyfriend, now husband, well, he’s never complained.
Ok, so, sex.
I do disagree with you on that, a bit. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with reading about sex honestly, but I do think that there is a real place for romance that deals in detail with emotions but not in detail with sex.
Girls with low self esteem substitute sexual availability for emotional availability so easily. I knew girls who copied “what I will do to you’ passages right out of books and mailed them to boys they hoped to acquire through the promise and performance of such deeds. 13 years old and in orgies or ‘poly’ relationships to prove devotion, into all kinds of things that who knows if they were really into? 13 year olds having sex to ‘prove’ they loved him more than another girl – thinking constant sex meant they loved each other.
Messed up.
So when I read “omg, we banged into the wall and he pounded me senseless and then I knew I loved him” in ever increasing details – it’s just a Penthouse letter to me. It’s a 13 year old girl sitting on a wall telling her friends that banging his friends was how she knew they were for real, because they could be so honest with each other.
Many of the heroines in these books are girls. Girls by life circumstance, girls by genre convention, not people I trust to separate sex from healthy involvement. I feel sorry for some of them, I wonder where they got damaged, I wonder if the couples have anything in common out of bed. I wonder what a girl who was like me is getting from all this sexual honesty.
I don’t disapprove of sex. I wish the market would be honest about what’s erotica, what’s romance, what’s porn – because it’s not all the same and it’s silly acting like it is to avoid defining it. Everything O does in The Story Of is revealed in Return To Roissy. It’s not filled with the meaning she gave it. I feel that way about a lot of the sexxxy books.
Dear SB Sarah,
You asked for some answers about how romance novels helped you with real life relationships. Specifically if they have helped.
For me, the answer is—No.
It’s not for a lack of trying to find a way to say yes to your question. Honest. But I find that, no, they haven’t because I don’t take them seriously as an example of “what to do in a relationship”. I think it may have something to do with the fact that, for me, romance novels are brain candy, and somewhat unrealistic because of how they always have a happy ending.
Because, let’s face it, if I did take some of what I’ve read in romance novels as “what to do in a relationship”, I would:
A) commit rape (as in Judith McNaught’s classic “Whitney my Love”) and then get him to love me after my transgression because I’m a “great gal” and I’d technically bought him
B) buy my way out of trouble (the most recent read, Accidentally Yours, has a billionaire buying things & offering a glitzy time)
C) manipulate children through cool trips and/or an awesome dog in order to get into the pants of the sexy man next door (assuming that a) there is a sexy man next door, and b) that he has a child to manipulate through, I don’t know, milk and cookies, or Mario Brothers computer games) (another Nora Roberts novel, Local Hero).
D) run away – to a new place (Nora Roberts’ Impulse), to home and the safety net that I have there (one of Nora Roberts’ Bride quartet novels), to a neighbour (Judith McNaught’s novel, Once and Always), just Not To Him.
(and I read way too much Nora Roberts from this)
But I can hear you say, what about their communication? Or their inability to communicate? Hasn’t that taught you anything?
Uh … no.
I admit to being dense in the sense that romance novels try to teach us how to resolve conflicts when they first occur. But honestly? Not all conflicts are resolved when they occur, and b) not all conflicts CAN be resolved when they first occurred. And, most importantly, not all conflicts are somehow resolved with a smile and a tussle in the ol’ sackarooney, as seems to be the most frequent method of conflict resolution in romance novels. Men in romance novels are either Very Reasonable (read: just don’t care about the woman’s point of view and decide to plow ahead with their own PoV anyway) or Very Sullen, of which they end up being horribly mistaken in their sullenness and end up being awesome men in relationships.
I’m sorry. W.T.F.?
Maybe it’s the romance novels that I read. Maybe I need new romance novels to get a different take on men.
Conflict in romance novels seems contrived to me. The conflict isn’t about the man’s perception of the female’s ability to manage time well but not understanding that everyone needs a fluff day once in a while, but more about how YOU LIED TO ME ABOUT YOUR VIRGINITY or something like that. Whatever the conflict is, it is SOMETHING BIG. It’s not about how tidy the heroine keeps the house and how the hero wishes she’d keep a cleaner house. It’s not about washing the effin’ dishes or how the guy is a bed hog and you need a good night’s sleep for working the next day. It’s a YOU CHEATED ME OUT OF X BIG DEAL kind of deal.
That just doesn’t happen to me. I guess I sweat the small stuff.
So, no. I haven’t learned anything relationship-wise from reading romance. I guess my lessons have all been trial and error—you didn’t speak up then, so when something similar happens, SPEAK UP. If you don’t like a trait about someone, either learn to live with it, or figure out how to, because unless he wants to change it, it ain’t happening. You can’t change someone – you can only change yourself. Ad nauseum.
Or maybe it’s just because I go, “Mmm. Romance.” kind of the way that Homer Simpson goes, “Mmmm. Donut.”.
(and feel free to quote)
It isn’t that a particular romance novel has helped my relationship with my husband, but it was his complete acceptance of the fact that I read them that helped. I used to be a closet reader; I’d buy a category on a night I knew my husband would be out late (which was regularly, since he’s a musician) and read it in that evening. If he came home early, I’d hide it under my pillow. And I kept them in a spot he never looked. We’d been married for seven years before he saw me read a romance novel, and that’s mostly because I started getting longer contemporaries from the library and couldn’t always put them down. He was nonplussed that I’d hidden them from him all those years. I felt so secure in his love for me as me and not an idea or certain expectations he might have for me—it was freeing. And led to a great deal of fun: I started to let him know before I finished a novel that “this was a good one,” which was code for, “I’ll be in the mood for love just as soon as the book is done.” It’s the sex in the books, yes, but it’s also the triumph of love. I appreciate that romance novels keep me believing in love, in the ways a good love can change not just a person, but a community.
Feel free to quote, using the name I use here.
1) I decided that damaged, brooding, tormented heroes really aren’t attractive. There’s no strength or desire in me to engage their demons; I have my own.
I passed on a romance with a troubled man in favor of one with my husband, a transparent, peaceable, optimistic man who had a happy childhood. We were very young when we met. Of course life has given us grief and struggle in the years since, but life does that, if you live long enough.
The odd thing is, my husband DOES find damaged, hurt women attractive. He wants to fix them and make them happy which was my good luck. But since I do not find anger, depression and pain attractive, and I know they’re not good for children, I give my family the best of me that I can.
2) This is what romance novels never never told me, but life has – It is fantasy – foolishness if you expect it in life – to think that you can be the heroine who tames the alpha rake and turns him into a devoted faithful husband, all for the love of you. It is much more sensible to start off with the nice guy who loves you and wants to be true, and then shift him over towards alpha.
And yes, you can publish and attribute to the name above.
When I was 13 or 14, my girlfriends and I passed around a dog-eared romance novel (something set on an imaginary planet with a heroine who had silver hair)—it was dog-eared at all the racey bits. My sexual education at that point had consisted of several conversations with my mom and a copy of The What’s Happening to Your Body Book for Girls—and sneak peaks at the boy’s version in my brother’s room. I believe my only working description of sex had been “the man places his penis in the woman’s vagina,” and the pen and ink cross section of a couple in the missionary position seemed to confirm this. Now, I don’t remember anything from that dog-eared book except the word “thrusting” and that it was used more than once. This totally rocked my world. My mom had Not mentioned thrusting—nor had my trusty reference materials. The conversation with my much better-informed friend went something like this:
Me: I don’t know about you, but I don’t really believe everything in that book.
Friend: Yeah, I know—simultaneous orgasm almost never happens.
Me: blink—blink,blink.
Friend: Why? What were talking about?
Me: That. The orgasm thing.
Now, why I hadn’t put two and two together (because I was not ignorant to orgasms and how those came about—for sheltered 14-year-old girls, anyway), I don’t know. But, we didn’t have the internet back then, and I didn’t even have cable.
Practical things aside, I think discovering your own sexuality is a healthy part of development that helps tremendously once you’re in a sexual relationship. For me, reading romance was a part of that development. I remember having it very clear in my mind at 15 that while I didn’t want a man to love me for my body, I wanted to experience a man loving my body. This seemed to be a fairly subversive idea both for someone well-ensconsed in her church youth group and who was growing up in an area with strong feminist influences. But it’s nothing more than what we all want—to be desired and to be loved. Romance got me honest about this and down off some of the pillars of ideology (both religious and feminist) I’d been standing on.
Romance was my first sex ed. My grandma had a lot of the alpha male romances from the 80’s that I wasn’t allowed to read. I did anyway—when I was at her house for a night I would sneak “No Other Man” by Shannon Drake (which is actually a really horrible novel) to the little room I was staying in and learn about “golden mounds” and “throbbing sexes.”
Later when I was 10 I asked Dad where babies came from just so my parents felt like they had given me “the talk” even though I already knew the facts.
oh and you can quote me, pseudonym will work
I don’t have a particular book to cite just my general experience of reading Romance. I grew up in a very undemonstrative family. I’ve seen my parents express affection to each other maybe twice in my life. Reading Romance exposed me to the variations in courtship and relationships. It opened my eyes to how romantic relationships can be different from what I was raised with.
Romance opens up new realms of possibility. Isn’t that what reading, and fiction especially, are about – exposing ourselves to possibilities and stimulating our imaginations? As a reader, Romance shows me relationships and I get to be the ultimate judge of their quality. I get to say “No, I would never stand for that” or “What a creep” or “Awesome.”
Romance novels have impacted my relationship and my life in two ways. The first way is by relaxing some of my more ridge beliefs about what it means to be a strong woman and a feminist. I use to feel very uncomfortable with the idea of marriage or relying on a guy. I don’t think its a coincidence that about the time I started really consuming romance novels I also finally agreed to marry my boyfriend of 8 years. Obviously that’s not the only reason we’re getting married but I do think it helped me feel more comfortable with being an independent woman and making the commitment of marriage.
I also think romance novels have a direct impact on my overall quality of life/stress levels, which indirectly helps my relationship. I work in a somewhat depressing and stressful field (chronic illness, mental illness, suicide…rewarding work but it can wear on you) and the romance novels allow me to escape to a place where I know there is ALWAYS a happy ending. I find its one of the few ways I can relax
I’ll come back and answer the question (probably after I get some sleep, hah)—but I had to comment on “wearing beaver suit while hitchhiking”. I love that series.