Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels (19 page)
Read Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels Online
Authors: Sarah Wendell
Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Love & Romance
Suggested by Andrea
She turned to grab a couple of ice packs from the built-in cooler. “Sit.”
“I said—”
“Sit.”
He sprawled into a chair. When she wrapped the ice packs in a small towel and placed them against his ribs, he didn’t protest. “What is it with men and testosterone?” she muttered, standing in the vee formed by his outstretched legs.
“I don’t think you’d like us without it.” He held the ice packs to his side by pinning them with his arm. “There was no need for this.”
She was about to snap a comeback when she realized he’d come to her precisely because she’d fuss over him, no matter what he must’ve told himself to the contrary.
LAST NIGHT’S SCANDAL
BY LORETTA CHASE
(Avon/HarperCollins, 2010)
Suggested by me
“Come,” she repeated, patting the bedclothes. “I want to show you my treasures…”
She opened the box and started taking them out: the packets of letters he’d written to her, the little painted wooden man—the first gift he’d sent her, the bracelet with the blue stones, the piece of alabaster… on and on. Ten years of little treasures he’d sent her. And the handkerchief with his initials she’d stolen a few weeks ago.
She looked up at him, her eyes itching and her throat aching. “I do love you,” she said. “You see?”
He nodded, slowly. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see.”
Asking for what you want can be very, very difficult.
In 2008, I started a regular advice column on the
Smart Bitches
website wherein relationship problems would be answered with the wit and wisdom of romance novels. In February 2010, I published the following letter, and am happy to say I have an update from the original correspondent.
Dear Smart Bitch Sarah:
I am a longtime lurker and I am in need of some advice. I have recently met a guy through an online dating site. We IMed every day for three weeks (we also talked on the phone) and then met in person. That meeting lasted the entire day. We continue to talk almost every day and have gone out again. I keep getting mixed signals from him. When we talk he sometimes references wanting a chance with me. But he is continuing to meet people on the dating site. Before we ever went out he told me he was a “friends first and see where that goes” kind of guy.
I am OK with that as that is how I operate. I just think that I would rather he didn’t reference dating me and telling me he is going on a date with someone else in the same conversation. I would be OK just being friends with him, but I have the feeling that if I let this continue I am going to get hurt. Am I just deluding myself? Should I tell him that I can’t continue this way? Should I just go with the flow and stop worrying? My feeling is if he really wanted a chance with me, then he’s got it, and why is he dating other people? If he doesn’t want a chance with me, then why does he keep mentioning it?
Sign me—So very confused
Dear So Very Confused:
In a romance novel, it’s no secret or mystery that the hero will like the heroine and the heroine will like the hero, and at some point between them, lips and assorted other bits will meet. In real life, there’s that pesky lack of omniscience to deal with. It’s so annoying, especially when, as it seems from your letter, you’re not sure what he wants… and you’re not sure what you want, either.
I think there are two problems here. First: his definition of the word “dating” and your definition of the word “dating” may be two very different things. Does “dating” imply exclusivity or not? You seem to think you’d like it to, while his definition seems to be entirely different.
Second, what do you want? It sounds to me like you have a rather fun friendship with this guy, despite his mixed signals of “wanting a chance.” You talk often; you see each other. You’ve told me a lot about what he’s saying and what he’s doing, but what about you?
So answer these questions: What do you want? What does “having a chance” mean? Is his referring to dating other women a question of manners and courtesy, or is it a question of your being unable to voice aloud that you’d like him to stop dating others and focus on you? Or do you want him to come to that conclusion on his own?
If he’d like to have a chance with you and he says so repeatedly, you need to spell out what has to happen for him to have the opportunity to be your boyfriend. If you’d rather be dating-as-maybe-friends, that clearly means, in his world, he will date other women and meet other women. If that bothers you, you need to speak up.
If you don’t really want an exclusive relationship, then ask him to keep the details to himself. You can set the terms of conversation. If he sees you as a friend, then he feels comfortable telling you about other women he’s seeing. But if he sees you as someone with whom he’d like a more meaningful relationship, telling you about other dates seems a strange thing to do.
If you want to stop worrying and wondering altogether, you need to figure some things out for yourself. First, ask yourself if you want an exclusive relationship with him. If you don’t, then let him do his thing and you do yours, and ask him not to dish about other chicks he’s dating as it bothers you a bit. If you do want that relationship, then speak up and tell him what you want.
He may keep mentioning the idea of being with you to gauge your reaction. He may be mentioning it because “having a chance” with you means getting you in bed. Who the hell knows? The only things under your control are your actions and reactions.
So: make your signals clear, and see how he responds. Decide if he is the one you want to take your chance on, and then offer him that chance he’s been talking about—and explain the terms you’re comfortable with. If he is what you want, go for it. A little miscommunication never hurt anyone, except when it adds two hundred pages of conflict when a simple conversation would have solved it.
Being the heroine of your own happy ending does require that you ask for what you want instead of waiting for it to come to you. Sometimes, figuring out what you want before you act on it is the harder of the two.
Lo and behold, a few months later, I emailed So Very Confused to ask whether she was still friends with this person, and things had changed. Her response: “I am actually dating the guy now. Amazing how a little of just asking the other person what’s up will answer questions! Getting the guts to do so is another story…”
I asked her for her advice to anyone else in a similar situation, and she wrote:
I guess for me it was a matter of [needing] a yes or a no answer. I couldn’t stand the not knowing any longer. I wrote to you in February but I didn’t point-blank tell him how I felt until the end of May (I tried the “Let’s go with the flow” method first). And I told him
exactly
how I felt and what I wanted. And he turned me down. Told me no.
And you know what? I survived. Yes, I was upset that first day but I had my answer. The twist to the story is that we continued to be friends (the friendship was that awesome—I still wanted to talk to him). Then about a month later he [came] to me and [said he’d] changed his mind. The last month of friendship [had] made him want to at least try a relationship. And we have been together ever since. The rule of open, honest, let-it-all-hang-out communication stands. And it works for us.
That is my story. I hit my breaking point and just went for it, nerves and all. It didn’t go down how I wanted it to…but in the end it worked out. I will also say that after I was turned down I didn’t just sit at home and wallow. I went out and did stuff (a road trip, kayaking, hiking, etc.) and I think that hearing about my many adventures also cleared his vision to just how cool I was. (Modest too ;-) )
I’m not sure I can contain my own giddypants at Confused’s happy ending. In order to be the hero of your own life, you have to decide what you want first. You are a person worth being with, and you should first and foremost be happy with yourself and have the confidence to say what it is you want.
And, as Confused points out, as scary as it is, you have to ask for what you want, or you’ll never get it—you cannot expect anyone, male or female, friend or significant other, to read your mind and anticipate exactly what you want. You must speak up for yourself.
There’s a terrible vulnerability in admitting how you feel and asking someone to admit their feelings in return. Most people are instinctively resistant to being vulnerable—including emotionally—but the payoff is almost always worth the risk. Even if that payoff comes later, as Confused demonstrates, when the person you’ve revealed yourself to has realized what a treasure you are.
If you’re more than passingly familiar with romance novels, though, you’re probably raising a brow since part of the romance fantasy is often that the guy can anticipate the heroine’s every desire—and in some novels knows what’s best for the heroine before she does. In other books, the heroine decides she knows best and figures out how to bring the hero around to her thinking.
Ultimately, in just about each and every case, the characters figure out what they want and decide to go after it. This step in an active direction usually means revealing everything the person feels, and what that person wants. It’s risky, but the payoff is worth the terror. Just ask Confused, who is, right now, happy she took the risk.
Here is the number one lesson from romance novels. Ready? You’ve read this far, you might as well get the payoff now!
As I wrote earlier, happily-ever-after isn’t sometime in the future. It exists right now, and starts with you. More importantly, courtship, the process of charming someone and demonstrating in word, thought, and action how much you care about them, does
not
end with the declaration of love or the commitment between you.
Courtship becomes part of relationship maintenance, but “maintenance” itself is a horribly unsexy word. Getting your oil changed as part of routine maintenance? Not fun. But getting the oil changed and the car washed on your significant other’s vehicle? Now that’s a very kind and lovely thing to do. That kind of care and thoughtfulness is what sustains the happy until, you’ll pardon the bad and sickly sweet joke, it’s never ending.
“Routine care and maintenance” are among the most unsexy and uninspiring words. Oil changes, annual physicals, and food and water do not always inspire passion or the remote possibility of poetry. While the absence of bad sonnets might be a good thing, the absence of care will wither a relationship faster than an orchid outside in an ice storm.
It’s better to think of the care and feeding of your relationships as “courtship,” only without that pesky insecurity of not knowing if the person feels the same way about you.
A very wise reader of Eloisa James’s wrote to her, “I’ve come to believe that people need to fall in love more than once if they are to stay together.” That is so very true. And while many romances are the depiction of falling in love once and for all, treating your personal romance as a repeated courtship keeps that relationship happy and healthy.
While many romances are the depiction of falling in love once and for all, treating your personal romance as a repeated courtship keeps that relationship happy and healthy.
