Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels (6 page)

Merriam has had an identical experience: “When the ‘big misunderstanding’ in a story is caused by a failure to communicate, it not only annoys me but it reminds me to try and be more open and to talk more about what the issue is, or what is going on in my real life. I am also much clearer about what I am looking for in the other person because I have tried on for size the heroes in romance stories. I also think you can’t underestimate the role of redemption in romance novels, with their message that we all get things wrong and must consciously work on fixing what is broken.”

Romances also teach that the heroine can be strong and that sex is not the only method through which to achieve intimacy, nor is it always the advisable or even the safest choice. Erotica author Eve Savage says that romances have helped her define what makes for a strong relationship—and what makes for an adventurous relationship as well: “Romances have definitely had an impact in my life. I didn’t start reading them until later (early to mid ’90s), and by then they’d evolved from the ‘wimpy heroine/raping hero’ style to the ‘confident but flawed heroine/strong yet sensitive hero’ style. This enabled me to realize relationships are about compromise. They helped me understand I was worth something and that most important lesson—sex does not equal love.”

Savage is not the only person who discovered and explored her own self-worth and relationships through the writing of romances. A writer who wished to remain anonymous and went by the name “anonapotamus,” thereby earning a huge giggle and my respect forever, writes that it wasn’t reading romance but writing romance that helped her slowly realize that her marriage was not ideal and that she deserved better for herself: “The more I learned about crafting stories, the more I told myself, ‘It’s a fantasy—this isn’t how real guys think and act; it’s how we (women) want to believe they think and act.’ And I convinced myself that what I had was as good as it was going to get. More, I think somewhere deep down inside, I kept waiting to get through the bad times to the big payoff on the other side.

“Twelve years, thirty-plus books, and some therapy later, I’m newly single, happier than I’ve been in a long time, and ready to Not Fucking Settle this time around. In the meantime, I’ve got a career I love and family, writer friends, and wonderful stories to keep me company.”

Another writer who goes by the name Odette Lovegood used romance to help her overcome her own shyness when she met someone she was tremendously interested in—and who was just as shy. But instead of reading it, she and her boyfriend collaborate on fiction with strong romance plotlines: “Writing romance allowed us to get to know one another and express our feelings in ways we never could have otherwise. It got me in touch with my own sexuality, and made me realize that sex isn’t something to be afraid of.”

Reader and writer Sarah W. (no, not me) says that the books she read helped her figure out what kind of person she didn’t want to be with—and figure out the goals for her own parenting: “Oddly enough, the rape-y, obsessive, I-hate-you-because-I-love-you, he-loves-me-so-it’s-okay romances that were popular (or at least crowded the shelves at the library and the used bookstore) when I was growing up showed me how wrong that sort of behavior is. My own characters (female or male) don’t stand for that—or don’t by the end of the story. And I’m raising my kids to know that real love is so much more than…drama and that they’re worth so much more.”

Caroline, another eager romance reader, agrees that identifying behavior that repulses you in fictional portrayals makes it a lot damn easier to spot it in real life: “Romance novels taught me it is never OK to let a man take advantage of you. I was so turned off in my early reading years with the ‘force my mighty sword-o-lovin’ on you and you will love and loathe me for it’ storyline. Ick. I remember never allowing a guy to just slobber and grope his way about without my explicit permission, remembering how awful it sounded when I read scenes such as that. The ‘I can’t stop, I’m so in lust and out of control for you’ line never worked on me. A knee to your groin will help then, right? Romance novels [also] taught me it is OK to fantasize, and dream, and take pleasure in someone else’s happy ending without needing to compare my own happy ending, or dejectedly pine that my romantic life sucks. It’s fiction, it’s fantasy, and it’s healthy, but it’s not real.”

Emotions are tricky, and, as
Smart Bitches
cofounder Candy Tan wrote in our book
Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels
, we are, especially in the United States, taught early that emotions are squicky, uncomfortable things that should not be talked about and certainly not displayed too much. Some people are very skilled at dampening their own emotions, and the safe harbor of reading romance and knowing that the emotional response you might feel for the characters or the story will end happily and without loss or grief is an equally safe space to explore emotions one might not otherwise want to feel at all. One reader, Em, writes, “I’m a fairly emotionally dead person when it comes to real life, so fiction gives me people I can care about without the pain that caused my apathy in the first place. Romance novels—being so emotionally charged—are the best for that.”

Amber G. is a shy person who figured out with the help of romance novels how she might interact with people she doesn’t know: “The first thing romance as a genre did for me was teach me about flirting. It was romance that taught me how to smile, how to meet someone’s eyes, that relaxing was good and so was dressing nicely and looking as though I cared.”

Jill Q. says, “I think what romances taught me was that it was OK to feel and have positive emotions, to be an optimist not just about love, but about anything. I think romance, like all genre fiction, generally has a positive message. You can stop the evil overlord, catch the murderer, fall in love. Be proactive about your life and good things will happen.”

Amanda M. says that when she was reading romances as a teen, “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.”

In addition to owning ourselves, romance novels teach women to be confident in our strengths. Reading about heroines who have a continual need to please gets old, unless that heroine learns to please herself first. Selflessness is not an admirable trait when it means you give away everything about yourself, and that includes both men and women. I’m not saying selfishness is the key to being heroic—it surely is not. But molding yourself to the expectations of others is not heroic either, and misleads everyone, including you, and makes for a heroine about as exciting and passionate as plain yogurt at room temperature.

Certainly women are bombarded with messages that they should achieve perfection in the eyes of everyone around them, but the same messages are sent to men as well. The trick to being the heroine of your own story is being happy with who you are. Confidence and accomplishment are hot damn sexy.

Just as there is no one single type of romance novel, there is no one way to read romance, and there’s no one way that readers use their romance-reading. Women read romance and bring it into their lives in many, many different ways. Identifying their own likes, desires, and senses of worth—and of being worth the effort so they don’t feel the need to settle for less than what they want—is only part of the value of romance for the reader. In addition to knowing ourselves, we also know happiness, and romance makes readers happy in a myriad of ways.

Now, this is not to say that romance readers are unhappy. They are not miserable and seeking panacea and palliative emotional fluffing in their reading. Most romance readers are happy already—and their reading material increases their joy and allows them to bring it to others. Would you rather have your dinner with your happy mom or your unhappy mom, your happy wife or your unhappy wife? Happiness, much like something spilling in the fridge, has a trickle-down effect, only much less sticky.

Romance readers bring their romance to life as they read it and find happiness, and they bring that happiness to their lives after they’re done reading. As Harlequin’s research has revealed, romance readers give themselves the gifts of time, quiet, peace, and hopeful optimism as they read—and they bring those gifts to others. In doing so, they recognize themselves and find validation and affirmation for their own desire for happiness.

And, equally important, after they learn to identify what they want in a relationship, they learn they can and will find it.