How Romance Novels Ruined Me For Romance

It was a bright, sunny summer day in my twelfth year as I reclined in a rocking chair on our screened in porch. In my lap lay the closed novel that I would shortly begin to read. I gazed excitedly at it and then slowly – reverently – turned to the first page. Yes, it was my first encounter with a romance novel.

Well, actually, that’s probably not what happened. All I remember – all I need to remember – is that I picked up a romance novel and never looked back. And truly, it was meant to be. I was, after all, named after the heroine in a romance novel…well, her middle name, but it still counts.

And so, from the age of twelve, romance novels were a large part of my life – and happily so! What started as a harmless desire to have romance any time, any where with a dashing, charming, stunningly gorgeous muscled man, quickly developed into an unrealistic idea about how men should be.

Given my fear of rejection (blah blah sob story), it was easy to focus solely on the lives of the characters, and I threw myself into those relationships wholeheartedly. It was whimsical, romantic, exciting…and safe. After all, I didn’t have to face these men in real life.

So for years I read these novels, and slowly over time I came to accept what happens in them as the natural progression of affairs; how relationships work.

This was my mistake…believing that romance novels were a guideline – a self-help book if you will – for success in romance.

It took me years to truly distinguish between the ‘escape’ factor in those novels (what I believe to be the true purpose/effect behind them) and the reality of relationships, which I suppose is only natural considering I had no real experience with men to back up those ideals or to prove them wrong.

Even now, when you need only spend two seconds with a guy to see those ideals smashed to smithereens, I still struggle to shake the hope that some of those ideals do exist. 

Guys simply pale in comparison to the romance I read about. They can’t live up to those ideals…and the fact is that they’re NOT SUPPOSED TO! And therein lies the crux of the problem because despite the fact that they can’t, you still want them to and still hold them up to those male paragons.

In spite of all my wishing and hoping that those guys do exist, real men cannot be all that the men are in those novels because it isn’t reality! Those ‘novel guys’ can possess superhuman manly qualities because they live in a book! Their flaws are manipulated to seem attractive, whereas if you saw that guy walking down the street you’d quickly label him a cocky (fill in the blank), roll your eyes and move on. Case in point, what used to thrill me about the men in those novels – their possessiveness, capability – and insistence – on taking care of a woman – no longer does. Those are simply added characteristics that fluff up the escape element. Put into practice, they are not desirable traits. I would certainly rebel against any man that was possessive/jealous about me platonically spending time with male friends or who thought that I was incapable of taking care for myself.

When you’re twelve, you can’t make this distinction, and the longer you read them without recognizing the difference, the harder it is to accept reality and enjoy the novels purely in a whimsical fashion – not as a guidebook about how to behave around men or in relationships.

Now, I have absolutely no qualms with romance novels. They are not written for twelve year-old impressionable girls – and I am aware of this.

In fact, I still read romance novels; still love series and getting wrapped up in the family of characters and still long for that kind of romance in my own life. So while I successfully take a more realistic approach to men and relationships, those ideals that were ingrained into my head through constant repetition (via the hundreds of books I read) refuse to fully up and move. It is because of that kernel of hope that romance novels have ruined me for ‘realistic’ romance.