I had an interesting conversation with a writer friend when she read some of my comments on the romance genre. Some of my comments have been appreciative (think Georgette Heyer). Some critical (think, oh, Stephanie Meyer). Reading and editing.
"Do you think," she asked, "reading too many romances can set up a woman for unrealistic expectations about what a man can/will be like? Or—can reading too many make a woman harder to please in real life?"
I knew she was thinking about a story she was working on, but I tend to put things into my own perspective. I laughed. "I never thought—even in high school when I was romantically inclined—that my life was going to play out like a romance novel. So I'm probably not a good example. These days my attitude, generally, is I am just happy that people are reading. But we could throw the same question at movies, right?"
She said, "I grew up watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson frolic across the screen and thought the first time a guy said, 'I love you,' meant you had to marry him. That created problems when a guy told me that the first time and I was 15 years old. Of course, I did end up marrying him but not until I was 21."
I happen to know she's had a long and happy marriage.
"Perhaps," she went on, "I've spent more time with foolish young women than you have"—she's an active Sunday school teacher for teens—"but I've met way too many young women who have skewed ideas about love and romance."
But I have met a few of the type she knows. A woman I worked with in the '90s (she was about to hit thirty, an only child still living at home) actually read me a list of the qualities she thought her ideal man should or would have. I thought her list—they were requirements, actually—was, at best, emotionally immature and at worst never gonna happen.
I was in my early forties, divorced about five years, and, interestingly, I had given this concept some thought. You know, in the first couple years after the divorce when I was lonely, a little in shock, and waiting for that wedding-ring grove to disappear from my finger. What was important to me?
As usual, I process everything on paper, so, yes, I made a list. Short and sweet. In my next relationship, I wanted:
1) laughter,
2) intelligence, and
3) emotional intimacy.
Looks? Money? … not important.
But that's real-life stuff. The thing is, a novel is fiction and romance novels take it a step further to fantasy. Perhaps we need a packaging label, like they put on cigarettes, for the less wise?
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