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Don’t get me wrong … I think you need to put a lot of effort into developing and maintaining a good, healthy relationship with your partner. But I also think that romance novels can help.
It’s been many years since romance novels have featured helpless Gothic heroines who must rely on the largess of a wealthy nobleman (usually a taciturn widower) or a handsome playboy billionaire who falls for his beautiful (but brainless) secretary. The heroines you meet in today’s romance novels are women who stand on their own two feet and have dreams and aspirations beyond catching a man. To a great extent, they end up with a man in spite of themselves.
Something that our books do is provide good role models for women, and for the way relationships are supposed to work – the give and take, the respect and admiration for each other, and the healthy process of working out differences. Sometimes these features are demonstrated by their opposites. The author might show us how not to behave, and the consequences of bad decisions. We see undesirable characteristics portrayed in the story’s antagonists.
The sexual tension present in a good many romance novels can heighten the reader’s physical awareness of her spouse. And this is a good thing (according to my own spouse!)
What do you think? Do romance novels improve your love relationship?
Filed in: Jaunty Post
Oct 8th
2007
5:53 am
Shana Said:
Wow, Margo! Great question. For me, writing is a job, so when I read it’s more for analysis than for pleasure. I do think that writing about love and being in love so much makes me think more about it and my relationship on a daily basis.
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Oct 8th
2007
8:55 am
Haven Rich Said:
As a reader, sure it keeps love and romance at the front of your thoughts. And when you’re thinking about it, you’re most likely to act on it. That sorta mind play…if you think you are happy, you will be happy.
Anyhow, as an pre-author, I’ve learned that it’s hard to be all sexy and stuff while wearing your pjs for 24 hours and forgetting to brush your teeth, much less your teeth when the muse has blessed you and all the planets have aligned just right so you might get the latest scene out. I think it would be hard for any man to find a woman sexy in such a state, much less her actually feel attractive.
However, being on both sides of the street, I’ve found that my marriage is pretty great because of romance novels and writing. After all there is research to be done that only the hubby can help with *wink*.
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Oct 8th
2007
9:26 am
Robyn DeHart Said:
It’s not so much the writer in me, but the reader in me that benefits from the romance novels in my life. As a writer, I’m not really sure if my “job” effects my relationship, The Professor and I had only been dating about 2 months when I sold so really I’ve been an author for our entire relationship so I have no basis for comparison. But I do know that when I read a good romance novel (and I try to work reading time in, although it is very challenging to do so) that it can definitely have a positive effect on my marriage. And I think all the books I read before my marriage helped as well. Romance novels make you happy and give you positive feelings about love and sex. So yeah, I think romance novels are good for your relationship. I read once (can’t find it now) that women who read romance novels have more sex than women who don’t and considering the majority of our readers are married women, that’s a lot of happy husbands out there benefiting from our books.
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