Romance Novels WTF

A thoughtful discussion about relationships in today's world. We consider how expectations around romance and marriage have changed over time, and the importance of shared purpose within a partnership.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.

Yeah. Apparently no.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: We were having a conversation this morning in the car and Simone has telling me, she's like, Oh, well there, there's this amazing thing where it turns out I can get these popular romance books for free. And so I listened to them to go to bed every night.

Nothing puts you to sleep like a romance novel. But you have to stop listening to them all after a certain point. Go into this because I found this fascinating and telling about modern society. Yeah. So not all romance novels end with like the will they part, you know, where like the couple finally forms and comes together.

And like, sometimes there, there are periods at which couples do like start becoming couple ish way earlier in the [00:01:00] novel. And the problem that I have when this happens is that I can't know the books after that. Like in the beginning, it's fun because you're like, well, what's going to happen? I mean, you know what's going to happen, but what's going to happen?

How is it going to happen? Oh, these people are driving each other crazy. The tension is so fun. But once it does happen, it becomes intolerable and I think the reason why is suddenly it's basically all about toxic relationships. It's all about drama. It's about one person you know, lying to the other.

It's about tension. It's about breaking up after that point or someone's not being faithful. More than that, I think when you were describing it to me this morning. You were like, it keeps focusing on the interdynamics of their relationship. Yeah, like even when it's pleasant, yeah. Instead of immediately switching, they get in a relationship and then they say, Oh, now you're a couple.

Now what are you going to achieve together? Which should [00:02:00] be, yeah. And it's interesting that you have this different framing of, okay, well, once you've sorted out the partner thing, Then you focus on what you're going to do with that person, right? Like that should be the point. And I think what this says about larger society is that people have a totally messed up perception of what relationships are all about, as is indicated by romance novels, which is to say that relationships are all about how you feel and how your partner feels.

And. you know, after you get in a relationship, it's either about how, how in love you are and how you do all these things for each other and how, Oh my gosh, how romantic it is. And you're all, it's all pleasure all the time and amazing. Or it's about, Oh, he's not listening to me enough. You know, Oh, this tension, or I have to lie to him about this, or he's lying to me about something.

So it's all about feelings, feelings, feelings, all feelings, feelings, feelings. And it's not at all about. Yeah. I mean, the whole point of becoming a couple is you, you, you then as a unit can achieve more than you would ever achieve by yourself. And also your [00:03:00] partner can help you become a better person.

Now, sometimes that transformation takes place during the courting process. And these books were like, you know, the, the, the protagonists will change and become better people over time, or they'll help one person become a better person. But like once they become together, yeah, it just like everything falls apart.

And I don't know why a woman would want to get in a relationship like or get married in the first place if she assumed that that was what was on the other end, just like, you know, making each other feel good, which I actually see a lot of relationships like this. And I think a lot of relationship breakdown is the misunderstanding.

And I think it comes from women more than men, potentially due to engaging in these sort of books and stuff. Yeah, the societal norms that these books are establishing. That once you're married, you're a single unit. You are basically a single person from that point on. You know, one of the things that you sometimes do when you like to piss off regressives, is you call yourself...

Mrs. Malcolm James Collins. Yeah, because that's the traditional way of doing it. [00:04:00] And the reason for that is because when people got married, they became a single unit, a single entity. They're, they're no longer with the question about how do we get along with each other? It became, okay, what are we going to do?

Like, how are we going to change the world? What do we need to do for our family? And that many hard cultures are more traditional cultures still understand this. Of course, all of them have been eaten around at the edges, like. As we say, cultures start hard and then society and the world sort of acts like acid, like softening them and softening them.

So you'll see bits where they begin to change and have this more romance perspective of relationships where after the relationship starts, then the question is, how does this person make me feel? Right. And the quality of the relationship is judged by the feeling this creates in the other person, and then they need to make those feelings and the oscillation of those feelings a constant game, right? Because it's about, okay, how can I masturbate this instinct? How can my partner masturbate this instinct?

How can they ensure that I am feeling [00:05:00] whatever, content with myself, loved, cared for, paid attention to, protected yeah. So marriages became completely within this context completely about how the other person makes you feel.

Mm-Hmm. . And of course when you're focused on that, then you create challenges around that in the marriage. Mm-Hmm. when, how you feel is irrelevant to the marriage. Largely speaking, when the marriage is about what you can accomplish together, there are still ways a marriage can fail or begin to feel like it's failing.

Like Simone and I. When we have a crisis in our marriage, it's like, we're being very unproductive this year. Yeah, it's always like, whether or not we're achieving our shared goals, it's not about like, how do you make me feel? Or your work output. I'm like, your work output has gone down significantly recently, Simone.

We need to talk about this. But then it's typically an action oriented conversation. It's how do we improve your work output? Yeah. And what's interesting is I went to Amazon and I looked up the like five top five bestselling [00:06:00] romance novels at this time. And even one of them was about a, an already married couple that.

Came into marriage trouble because the husband specifically had become so focused on making his business work That he I guess like stopped paying so much attention to his wife who in turn had Made many sacrifices to help the business grow as well that is to say like she went for it like she helped him build up his business and went to networking events To help him.

And then she felt like she was being neglected. And so she like walks out on him and like the book is pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.

Yeah. Apparently no. So like the one, so when you look at, for example, all the top five best selling Romans. Books on Amazon right now the one common theme among all of them is that [00:07:00] the men are just like insanely in lov