After 22 yrs of not reading romance novels, I ashamedly admit - I do again. However, I can declare that they aren't the Harlequin's of my past where I could read two a day in the summer of my youth. :) These are actually suspense/mystery with romance. Yes, some authors add sex to the romance, some authors make it very nice and let your imagination do the footwork.
One reason I gave up reading romance novels as a young single adult was that I knew that life wasn't a romance novel. Men really aren't strong, masculine, well built, honorable, noble, humble, and totally caring about what a woman wants or feels. Right? Yeah, if you have one of those men you have either been married long enough to train him right or you are still living in a fantasy world. No one is perfect. See the title of my blog. My world isn't perfect, my kids aren't perfect, my husband isn't perfect, my house is FARRRR from perfect (especially my yards - poor neighbors), and me - I am the most un-perfect of any list written. I am a recovering perfectionist. I know I'm not perfect yet want things I do and create to BE perfect and get very, VERY annoyed when they aren't. I will stew and fuss and continue to fiddle until I finally give up and say ...
"FINE, whatever, this is what it is!". Now, someone else looking at what I'm doing that doesn't have a perfectionism gene in that specific area may look at me and wonder what the fuss is all about. I couldn't agree more, I just can't stop it. I have gotten better however. I used to fuss and cuss and leave things UNDONE because I could not make them as the picture in my mind was (perfect for me). Now, I try, I cuss, I fuss, I fiddle and finally give in because I no longer have the energy to waste.
What do romance novels and self recovering perfectionism have in common? Oh come on, we all know and I think we all suffer from just a tinge of it atleast once in our marriages. We want our marriage to be perfect! We want our families to be perfect, our homes, our love, our passion, and ourselves. What happens if we are too stuck in this rut? Things fall apart, we become depressed, we lose sight of what really matters and above all WHO really matters in our lives. There can be a "Happily Ever After"...AFTER we've worked at it. After we've accepted our partners faults, worked on our own, decided some things really don't matter - AND MEANT IT. That's the hardest thing I think, trusting OURSELVES to mean it. Trusting ourselves to someone else, knowing that they aren't perfect. I saw a cartoon the other day that had an old couple walking hand in hand. He was asking how they had made it over 50+ yrs married and she replied, "Because we are of the generation of fix it up, wear it out, make it work or do with out." I think too many people are stuck in the fantasy world of "what if". For example, my life isn't exactly what I want it to be, "what if" I didn't have to look after my kids every day 24/7 and be a mom or a dad anymore? "What if" I had someone who was a better lover? Better looking? etc etc. In a world of instant gratification and what if's - no wonder seeing someone reach the 30 yr mark of marriage is a cause for GINORMOUS celebration! I'm sorry - that's just sad.
Now, why do I bring all this up? Why do I read romance novels now? Because I now read them differently. As a teenager with no boyfriend, no experience, and no love life - it was fun. It was exciting, it was fantasizing, it was wishing... it was a little girls dreams of what her life could be like. As a married woman with teenage children and depression... it's a chance to look at life differently. Don't get me wrong, it's still exciting and fun; however, I now look at the characters written and try to place them in the real world. If I've read a book about a policeman or detective, the next time a police car passes me by I see the PERSON in the car. I wonder what their life is like, their love, their relationship, their family. I'm beginning to see people as more than jobs and professions as they pass me on the street but as people who have lives just like me - ups and downs, bad timing, horrid days and moments of perfection.
I was reading the last book in a series (Bitter Creek Series, by Joan Johnston if interested) and it TOTALLY threw me for a loop! I'm going to try to word this in a way that it doesn't give the plot away - hmm, hopefully. The series of books is about two families and their ties together and how it effects different people in the family, their lives and how they deal with it. Characters appear repeatedly throughout the three/four books (something I LOVE because they are more dimensional that way and it's like an epilogue) so the character highlighted in the last book you've known since she was 19 - she's 29/30 in the last one. Her love life does not end up the way she planned, the way she would have wanted and her marriage leaves something more to be desired. She has secrets and unrequited love. HERE is the twist that I found and LOVED in this book. She has to stop and think, is it really LOVE that she feels for her unrequited love or did it just feel like love because of her situation? Because her MEMORIES had made it more than it was and they were thrown back together in a situation? It made ME stop and think. How many of us - not married to our HS sweethearts - have some unfinished business with someone? Is there somewhere in the back of your brain a yearning to finish something that is being translated instead into a yearning for something? I started thinking and pondering, realizing that when your mind is focused on someone you start to develop a relationship with them - real or not. You develop feelings, any kind - good or bad, based on a memory, based on an EMOTION from the past that is trying to resolve itself. Interesting. Atleast I found it so... maybe it's enough to give you some niblets to munch on in your brain as to why certain thoughts are there and if they are really what you think they are. :) Paix
