Rejecting Reality

Zazzle 

So much truth can be found on a T-shirt. Zazzle-link above- is one of my favorite suppliers of truth. This little gem here is one of my favorites as well. I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own. Never could the life of a writer of romance be summed up better.

Going through some of my old novels to study technique brought this thought to mind. We all know that emotion seldom runs that high, and we also know that the same couple a few years down the road will look quite different. We know this because of statistics.

Yeah, I know. Where's the truth in statistics? Sometimes I agree with that assessment. However, in this instance, the divorce rate suggests that romance leaves out some truth somewhere. The question is which truth is left behind. I think we substitute the reality we wish we had sometimes. The  same thing is done so often with autism and other diseases. We romanticize an autistic character in a movie because the truth of the statistic is too hard to bear and unpleasant to look at. Your average kid with autism is not charmingly doing math problems to entertain his friends at school where he's popular despite his social awkwardness. Most of these families live life in a different reality from that. The same is true of romance novels.

What's real romance in the reality in which we all actually live? It would be sad if it's not getting divorced. Then again, isn't that where the rubber hits the road? I mean loving someone when it's easy is a piece of cake, but when that girl you married is nursing a three-week-old, the varnish will come off. She showers haphazardly. She gets grumpy, sore, and tense. Isn't sleeping. Isn't eating. The last thing anyone would call her is the romantic ideal, but she is the perfect mother, putting everything into her child until it all settles down and she can wear make-up again. As a culture, we don't seem to revere that anymore.

Then I did some googling. Procrastinating really, but it gleaned information and an article. Breast augmentation leads to better self-esteem. Well, all right then! Isn't that just more varnish? Romance writers are moving somewhat away from this romanticized view of women. Heroines are putting on a few and getting sassy, but women in Western cultures still seem to feel they must be perfect, love must be perfect. It made me wonder. Have we always been this way? Or did we just reject reality and substitute our own?