I feel like I struggle with this in all facets, especially as I love fantasy books and it tends to make me feel more down about my real, mundane life, but I feel like I notice the most impact when it comes to relationships.
This isn’t just my current one, but also great relationships I’ve had in the past that ended amicably. I’m in a great relationship now. He’s loving, caring, attentive, romantic, handsome, hard-working, etc etc. But I feel like every time I read a romance novel (especially one written by a woman), it makes me look at all of my relationships in a new light in my head. No one is freaking perfect and lord knows I’m far from it, but a lot of the male love interests I’ve read about in novels are portrayed to perfection with the perfect amount of emotional intelligence that just no real person has.
I don’t know. I love my current relationship and I’m very serious about it, but I don’t love how romance books always ignites this insanely unachievable hopelessly romantic side of me. Do I just have to stop reading completely lol? Is anyone else like this? What can I do?
I wouldn’t call the books I read “romance novels”, but they have romance in them. (Maybe this explains the difference between my perspective on this and your op?)
I see my own relationship in the romantic elements of the story. If anything it makes me feel more positive about my relationship, because it reminds me of the best aspects of my relationship.
Life is ussually very routine, so it’s easy to forget the special moments we’ve had over the years. The romantic moments in novels make me remember things like the time between first meeting her and first dating her or the times that we celebrated anniversaries or the times that we made sacrifices for each other and so on and so forth.