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’ve heard once that romance novels are too women what porn is to men.
Porn can give men unrealistic expectations and entitlements to women.
Romance can give women unrealistic expectations and entitlements to men.
I think the only real difference is that men are taught pretty quickly that the behavior is bad. Whereas women aren’t taught at all. On average of course. It’s something to keep in mind. Media can only really affect us if we let it. Makeing a conscious decision to separate fantasy from reality is a good idea.