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 completely relate to you and feel the exact same way, except I am not in a relationship and believe that reading so much and being such a hopeless romantic and adventure-loving person has actually prevented me from getting into a relationship because I have such high expectations.
Something that has really helped me so far has actually been to check myself often when dating. Like yea, this man is no Rhysand or Damen/Laurent or Draco from DMATMOOBIL, but it’s not like I’m completely selfless like Feyre or a world-renowned genius/smartest witch of my age like Hermione. I’m also just a normal gal trying my best day to day to show the people around me that I love and care for them. And that’s all I can expect from my SO too! Hope this helps or offers a different perspective than “oh just stop reading lmao” like??