On women and romance novels

Ok, so, the game is up.

I admit it.

I read romance novels.

Not exclusively, not all the time, and not every day. But I do read romance novels.

Shocking, I know. And unlike my mom, I will not claim to skip certain parts of them either, because I don’t, unless they’re terribly written. Then I am likely to skip, say, the rest of the book.

But I both read and enjoy them. So there. Take that.

I also have another admission to make, one that will be more shocking to all but a select group of people who know me.

I write romance novels, too. And no, you haven’t read any of them. I haven’t tried to get any published, because, well, I’m a chicken. But the fact remains that I have written n romance novels, where n is greater than 2.

This post (which is not about my secret admissions above, exactly) has been banging around in my head for a while, but I’ve avoided writing it for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I work in a very male-dominated, technical profession. The kind of profession where you might, in a non-work social setting, overhear someone making jokes about how women watch porn differently than men in a way that is both very funny (ok, I laughed) and completely, completely wrong. (N.B. Women who watch porn do not watch porn movies all the way to the end because we’re hoping there’s going to be a wedding. This xkcd cartoon explains the problem quite clearly, thankyouverymuch. )

So lest I destroy my geek cred, these were not admissions I felt particularly comfortable making.

However, in the spirit of my new “screw that, I’m me, deal with it” philosophy, eh, well, screw that – I’m me. Deal with it. I read romance novels.

I also read novels about space and dragons and real people and aliens and art and religion and time travelers and road trips and whatever-you-call-what-went-on-in-Hunter S.-Thompson’s-head and dystopian futures and, and… I read everything.

Except for books about the apocalypse. I hate those.

(Ok, I got sidetracked trying to keep my geek cred there. Onwards…)

I also held off because what I wanted to say about it might lead to the conclusion that I was making a specific commentary about me, my life, my husband, my previous boyfriends, friends, crushes, parents, pets, whatever… which I am not.

So there’s my disclaimer: I’m not.

It occurs to me that there are a lot of misconceptions, particularly by men, about why women read romance novels. It’s kind of sad, really, because one could probably learn a lot about what women really want from their partners/lovers/whatever from them, but I’ve been thinking about this for while, and I decided that I, your lovable hero SUPER Grover, am just the monster to clear this up.

Er, wait, sorry.

Sesame Street fantasy again.

So here’s the real gist of the post (and the death of my credibility as a geek, forever and ever and ever, amen) – I decided I had something to say about why women read romance novels and how people (ok, guys, mostly) get it all wrong. And so I’m saying it. Right here. Now. Just for the Hell of it.

Mostly because I refuse to be embarrassed about it.

Your mileage, as always, may vary

N.B. This post is broken up into multiple pages for readability. Click the page numbers below to continue…

On to Myth #1: Romance novels are just porn for chicks…