Then something catastrophic happens, like... a car accident three blocks from your house that totals all involved vehicles -including yours- and before you know it, you're spending more time in the hospital than in the gym and more money on co-pays than bar tabs. The horror.
I keep telling people I'm OK, but am I really? I started reading romance novels. I'd even go as far as to defend them and say no no, not the ones .25 yard sale ones that boast a bare-chested Fabio with wind blowing through his unbuttoned shirt and a Disney-princess looking type woman clinging to him with her whole soul, definitely not those. I'd probably be lying; I'm sure I've read an e-book and just spared myself that horrifying reality of having to sit in public with that inappropriately desperate cover begging for attention while its reader tries just as desperately to not attract unwanted attention.
It started with Fifty Shades of Grey. I read it and found the mixture of romance (a word I find ironic to describe these types of books; please see my discussion herein) and suspense alluring. I blame recent trauma. I believe I started reading to stop the feeling of hopeless sadness in my own life and get lost in someone else's -- all while in the privacy of my own home. I read the other two in the trilogy. I didn't even know it was a trilogy. Then I read the Crossfire trilogy. Gabriel's Inferno trilogy. Some JoJo Moyes mixed in for sanity. Finally, I was oddly encapsulated in Colleen Hoover's tales of young adult heartache. Why?? I guess heartache loves company.
Back to the why: People do things and enjoy situations and relationships because there is a degree of being able to relate it back to oneself, right? There's obviously something I'm getting out of these books to keep putting myself through the worn and predictably torturous storylines. In some regard I feel like if you've read one romance novel, you've read them all. The names and situations are interchangeable but the same truths about what love and life is and how it is acquired (as written, mind you, 98% of the time from a women's point of view) apply, just the source of the drama changes.
1. Women apparently love when men watch them sleep. Especially if the men take secret pleasures in snapping photos of them mid-slumber. Bonus points for displaying it on the wall. Extra bonus points if she goes through your phone only to be surprised to find albums full of photos of her sleeping. Awe!
2. Mercurial. Look it up, because every man in every romance novel is described with that word. And it's apparently very attractive to become obsessed with Dr. Jeckyl AND Mr. Hyde. If one beats you, and one loves you, the love side wins. Bruises heal. Love is for-eeeverrrrrr.
3. He has TONS of money, but he loves you because you're not attracted to his money, you're attracted to him and his lifestyle. Which is only possible because of his money. Then he falls in love with you and makes you spend it against your will. First. World. Problems.
4. He stalks you to protect you. Privacy be damned, if you're flying to Los Angeles, he's on the ground waiting for you with a private car, despite the fact he was in New York with you two hours ago. Private jets travel faster than commercial planes, duh.
5. More push-pull than the doors at Walmart. Love him, leave him, love him, leave him. Whatever you do, don't have a consistent week or the book gets to be a total snoozefest.
