about romance…

In addition to what you will find here…

My novels usually have romance, which isn’t always tame. I’m unapologetic about it. When you dig deeply enough, past endless onion skins of pretenses and big words and philosophies it’s all about sex, death and love. Meaning my novels usually are R16.

Romance has a long history, closely linked to society’s expectatibns about what is actually is and/or supposed to be. Anybody interested in some reading about the topic from the point of view of a sociologist—Eva Illouz, one of the very few I actually pay attention to—may treat themselves to Why Love Hurts and The End of Love.

While I accept that what Illouz telling us is almost certainly right—her arguments are disturbingly convincing—I would like, and actually believe that I have a good reason, to think that there’s something more profound and deeper, to human connection, especially between those who ‘love’ each other; be it romantically or through other bonds.

Yes, ‘societies’—whatever they happens to be in any given context, place or time—will impose measures, through processes ranging from subtle indoctrination and implicit brainwashing to outright coercion, to regulate those connections; have them conform to patterns of thinking and behavior the societies in question want. The end result is almost always that relationships become predominantly transactional; even when they shouldn’t be. Transactionality destroys ‘true love’, if you will. The kind that is all about two people forming a deep and unconditional connection.

Society will interfere; we live in groups of many sizes, all of them having formed social contracts to continue existing. This creates irresolvable conflicts, built into human existence, merely because we are social animals. Fiction, as Illouz observes correctly, is and has always been obsessed with this conflict; for good reasons, as it rules all our lives.

And yet, and yet…I stubbornly cling to the belief that we can make our need to connect and remain deeply connected to someone we love and who love us become something tangible; not because it’s necessary for ultimately transactional purposes or social mores, but because itit is part of what Eddington called the ‘and’.

“We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two.
We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
Arthur Eddington

There is a very deep truth here. Which is why maybe we can speak of ‘true love’ as opposed to the socially, contextually and rationally regulated version.

‘This is true love.You think this happens every day?’

Yes, I’m a Princess Bride fan, and always will be. And I’ll continue to write fiction in which ‘true love’ becomes real for my protagonists; because they’ve either discovered the deep meaning of Eddington’s ‘and’ or maybe they just can’t help themselves but to make it come true for them, because they’re meant to be one, split into two individuals.

It’s always a tightrope, but somehow they can eliminate transactionality and social conditioning from the equation and replace it by a deep understanding of how 2=1AND1 and 1AND1=1+. More than one, but still one.

This has nothing to do with ‘sacredness’ or anything even remotely religious. I have no time for religions or ideologies of any kind. Except for a few insignificant outliers—religions and ideologies are spiritually brutal, oppressive controllers of human societies. In that way they do provide coherence and coexistence; never mind how ludicrous their creeds may be. But at the same time they elicit a terrible price, in that they have always and will always do what they can to destroy ‘true love’.

To quote Alex, the male protagonist in Can’t Do Everything when he speaks to Helen, the female protagonist, trying to express his feelings about this amazing thing between them:

“Like you said: it’s us. That’s what matters. We’re it. Love… True love—like Princess Bride style—is pure anarchy. The lovers are the only ones setting the rules. As if they were just one person.
“But societies hate anarchy; and that’s ok I guess, as long as it comes to making sure that groups of people get along with each other and have entered a social contract of sorts. Doesn’t matter what kinds of group they are. But all societies will do what they can to destroy any kind of anarchy in their midst. Even if it’s  true love. Sometimes they do it openly and brutally if necessary. Right now, societies like ours do it sneakily; psychologizing love and lovers and conditioning them into seeing themselves as being in ‘relationships’. I hate that word. When ‘true love’ is flattened into a mere ‘relationship’ it’s done for. It becomes what society wants it to be.”

Helen, who has to fight against pressures applied by her domineering—and criminal!—parents and a prospective—equally criminal!—husband they’re trying to foist on her, is completely on board with that:

“I’m good with anarchy,” she said softly. “I guess once we get married, we’ll have done something to pay our dues to society and look respectable enough, so that we can be us, and they’ve got no reason to think we’re deviants from their norms.”

I think that love of the 1AND1=1+ kind is what makes humans mysteriously different from all other living creatures. We should celebrate the anarchy of 1AND1=1+; celebrate romance; not look down our noses at ‘happy endings’; and in our minds always, when we read THE END under a happy ending romance, replace it with THE END OF A BEGINNING.

I know that modernist cynicism, just like religions and basically all ideologies, when it comes to ‘true love’ in the 1AND1=1+ sense weighs in oppressively and persuasively against it. But why not muster up the courage to ignore this pressures and surrender to it anyway? If we don’t, what’s left for us but meaninglessness?

By the way, Helen and Alex in Can’t Do Everything have it comparatively easy. Jess and Jack in The Crime of Love face a situation that makes Helen and Alex’s and Romeo and Juliet’s predicaments seem trivial.