Dear fictional people of a monogamous persuasion

[lydy]

If you truly feel that sleeping with an inappropriate someone would burn your current life to the ground, would you please make up your fucking mind? I mean, if you want to burn your life to the ground, I'm good with that and I have a torch right here. But if you do, in fact, like your current life, would you please stop faffing around in private with this person that you find so irresistable, or failing that, would you please take reasonable precautions to avoid getting caught? And above all, would you make a decision and stick with it? Your guilt is spectacularly uninteresting, especially if you keep on going back and screwing your inappropriate interest. If you can't be committed to your legitimate relationship, could you at least be committed to your adultery? Is that really too much to ask? Look, I get it. But there are options. I mean, I've arranged my life so that when I am presented with the irresistible opportunity, it is a minor logistical issue rather than a life-changing debacle. ("Um, David? Yeah, I'm not going to make it home tonight. Could you feed the cats? Thanks. I'll tell you later.") If cheating on your primary partner is actually unthinkable _stop thinking about it_! If it's not unthinkable, if in fact you are thinking, then act in some sort of reasonably constructive fashion. Or burn your life to the ground. Really, have fun.

'K,thx,bye.

Comments

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

->blink blink<- ->giggle<-

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes! I hate books that frame their universe as though monogamy isn't an active choice, and polyamory isn't an active option. Having lived both, it always seems lazy as hell.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

The things I find most infuriating are the characters that spend a great deal of time agonizing about the consequences of their decisions, without making any attempt to manage said consequences. The idiot that spends a huge amount of time crying about how their beloved will be destroyed if they find out that they've been stepping out, but who somehow are unable to either stop stepping out or take reasonable precautions against being found out. The character who absolutely cannot afford to be caught in an affair who nevertheless spends huge amounts of time, in public, staring longingly at the person they're secretly banging. The interminable back and forth between insatiable lust and insatiable guilt. I mean, I could kind of understand it if the guilt were some sort of weird sexual fetish, and maybe for some it is, but a lot of fiction intends me to feel bad for people doing this to themselves, and I kind of don't. Life has consequences and hard choices. I also hate the trope that cheating is the ultimate sin, and people who feel genuinely bad about it seem incapable of admitting to error and asking for forgiveness because they have decided that their partner can't forgive them, without ever giving their partner a vote in. The whole unthinking monogamy thing is deeply irritating, I agree, and the bizarre fiction that monogamy isn't something that one chooses, and, indeed, actively chooses again each time one is presented with a temptation, makes me want to strangle someone.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Something legitimises sex. (Consent, enthusiasm, the seal of marriage, all the possible things is a lengthy list.)

In many cases, the thing that legitimises sex is guilt. This has rather the unfortunate consequence of both eroticising guilt and directly relating the amount of guilt with the amount of desire. So you get people writing stories like the one that's annoying you.

(There's a very long version of this, which points out that "Romance" started off with "everybody dies" because it's about failing to legitimise sex, and that turned into failing to legitimise sex enough, because there was more narrative tension in it, and now there's a whole genre of conflict between means of legitimization, and pretty much nothing gets written from a perspective of sex not being the source of conflict because someone would have to figure out how. (And if the sex is the reason to read the work in question, making something the source of tension absent conflict is something of a technical challenge.)

[lydy.livejournal.com]

"In many cases, the thing that legitimises sex is guilt."

Euwww.

Ok, guilt is one of my major squicks. Early upbringing, and all that.

And, yes, you're probably exactly right. But euwww.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Or simply sheltered and lacking in imagination to some extent. Plenty of people don't realize that monogamy can be a choice, much less that polyamory is one viable option. (Sad but true.)

[carbonel]

"Yes, you, Guinevere. I'm talking to you."

[ckd]

If cheating on your primary partner is actually unthinkable _stop thinking about it_!

"Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Aw, damn. I was going to go all Alice Roosevelt Longworth on you.

K. [sure some storyteller you know can explain this sort of dynamic tension?]

[iraunink.livejournal.com]

This is why I cannot stand to read romance novels.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

At first I missed the "fictional" in yr subject line--and, really, this is too common with real people as well, who don't even have the excuse of fictional people that they were plotted that way. There's a deep meme that true love just can't be controlled--which is hogwash, or at least the intermediate steps have enough control that one can usually avoid the uncontrollable kind. I was almost relieved by the one ostensibly-monogamous person who didn't bother with rationalizations and just said, more or less, it feels good.

I am glad that real-world therapists are starting to treat sexual infidelity like any other betrayal: the relationship can be repaired if the people want to do that much work.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Infidelity is not a common theme in romance novels. Perhaps you're thinking of Danielle Steele.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I certainly am!

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Not infidelity, necessarily, but I thought romance was all about the inappropriate or unattainable romantic interest. Which I tend to find tedious. Not infuriating the same way that the angst of serial cheaters is, though.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Gods, I am so glad I am not dealing with this in real life. My ability to be constructive and compassionate would be severely curtailed by my impatience with the whole situation.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Although it occurs to me that the person I'm _really_ irritated with is Lancelot. Guinevere has a lot less power on several different axes (and one does wonder if perhaps she was faintly hoping that Lancelot would knock her up and she could claim it was Arthur's -- possibly Arthur was hoping so, too.) But Lancelot's behavior towards Elaine is cruel and bizarre, and idea that just because somebody told him it was Guinevere, and it was dark, and so of course he made the mistake and slept with a completely different, inappropriate young woman.... Arghhhhhhhhh.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's about inappropriate (the stable boy or the miller's daughter is too far beneath you to ever be accepted by your family) or unattainable (he's joined the army and left forever), but today's romance market is all about the HEA,* and you can't have that if the lover is *actually* unattainable. (Or even morally unattainable: it's not a happy ending if either of you has to violate your integrity to get there.)

There are a great many tropes in the romance genre, from the Secret Baby to the Incognito Millionaire, to Career Woman with Family Issues to stories based around particular careers or communities. Nurses, small towns, a band of brothers.

My critique-partner Liz is currently starting a series with Avon Impulse, based around a Wyoming ranching family with seven sisters. No infidelity issues in any of the seven stories.

I'm working on my first in a five-book series including lovers crossing universes to overcome death itself, ghosts, time-travel and fairy godmothers - and nobody has to break a vow or even violate a social contract to be with someone they love.

I applaud the practitioners of polyamory for their honesty in their relationships. There are some romances, I think, that incorporate polyamory (in the more erotic sub-genres). Fiction about people who lack that honesty should not be classed as romance. Most romance readers are more into the ideal of monogamy, or one true love. At least, one at a time.

* Happily Ever After

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I do truly, utterly hate the ideal of the One True Love. Which is actually a separate hatred from the angsty philanderer. I think that the One True Love meme has ruined many a life, and created much real misery in the world.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Hm. I have mixed feelings about it myself. 'One True Love' may be too strong a term, given that serial monogamy seems to be what works for me.

There's something in me that resonates very strongly with the idea of 'holy union' - where two people are drawn together by a mutual passionate love and give themselves to the relationship between them, creating a common future or destiny. I love 'The Princess Bride' and admire friends like Chas and Bonnie who form lasting partnerships.

On the other hand, I see things like the meltdown between Nate and Louie and shudder at the thought of being trapped with someone whose love is more about control. And I've heard/witnessed other horror stories that keep me relatively content to be single, if not hiding in a hermit's cave in the woods.

Romance stories come from the desire for the version where the partnership works.

I'm fortunate that my three critique partners have all been happily married for many years, with grown children who are now getting married and having children of their own. Sometimes it works. I want my fears to keep me aware of pitfalls, not to deter me from something my heart really desires.
.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

To be clear, I'm fine with monogamy. It doesn't work for me, but it does work for a lot of people. There are even people who manage to find an appropriate life-partner first time round, and that's great. What I hate is the idea is that there is one and only one person in all the world and that they are the soul-mate, and a perfect union results. Bah.

I think that people fall in love in part due to useful proximity. I don't think that fate moves people into a position where they meet their one true love. I think that instead, people fall in love when they are having useful interactions with someone at a time where they are open to forming a partnership. People don't always know that they are ready to form a partnership, it can take them by surprise. People do report falling in love at first sight. People are, gods know, weird. But if it wasn't that specific person, I think that it would have been someone else.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I thought my response to this deserved a post for itself. (Here: http://skylarker.livejournal.com/946155.html )
Thanks for provoking it! :)

[iraunink.livejournal.com]

It's the going back and forth between lovers trying to figure out which to choose or being single and the other party being married/engaged and flip flopping between who is single and who is not. My mother gave me a "wonderful" book from her favorite romance author, citing that there weren't any sex scenes (which I also dislike). But the heroine is never single when the guy she's suppose to end up with is also single. Yuck!

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That doesn't sound like any romance novel I know - more like what we'd find on a soap opera.