On Romance, Morality and Respectability

[gehayi]

Romancingtheblog has a rant about how impossible the writer finds it to read and enjoy books featuring adulterous heroesHer reaction, when added to a great many other attitudes I've seen on various romance sites, message boards, lists and Yahoo!Groups over the past year, annoyed me. I responded, but I'm going to expand on my response here

Comments

[gehayi]

Yeah, I think it's the "it has to be this way or no way" thing that causes problems in fandom and original writing alike. Everyone doesn't agree on what love is, but very vocal groups have a habit of decreeing what it is and why it can't be anything else. It's not that simple.

It's not impossible to have loved someone and then love someone else if that first person leaves/dies/(or heck is still alive) but it's like the feel his love for Starbuck would somehow be tainted if, god forbid, he'd actually been in love with the woman he married. *head desk*

*sigh* That's something else I see a lot, both in amateur and professional romances--the concept that the person in love could never POSSIBLY have loved before. Even if they've been in love with or married to someone else, that has to be disregarded. I don't know where the whole "I can only love one person and that person must be my true love/soulmate/whatever" bit came from. Most people do love more than one person in their lifetimes. The person you love at sixteen isn't usually the person you'd fall in love with at forty-six.