I Think I Finally Get The Ridiculous Misunderstandings in Romance Novels

 

As a reader of clean romance, I have been continually frustrated with the misunderstandings that many romance authors create for their two main characters, the big misunderstanding that is meant to pull them apart.

Of course, some of these misunderstandings – many of them, perhaps – really and truly are ridiculous, arbitrarily pulled out of the air by an author desperate to create drama and lacking the skill or patience to think of how to do so in a way that won’t make the reader roll their eyes.

In other words, the misunderstanding is unrealistic from anyone’s point of view.

However, the other day I realized that perhaps an equal number of these misunderstandings make perfect sense… to neurotypical people.

I am not neurotypical. I am autistic. I want people to speak to me with directness, no beating around the bush or polite white lies. And if I had a friend whom I knew could potentially get deceived by a former colleague, I would tell that friend outright, even right in front of the colleague, if necessary. And I wouldn’t care one whit about hurting the former colleague’s feelings. If they were a jerk known for making new friends, then using them and wringing them out like old rags when they were through, I would warn my friend about it right in front of the person.

Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t anyone? Jerks and con artists should be called out on their jerkhood so that they can stop victimizing people.

The scene that started it all.

That’s why, in a recent novel that I read, I got ticked off at the male protagonist. David’s old boss, Martin, had shown up to some corporate ball. Martin was notorious for stealing women away from the men who loved them, using them, then tossing them away, causing heartbreak all around.

So when Martin made a comment, out of Ellie’s earshot, about her beauty, David made it sound like he and Ellie were just friends and co-workers, at the ball as part of their job. He knew that if he let Martin have an inkling about his real feelings for Ellie, Martin would go after her and end up hurting her.

At that point, Ellie didn’t know how David felt about her, either. She only knew that she’d fallen for him sometime ago.

What happened was, Ellie was returning from the restroom at the time and overheard David’s callous remark. Instead of rushing to explain what Martin was about, David remained polite and simply introduced them.

Of course, after Martin was out of earshot, David tried to explain to Ellie, but in her mind he was too late. She refused to let him speak. Understandably so.

My autistic brain doesn’t get that kind of cow poop. Why are we worried about hurting the feelings of someone who is not only not a friend, but also a living turd? Who made the rule that you had to be polite when someone’s life might be at stake?

Then, I realized: it's a brain thing.

However, as I’ve been learning about how the autistic brain works and thinks, I’ve come to realize that one of the major reasons that autistic people struggle to make and keep friends is that they think literally. White lies aren’t part of literal thinking, or literal speech. All the social niceties and games that neurotypicals play for the sake of keeping the peace are also beyond the scope of literal thinking. This is why neurotypical people tend to consider autistic people as rude.

Blunt honesty hurts their feelings. If someone’s feelings are hurt, then by default the person who spoke the truthful words must be rude.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some things are unkind and unloving to say, true though they may be. But even if we autistics judge a certain truth not to be unkind, we learn to keep our mouths shut. We put on neurotypical masks so that we can make and keep friends. We learn what neurotypical people consider to be insulting or offensive, and we refrain from speaking our mind.

And it’s stressful. Very stressful.

Many other autistics, like my middle sister, never mask and say exactly what’s on their mind. Ironically, until I started to be too tired to mask a few years ago – especially until I discovered that I’m autistic – I considered that sister to be tactless and rude.

Now I know the truth. She’s never been capable of playing the social niceties game.

Back to romance novels. I now understand that my frustrations with the kind of misunderstanding I illustrated above have come from my brain being autistic. From now on, I will read such misunderstandings with better understanding.

That is, I will understand that the author is writing from a neurotypical point of view.

I guess I’ll never set the pond on fire with my romance stories, because I can’t make my characters flat-out lie for the sake of protecting a jerk. For the sake of creating tension and drama.

Even though I get it, really, I don’t get it.

You've Got Love All Wrong

Love. In any language, it's the most positive word that has ever existed. Scientists have even discovered that speaking the word can transform energy fields, even the molecular structure of water. 

Everyone thinks they know what love is. 

Most of them are wrong. 

Including most Christians. 

I have ample evidence to back up this claim. In Western society, if you ask most couples why they got married, they will respond with, "We fell in love." Eighteen years ago, I would have given the same response. But once you are with someone for a number of years, that feeling of being "in love" dminishes. Often, it disappears altogether.

This is the point where many people get divorced, claiming that they no longer love  their spouse.

Before I go on, I want to make it perfectly clear that I don't believe that anyone should remain in a marriage where the spouse turns out to be an abuser, a cheater, or an addict who refuses to rehabilitate. I'm talking only about people who walk away from a marriage, from the vows they made to God, simply because they lost that lovin' feeling.

And that gets us to the crux of the problem.

Most people believe that love is a feeling. Even if you have sat in a Sunday morning service and been told otherwise, chances are high that you persist in acting on the belief that love is a feeling. I understand why. For hundreds of years, cultures around the world have taught that the emotions surrounding romance, and that feelings of affection, whether toward one's children, friends, or pets, are equivalent to love. 

Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, brain researchers now know that the feeling of being "in love" is nothing more than a physiological reaction that occurs in the amygdala. This is the same part of the brain responsible for our basic instincts, such as feeling fear when facing an enemy, or anger when your life has been inconvenienced, or excitement when you're presented with a potentially big and positive opportunity.

In other words, the feeling of falling in love is not spiritual. It's not a sign from God that this person is "the one." It's a primitive response to a person whom you instinctively sense could make healthy babies with you. That is it. 

Now that I've destroyed my writing career by ruining romance novels for you...😉

 ...let's explore the truth about love. God so desired for you to understand it, that He inspired one of the original apostles to pen an entire chapter about it in the New Testament. It's found in the book of First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and is commonly known as "the love chapter." The Apostle Paul defines love as follows:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in inquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never fails.... [1 Corinthians 13:4-8a]

I ask you: where in that passage is there the slightest hint that love is a feeling or an emotion? The answer is, nowhere. This passage reveals that love is action, action the results from a state of perfect peaceful being.

You might say, "Emily, those verses are talking about the agape love, the unconditional love that God has for people. We mere human beings are incapable of that kind of perfection."

I completely agree. Mere human beings, in their current fallen state, are incapable of that kind of perfection. But human beings who have connected with their heavenly Father have the power within to produce that kind of love. I would dare to say that even atheists who believe that living by the Golden Rule have the ability to show real love to a certain extent. They have been, after all, created in the image of God as much as any Christian has.

But living a life completely free of sin, in perfect harmony with the Holy Spirit every second of every day, is not the issue at stake here. What I want you to understand - what the world needs you to understand, especially if you call yourself a Christian - is that love is not a feeling. It has nothing to do with physical intimacy. Rather, love is the Golden Rule in action, but not from a sense of duty or obligation. Not from a sense of "I should" or "I have to." Instead, it's the natural outflow from a heart that desires to please God in all things. 

I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with wanting or feeling the pleasurable buzz that comes from romance. There's nothing wrong with feeling affection for other people. But in the ideal world, these feelings and desires should be grounded in a firm understanding of true love. Then, and only then, can the romance and affection be free of selfishness and manipulation.

Peace to you, and may blessing abound in every area of your life. 

And before you go, share in the comments a time when you experienced real love at the hand of another person.

 

I Wrote Another Novel; Here’s How I’m Planning to Avoid Burnout in the Future

 In the blog post I wrote this past June, I confessed that I might be through with writing novels.

Well.

A few days ago, I completed the first book in a new Christian holiday romance series. The 65,000 words took me about five weeks to write. As usual, the task began to feel like pulling teeth after about 30,000 words. As usual, I plowed through.

But this time, I didn’t resent the time. This time, I didn’t end up utterly hating the story and never wanting to see so much as a single word from it again.

Why? There were two things different this time around.

I understood my brain.

This is the first novel I’ve written while having an understanding of my brain. Knowing that I have ADHD, when I got to the notorious “halfway point,” I realized that I didn’t really hate the story. Nor did I think that I’d missed my calling, that I was going against God’s will by writing novels.

Instead, I realized that my brain had gotten bored with the story and wanted to do something different. I kept working on the novel every day until I felt like I was going to explode with the need for something different. And then, I took a day off.

Just one day.

I listened to somebody else’s novel. I watched YouTube. I walked around outside with no other aim than to be in nature.

If I’d needed to, I would have taken more days off to play. As it happened, the next day, I was able to sit down and get back to it.

Lesson number one: I can continue writing novels as long as, when in the middle of writing one, I give my brain a break to do something different when it’s begging me to.

I understood the cause of my burnout.

Related to that is the second thing that was different this time around. Because I understand my brain better, I figured out why I had my worst novel-writing burnout late last year and early this year.

I didn’t give myself enough time between books.

And my last series was the longest one I’ve ever written – six books, as opposed to my standard four.

Previously, I drove myself to complete a four-book series within a six-month time frame. Or less. I thought a two-week break in between novels was long enough.

Nope.

And my “Christmas Sisters” series being six books long, I pushed myself over the edge with it.

And because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment, a couple of months later I pushed myself to write the next two books in the “Pine Mountain Estates” series.

There are other self-published authors who are this prolific, even more so, and can just keep going.

Obviously, they have neurotypical brains.

Either that, or they’re at high risk of being put into a psychiatric institution.

To prevent any level of novel-writing burnout ever again, I decided, before I began writing this last novel, to write only four novels per year. I decided, as well, that I would take a two-month break in between each novel.

I don’t know why it took learning that I have ADHD to figure this out, because I enjoy creating YouTube videos, as well. Why didn’t it ever occur to me to write one novel, then take some time off to create videos?

I enjoy YouTubing so much, in fact, that the more I think about it, the more the idea of becoming a full-time YouTuber appeals to me. But back when I was forcing myself to crank out a minimum of six novels per year, I simply didn’t have the time or creative energy to be both a novelist and a YouTuber. I blamed it on perimenopause, then menopause. I blamed it on aging. I blamed it on my Irlen Syndrome.

The truth was, I’d been working against my brain.

With a full eight weeks in between writing novels, I can create as many videos as I like… including enough videos to upload during the several weeks that I’m writing a novel. Likely as not, most of my future blog posts will consist of YouTube videos, plus any script I wrote for them.

Life is finally starting to feel fun. 😊

Lesson number two: I need to work with my brain, not against it.

Until next time, be blessed!