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So, I've been wondering, what you guys think about romance stories shaping our views on relationships even if only subconsciously.

Have you noticed that you have higher expectations for your potential partner? Do you expect or maybe are you prepared for as much drama to happen as it often does in romance novels?

Do you find yourself sometimes wondering if your relationship shouldn't be more exciting?

I have to admit, when I first started dating I was expecting more excitement, wanted to see my boyfriend fight for me but it turned out he was just toying with me while he had a long-time girlfriend, which was definitely demoralizing at that age. And you know, if life was a romance novel, then he would have left her in the end and chose me because "obviously" his girlfriend was not the right one for him, but looking at this experience after more than 15 years, I find myself feeling for the girl because she probably was a great person and she knew nothing of her boyfriend's actions, but even if she wasn't great she didn't deserve to be cheated on like that.

And I think this is what many romance stories lie about. They tend to pitch women against each other, showing the "old one" as the evil bitch, who would do anything to undermine the heroine's budding relationship with a guy who is often not single or just got out of a relationship for reasons that we only learn about through the guy.

Do you think that these stories teach us the wrong kind of things?
Like
- feeling sorry for men over other women
- distrusting other women
- building idealistic images of partners and relationships

I have never read a romance novel. Yet, if you think there is reality involved and that you are expecting too much due to these books, maybe you should stop reading them. They are novels and the base to every novel is that they are fiction, not truth. This is the same kind of fallacy as men expecting to have women swoon over them and tear their clothes off for male pleasure because they happen to watch porn. It is fantasy, not reality.

The romance books are not to teach how to have relationships, they are there to tickle your imagination. Mostly genre novels work in archetypes we all recognize. The shrew, the dashing hero, the hurt party, and in this case women pitted against each other. If your hero had a great lady, would you feel sorry for him or cheer the new girl for taking him away?

i enjoy romance novels. it took me a while to realize that romance novels are just as unrealistic as erotoca, and therefor, porn. In a different way, of course, but setting us up for unrealistic expectations nonetheless. Reading romance books can be fun and enjoyable, as long as you remember that constant drama in a relationship is dysfunctional and real love is calm and soft.

I am glad I did not start dating in my teens, because in my teen years, my view on relationships was so distorted then because of the cheesy early 2000s YA romances I read. The big thing that was a letdown / psychological hindrance for me in real life was the fact that since a lot of these novels were wishful thinking for the authors, in all of these novels, a presumably ugly unpopular girl eventually got a guy because of her amazing personality, I believed that this is how life is, and I felt really bad about myself for not having boys / men fancying me... and I started thinking that I was ugly AND had an unlikeable personality.

Now, for something funny, I thought that every relationship has major drama in it, even the best, because of the media I consumed (books, TV shows)... and when I had my first relationship, a few months in, I started thinking whether everything was alright because we had minor disagreements that we handled in a really polite way, and that was it :D.