What Romance Novels Remind Us About Relationships

I was having a conversation with a friend recently about my love of soap operas and romance novels, which she has yet to fully understand despite our many years of friendship. The soap operas more so than the romance novels. My love for drama, angst, love, and the promise of a happily ever after cause these two things to be at the top of my ‘don’t want to live without’ list.

I wrote a post last year about what soap operas have taught me about life and after the aforementioned conversation, I unsurprisingly realized that romance novels do quite a bit of teaching in their spare time. Despite having to suspend our disbelief at times with the plot points in romance novels, they can have quite a bit wisdom between the pages. Many of my favorite romance authors tackle a lot of serious issues including but not limited to race, abuse, and familial turmoil while giving us the sappy love story we crave.

Romance novels are centered around relationships, duh! While I don’t necessarily believe that romance novels necessarily TEACH us things about relationships, they can definitely remind us of a few things that we would do well to remember. Follow me here: romance novels can help you remember discernment when it comes to choosing your partner, or realizing which conflicts may be a deal breaker and so forth.

Here’s what romance novels remind us about relationships:

Communication is key

Talk to each other, for the love of God. How many romance novels do we read where the main conflict between the characters could be resolved with a simple conversation? Or what about when one of the characters misinterprets what other says or does? Communication is crucial in every relationship.

Clear communication can solve a multitude of problems.

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Make it clear what you want, from the beginning.

How many ‘friends to lovers’ romance novels have we read? Point made.

No such thing as the right time.

There will never be a right time; make the move, go out on that date, say how you feel and enjoy each moment. If you’re out here waiting until you’re fully secured in your professional life before you start going on dates then honey that may be a long wait. If you’re waiting until the time that everything’s neatly wrapped up in a bow in all other areas of your life before you tackle romantic entanglements then I’m here to tell you that time may never come.

As the old saying goes, dog eat your bread.

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There are people out there waiting for the right time to tell their crush that they like them or their best friend that they may want to take things to the next level. They wait too long and the next thing you know that person is completely out of reach now; whether physically or emotionally. Well, as the old saying goes: dog eat your bread. You snooze, you lose.

Let’s not get it confused. I’m not out here saying romance novels are relationship gurus because, Lord knows, I wouldn’t want to be involved in half of the sh*t some of my favorite characters have been through.

I’m just saying, don’t sleep on the advice/signs in romance novels. 🙂

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Natalya

Natalya is an Account Manager by day and an editor and author's assistant to passionate creatives by night. When she is not adding to her enormous book collection or stationery supply, she is catching up on her favorite television shows.

Natalya is the author of All The Things I Never Said, a soul-stirring collection of short stories, prose and love letters for the soulful wanderers, the brokenhearted and the hopeless romantics.

You can follow her rantings and occasional sparks of brilliance on Twitter @NatalyaMuncuff.