Originally Posted on One Handed Writers as “Valentine’s”.

I’ve never been one to celebrate Valentine’s. I never really saw the point, and from a feminist perspective, I always found it offensive in how it upheld so many stereotypes about women, and men, and how they interact in relationships.

I just don’t buy this idea that women are only interested in having sex with their partner in exchange for material goods, or that men have to take their partner to an expensive, crowded restaurant on one of the busiest days of the year. It’s a societal expectation, however, and people do like that.

I’ve long ago come to terms with the fact that I’m not normal, and that my views on relationships are not normal.

That’s why I don’t feel comfortable writing romance. I can’t empathize with it. For me, relationships are so much more complicated than the standard plot line, and I want to explore that. Romance that isn’t romantic, that isn’t following a prescribed idea of what people want is what arouses and stimulates me.

Don’t get me wrong, people do want their romance to follow certain standards, and there’s nothing wrong with expecting a nice boy meets girl, boy and girl face trials and tribulations, and in the end love conquers all. I just can’t do that plotline justice. I can’t engage readers like that.

Sure I still love seduction. Sure, I love having my characters desire, need and love one another, to feel that there’s something special between them. For there to be this magical pull that keeps bringing them closer.

Instead of exploring that in a romance novel, though, I focus on things that I’m good at. Relationships that are weird and sometimes a bit unbelievable. Relationships that start with sex and end with love, or hate, or indifference. Relationships where they fuck up the order and still manage to get through, changed and different.

The most romantic story I’ve written to date, I’ve been saving to release for Valentine’s Day. It’s about an innocent farm girl that stumbles upon a rugged ex-military man in the forest near her home, and everything screams at her to want to be touched. All that pent up emotion, that sexuality that she’d never had an outlet for in her isolated life just boils to the surface and makes her need him. She’s an adult that has never been around an adult man that wasn’t a relative, and her body needs him.

Some people wouldn’t term that romantic, but for me, the process of two people finding one another and being able to help one another through a time of intense loneliness is beautiful and romantic in its own way. Sex is a facet of life, something most people crave just like they crave food and shelter. It’s on the lowest tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

So I don’t think there always needs to be this preamble, this lengthy seduction and courting session. Instead, I just let my characters do what comes natural to them. They fuck on the forest floor because there’s nowhere else they can go, and in the end, they have their happily ever after.

This is what my partner and I are good at, and we’ll leave the true romance to people who can fulfill that niche. We’ll stick to the strange relationships that seem almost unbelievable when written down but happens all the time in the real world.

After all, the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense!