Squawk Radio

Dear friends,

I read a post today on a reader message board, and I found it heartbreaking. According to the poster (I am paraphrasing), she is giving up reading romance novels because they cause women to have unrealistic expectations about their relationships with men. Her feeling is that romance novels "fuel fantasies" that more or less lead to disappointment with real life, and that "romance and passion are the exception not the rule" after you've been together for a while.

I understand what she was expressing, but my experience with romance reading has been so radically different that I feel compelled to mention it here. I started reading romance novels long before I ever had a serious relationship with a man, and they did indeed fuel fantasies . . . I imagined what it would have been like to live in the historical period, and what my own real-life romance would someday be like. But I never expected the men I dated to be exactly like the ones in the books. And I can assure you I had very realistic expectations. I never thought that these exciting romantic stories with dashing alpha males were a blueprint for how life should be lived.

My mother reads lots of serial killer novels. This has not led to expectations of being attacked in alleys by murderous strangers. My brother loves sci-fi, but to my knowledge he doesn't expect to have an alien encounter soon.

I think most women, even young ones, have the capability of separating fantasy from reality, and enjoying both parts of their lives for different reasons. My husband does not usually ride up on horseback and carry me off to his castle, but there are times I think he is the sexiest man in the world. After eleven years of marriage, we have a passionate and fulfilling life together, and part of it is because of my love of romance novels.

Years of romance reading have reinforced the belief that I, as a woman, am entitled to sexual pleasure . . . that women should be treated with respect and tenderness . . . that what we think and desire is important . . . and that sometimes, in spite of life's difficulties, we triumph over adversity.

Has reading romance been bad for me?

Never. Not for one second.

But I feel tremendous compassion for anyone who has to give it up because of disillusionment and disappointment in her real life.

We should enjoy our fantasies, our imaginations, our escapes from reality. We deserve them, don't we?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.