Forever Alone | Chapter 1: Lonely & Longing (Part 3)
In which much is introduced, including why I think my singledom is my fault, all the couples I’ve shipped, my great-grandma’s take on erotic novels, and the age-old question: Are my hopes too high?
I published Forever Alone: One Introverted Millennial’s Half-Agonizing, Half-Hopeful Journey Through Singledom in 2021 as a 7-part podcast miniseries. I’m re-publishing it here on Substack for the first time in written form! Start reading from the beginning here.
My great-grandmother, Kate, was 91 when she died in the early 2000s. She was what you’d call “something else.” She went to beauty school at 15 and opened her own salon as a young woman, at a time when female business ownership was a rarity. Her first husband died in a train accident when their baby, a boy nicknamed Sunny, was only 6 months old. She remarried a few years later and gave birth to my grandmother. And when my grandma was a teenager, Sunny’s plane vanished during a military training mission at night, over the ocean. They never recovered his body, or any wreckage. My great-grandma struggled with alcoholism off and on her entire adult life, and after those kinds of tragedies, it’s hard to blame her for wanting to forget.
She was tough and sharp and opinionated. She was a woman who radiated “Do not fuck with me” energy. We tend to admire that quality in women, and it’s easy to see why. When you’re already at a disadvantage, you can’t afford to be weak. But I wonder how much of that rigidity was born from pain and trauma, and needing to protect herself from more of the same.
In the years before she died, Kate—which is what she insisted her grandchildren and great-grandchildren call her, by the way; none of this “grandmother” business for her—spent much of her time bedridden. Since she wasn’t very mobile, she watched a lot of TV and read a fair number of books in that time—particularly romance novels. She said, and I quote, that she liked the ones that got “hot under the sheets.” Even this very independent woman, far ahead of her time, wasn’t immune to a good old-fashioned bodice ripper.
Have you ever walked through the romance section of a bookstore? Checked out those bodice rippers that get hot under the sheets? It is astounding how many of them exist at any given time. Not to mention how many you can find self-published online. And isn’t it interesting that, to an overwhelming degree, they’re written by women, for women?
Obviously not every woman loves romance novels, or finds themselves shipping every romantic pairing she stumbles across. And surely, there are men and nonbinary folks who do enjoy those things. But it’s hard to ignore that the vast majority of people who gravitate toward these kinds of stories identify as women—even tough old broads like Kate!—while the majority of men seem to have very little interest. I can assure you—my great-grandfather Jimmy, Kate’s husband, the chain-smoking butcher—wasn’t plucking any romance novels off the shelf when his health went south.
So, what kind of story are women telling each other? Why do so many of us—from my great-grandmother on down—positively devour a particular kind of tale?
Let’s whip out a few VERY popular stories and see what we can discover, shall we? I’m going really basic here, and I do mean basic in multiple senses, and picking three I’ve already mentioned: Pride & Prejudice, Outlander, and, somewhat surprisingly, The Notebook. I know, somewhat of a weird flex (I’m sure the kids don’t say that anymore), because yes, obviously the book was written by a man, and the film was directed by a man, too. But it’s basically the dictionary definition of a romance, and I KNOW you’ve seen it and can most likely quote it. And we all know Ryan Gosling, and Rachel McAdams for that matter, can and still could get it. So, don’t front.
Ahem:
To wit, they each have what we’ll call a “feisty” heroine, which is a slightly patronizing word, don’t you think? More accurately, Lizzy, Claire, and Allie are all strong-willed, opinionated, independent characters. They’re a little hot-headed and prone to putting their foot in their mouth. Drama tends to find them, though they’d deny they went looking for it. It doesn’t even bear mentioning that they’re each beautiful and very feminine in appearance.
The men in these stories are all conventionally masculine, in their own way. Tall and handsome and muscular, obviously. And crucially, they’re all instantly in love with the heroine, before she falls for him. They each bide their time, hoping (and sometimes actively persuading) the heroine to put them out of their misery and just be with me, for God’s sake.
And, just as importantly, they all had to be willing to put the heroine’s needs before their own—to let her go, with no promise she’d ever come back or want them again—because her happiness was more important than any other consideration. They had to grow up, perhaps see the error of their ways, humble themselves, allow themselves to be transformed by the love of the heroine, in order to finally be worthy of her loving them in return.
Listen, I know that not all romances follow the same story structure, but you’ve got to admit, there’s something afoot here. There’s a reason we keep gravitating toward this kind of story.
A heroine gets to be something women aren’t often encouraged to be—loud, opinionated, bold, messy, emotional, fully expressed—and, not despite those qualities, but because of them, is loved by a tall, handsome man. A man who, through the magic of love, is transformed from someone who may once have been immature, selfish, arrogant, childish; into someone strong, steady, capable, grown-up. Who can and wants to hold space for everything the heroine feels and desires? Who can’t be pushed away by her being “too much?” That her “too muchness” is perfect in his eyes?
Umm, you guys. This …. is emotional porn.
That’s not a judgment. It’s just true. If literal porn is an outlet for physical desires, then I think romance creates a world that, for most people who identify as women, is an outlet for our emotional desires. A man who loves your flaws? Who wants you to express yourself fully? Who’s emotionally available and wants to change and grow, because of how much he cares about you? Someone you can lean on, and rely on. Who allows you to drop your guard, and not have to be quite so tough and independent all the time? Who makes you feel seen and heard, and who you also want to bang because he has Ryan Gosling’s abs? Uh yeah, sign me the FUCK UP.
I fail to understand why anyone wouldn’t find that attractive and deeply desirable. Though that might be because I obviously see a lot of myself in those heroines—I’d sure like it if someone loved me because I was loud and emotional and could hand them their ass on a silver platter. But still, these stories are incredibly popular for a reason. Clearly, I’m not alone in finding emotional satisfaction in these kind of stories—satisfaction I’ve never even come close to having in real life.
I’m aware that fiction isn’t reality. But the stories we tell and consume are our ideas of what reality could be.
At best, fiction and fantasy help us see ourselves through a different lens. It gives us hope and possibility, and maybe the inspiration to ascend beyond our current circumstances. We lose ourselves in a story, only to find ourselves stronger and more capable in the real world.
But at worst, we can lose ourselves in a story and never get out. We can use fiction as a way to escape—to get wishes and needs fulfilled that aren’t being seen and met in our actual lives, and that we may have lost hope of ever getting met.
So, here we reach a fork in the road. A question that I’ve agonized over for years:
Should I write off these stories as fantasy? To acknowledge, like my friends after a movie that’s rent my heart asunder, “That’s nice, but not real life,” and get on with finding something more down-to-earth, before I risk missing the boat on finding love entirely? Or, do I use everything I’ve seen and felt after losing myself in a good story as inspiration for what could be possible in my actual life?
I’ve traveled both paths, and I have an answer. I’m going to take you on a journey down them, too, and let you decide for yourself. That’s to come, on Forever Alone.
This was Chapter 1: Part 3 of Forever Alone. Read on for Chapter 2: Part 1!