Without Love

In which The Writer is about to prove that a romance writer can contain multitudes

My capacity to believe in finding romantic love has managed to burrow itself to the point where it is nestling nice and comfortably against the warmth of the core of the Earth.

It’s made its journey there over the last decade or so. It stopped briefly for a short while, but then it carried on making its way down.

At some point as I rebuilt myself from the ashes of my one and only relationship I accepted that I wasn’t going to try and drag that belief above the ground. I was happy to let it do it’s thing.

Romantic love is a very distant thing for me and that’s fine.

Now I don’t say this to evoke a chorus of platitudes. You know; ‘it will come when you least expect’, ‘there are plenty of fish in the sea’, ‘don’t be silly, of course you’ll find someone’ *insert one of your choosing here to round this off*.

Your platitudes are nice, but realistically speaking they are lies. I am not on dating apps. I don’t really go out and meet new people. When I go on my little excursions I almost always have headphones in and have a very good ‘kindly leave me alone’ energy about me. I can’t stress enough how much I am indoors. I don’t have friends who have friends they can set me up with. Again, I am almost always inside.

Please present to me the scenario that I am meeting someone with the intention of pursuing a romantic relationship? I’m all ears.

Now where did this belief originate from you might ask?

Well, it’s simple.

No one that looked like me found their great big love in the media that I consumed.

Belle, the stunning white village girl, married the (eventually) white Prince. The red headed white Ariel gave up her voice to go on land and get her white Prince. Cinderella, white, chased by a white man. Snow White (you don’t need me to clarify that the one I grew up with was white do you?) saved by a white man. Aurora, white, roused from her sleep by a white man. Pocahontas ended up with her coloniser.

I maybe, maybe, had Esmerelda but people seem to forget that The Hunchback of Notre Dame exists and even then they subtly cast her as a temptress (side note, Hellfire is the best villain song). But she also doesn’t have Disney Princess status.

I will give you that Mulan and Jasmine existed and they both ended up with men of colour, but they still didn’t look like me.

I didn’t see a black Disney Princess until I was 16 and even then Tiana spends most of her time as a fucking frog.

If we move away from Disney it was still a struggle to find love stories that put people that looked like me at the forefront.

It’s there in Clueless, but the focus of that is Cher falling for her stepbrother. There is a sliver of a romance in She’s the Man for Toby (although I think it’s the butt of a joke at one point). Gabrielle Union’s Chasity is the enemy to Bianca who is the side story to Kat (10 Things I Hate About You). Those teenagers were never speaking again once she went back to the States (and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s marriage is for sure about to get wrecked by Andrew Lincoln when the new year rolls around) in Love Actually. Richard Curtis films in general from back in the day are basically just vessels for Hugh Grant to bumble around and get a white woman with fabulously styled hair to fall in love with him. Except in Bridget Jones, where it was ‘regular’ woman he fought for the affections of. But ‘regular’ still means white.

TV shows weren’t much better. Gilmore Girls involved Rory falling for whole host of white men (I am still Team Jess). Vanessa in Gossip Girl was a character they clearly had no idea what to do with and so she didn’t get to be as messy as Serena and Blair (that show should have just let Dan and Blair be together - Chuck was awful). 90210 also didn’t really know what to do with Tristan and love. I have yet to watch Dawson’s Creek or One Tree Hill but if memory serves me correctly, those casts are very white.

Don’t get me started on the way The Vampire Diaries and they way they treated Bonnie.

I grew up on a diet of films and TV that presented love as this great big beautiful thing, but only if you looked a certain way. Otherwise you had best be prepared to struggle at all times.

It wasn’t campy or fun or low stakes. The drama was always dialled up to 11. It always cost them so much. Most of the time, it never seemed worth the bother. Love was exhaustion if you weren’t white.

Turning to books produced much of the same results.

I could find many a YA book that gave white characters adventure, magic or love but the only series that really centred on a familial set up that I could recognise was Noughts and Crosses and well…that isn’t exactly a fun time.

Love stories felt more and more inaccessible and the belief that it could be for me started burrowing down and making its descent to its current location before I was even really aware of it.

When the hormones started really flying and attraction became a thing I was confronted with a different beast.

Black women have been consistently hypersexualised and I move through the world as one. Any attraction that may have been thrown my way came with this odd expectation that I must be gagging for sex (pun not intended). Even at 14 (or younger, I have somehow always looked both too old and too young in my life), I must be craving it.

And suddenly that was all I was really good for. A supposed good time, but not a long time. I was great to show interest to because it gave the guy the idea of liking a broad range of girls, but in actual fact I was a box ticking exercise. I was a way for someone to prove to themselves that they could ‘pull a black girl’ but they didn’t actually want me for anything beyond the physical and the appearance of inclusion and when I didn’t put out they dropped me like a hot potato.

Just as suddenly, I was then relegated to the side character. You know the one. There are slight variations, but for the most part I am the sassy black friend to the various white friends I’ve had over the years. I am the stepping stone for men to them. Letting interested parties know if the interest is reciprocated. Sometimes used as a way to make another person jealous. People (men) stopped being attracted to me as a person and started being attracted to what I could do for them.

But still I clung onto the belief that I’d find that great big love one day, even as it burrowed deeper. I had to. That was supposed to be the point of everything. Who was I if I didn’t get to experience the point.

So I kept searchiong for it everywhere and clinging to it where I could find it. The rare times I could find it.

A guy on a dancefloor that seemed to want to get to know me but then shuffled away after we kissed. A first date that seemed like it went fine but he ghosted me when I tried to start up a conversation post-date. A situationship in my early to mid twenties.

A situationship that ended when he got married out of NOWHERE. Although it didn’t really end beause there was still moments of flirting and he legit seemed jealous when he saw my boyfriend’s name came up on my screen when he text me and my phone was in between us at a bar.

Said boyfriend who actually somehow provided scraps of affection and also love bombed me.

And with all the clinging to this hope. This belief. This desire to be part of the point, I was actually just crushing myself down into a shell of a person who had the facade of being fine with who they were.

So my belief in romantic love took things into its own hands and burrowed somewhere that it could actually be of more use. And now it’s comfortable in the fertile ground of my creativity. Nourishing away there.

Because here’s the thing;

I do believe in love. I just no longer think that romantic love is the point.

There is a reason that when it came down to it, the books that I have been able to finish writing have been romance books. There is a reason that I keep getting new ideas where more people fall in love with each other (I think I have ten ideas on the burner). There is also a reason that since I have taking writing more seriously that I have found a greater sense of contentment within myself.

There is joy to be had in writing messy people who are flawed and maybe a little broken and then also getting to write them have their own great love stories. There is also joy in not having to account for someone else when you want to do whatever the hell you want on a Saturday and being content with your own company.

To be honest, I think on some level the reason that romance is the genre I was most called to it because believing that romantic love is not for you is a really cynical view to take on life and writing romance means that I have to be just a tad less cynical. I have to write big feelings and sort of grand gestures. I have to get creative with relationship dynamics and write decent communication. I, personally, have chosen to write sex scenes which means I also have to write intimacy and connection and show how it can deepen relationships (I by no means think that is the ONLY way you can demonstrate that, it’s just one of the ways that I do).

I can’t really do that if I’m a full cynic. Or maybe I could. I don’t know. I somehow doubt it and it’s not something that I have to find out because it isn’t my reality.

About three things I am absolutley positive. First, romantic love is not the point nor is something that is likely to happen for me. Second, there is not a single part of me that isn’t perfectly content with that. And third, I irrevocably love writing romance novels.

Jumpin’ Jumpin’

What I’m reading - One thing about me is that I am always thinking about re-reading the Losers duet by Harley LaRoux. I am usually pretty good at ignoring the pull to read a 1100 pages of poly goodness. But this weekend I gave in and I had a grand old time. This duet was on my summer reading list and once again I am saying that you NEED to get these books in your life.

ARCs read - Bull Rush - Maggie Rawdon (out Sept 27th), A Jingle Bell Mingle - Sierra Simone & Julia Murphy (out today) and Adam and Evie’s Matchmaking Tour - Nora Nguyen (out now)

Other books - Losers Part 1 & 2 - Harley LaRoux, The Retreat - Andi Jaxson & J.R Gray and Reel Love - Evie Browning

Currently Reading - Look Up, Handsome - Jack Strange (out today) and Pucking Sweet - Emily Rath (out today)

(Bookshop links are affiliate links)

What I’m watching - Watched the first series of Celebrity Race Across The World and Strictly season is back. Also randomly watched The Cruise, which if you are in the UK and know of the great Jane McDonald is where she (and others) are working on a cruise ship…it’s very mid 90s (they have to go off ship to call home)

Title Inspiration - This idea came to me while I was deep in my Hairspray reacquaintance phase (get James Marsden in another musical ASAP) and look, it doesn’t quite work, but we’re pretending it does. Without Love - Hairspray cast.