In romance and chick lit novels, the reader is usually assured that the hero in the book is a good guy, and she has a deep comforting feeling that it’s all going to work out. Even if the hero seems to have bad qualities, a reader knows that by the end of the book, the author will have worked out all the potential issues.
However, if a woman translates this attitude to real life there is potential for disaster! A woman has to be savvy to deal with a single man, especially if he is a stranger. No matter how much she might be open to love, she has to be aware that a man, in the beginning, does not have
her best interests at heart. He has
his best interests at heart. So a woman who is kind-hearted and giving, and is conditioned to putting others first, can very easily fall into the trap of doing this with a man she is dating. However, this is to her detriment if she puts his needs before her own, as she might end up with a man who wants to have the dating game entirely on his own terms.
The more romantic a woman is, the more armour she needs. And as romantic women don’t think of relationships as a battlefield, and are so open to love, they can make the mistake of believing that a man is
just like them and
wants what they want. This is dangerous thinking because a woman never knows what a man’s motives are when he starts a relationship with her. He might not start off a relationship looking for love and warmth and intimacy – he could simply be seeing the woman he’s dating as a challenge to be conquered.
In romantic novels, you’ll notice that it is often only in the process of chasing an attractive woman that the hero’s emotions become involved and then, unexpectedly, he
falls in love. That’s why it’s called falling in love… he didn’t expect it! I think romantic women always expect love. Men don’t necessarily.
This is what my heroine in my chick lit novel,
The Blog Affair, realises she has to learn. In order to analyse her past relationships which have gone wrong, she sets up a blog in an attempt to understand the shortfalls of men she calls “serial datists”. However, it's easy to put so much armour on when you're single and dating that you send out "stay away" signals which can be detrimental to attracting a healthy relationship. No one ever said dating was easy and that's why I thought it would be such an interesting thing to examine in a novel.
THE BLOG AFFAIR is available on
Amazon.
