Cynicism and the Romantic Idealist

I’m a hater of Valentine’s Day. I believe marriage is an obsolete institution. I feel the word “love” has been cheapened through overuse and insincerity until the word is rapidly becoming meaningless.

One might say I’m cynical. One might question what makes me think I’m qualified to write about romance—or why I’d have any interest in trying—in light of my oft-expressed scorn for what passes for romance in modern society.

The world is filled with inescapable ugliness—poverty, famine, disease, pollution, deceit, corruption, abuse, prejudice, tyranny, war. Turn on the news or read a newspaper, and you’ll find it. Watch a dramatic movie or television program or read most of what’s classified as “serious literature,” and you’ll find it. I’m lucky enough to have the privilege of a career wherein the slimy underbelly of humanity rubs up against me every day, and it’s my job to find it. The sick and wounded are wearying, but there are darker things that taint the spirit, erode faith in humanity, and cast doubt on the purpose of living.

Writing gives us the opportunity to reinvent the world the way we wish it was and share that vision with others. It’s my nature to be hopeful, even when things are bleak, even when I know they’re destined to get worse and better days lie in the far-off future. It’s often difficult to find cause for hope in real life, but in a romance novel, it has to be there. Hope is the prevailing theme in romance. True love and happy endings are guaranteed, the implicit promise of the genre.

One might think a cynic such as myself would have no interest in love and happiness.

One would be mistaken.

I have a very deeply felt concept of what love is. The abridged version encompasses understanding, support, friendship, passion, trust, security, devotion, and loyalty, a bond that resonates between two souls and lasts forever.

Which sounds a lot like the ideal love romance novels strive to communicate. They fail more often than they strike the right chord, but they try with the best intentions.

My cynicism arises from repeated disappointment in real-life people, who too often don’t have the best intentions. They say “I love you” to manipulate, to instill guilt or prompt sexual favors. They get married because they’re afraid to be alone or because it’s less of a hassle than ending a relationship and starting over with someone new.

If it doesn’t work out, it’s no big deal. Divorce is as quick and painless as the involved parties choose to make it, and if one party wants to be difficult about it, the other can just leave. That piece of paper they signed doesn’t obligate anyone to love, provide, be faithful, or even stick around. Matrimony is only as binding as the intent when it was entered, begun and ended with equal measures of impulsivity, convenience, bad judgment, or greed.

I can’t keep track anymore, even among my far-from-extensive social circle, of whose marriage is failing and who’s pursuing their second or third or fourth, which I also expect to fail because relationships are treated as a disposable commodity.

I would rather be alone than disposable. I would rather be alone than settle for a partner I could bear to throw away when I get bored or angry or feel neglected. I want someone who’s important to me, and I want to be important to him. I want the ideal. In those rare lulls when I’m not completely consumed by job and motherhood and household maintenance, there are moments when I yearn for it.

I don’t see it around me. I don’t see even an appreciation of the concept. But I’ve never been one of those people who says if I haven’t seen it, it doesn’t exist. In fact, I’m the first to respond to that kind of narrow-mindedness with “A blind man has never seen the sun. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

I want true love to exist. I want happy endings to exist. I’m willing to keep looking until I find the supporting evidence.

Even if my pragmatic side says I have better odds of having a close encounter with God or Bigfoot than experiencing true love, there’s the hopeful side that refuses to accept the ugliness is all there is in this world. If we’re nothing but life’s punching bags or if our only reward is “beyond” this existence, who would want to spend another minute here? So we hope for something better, something beautiful, some compensation for enduring without becoming everything wrong about our environment.

Everything I write will always acknowledge the ugliness. Characters will get hurt and die and despair because that’s the truth that anchors the fiction in reality for me.

But in the midst of the filth and evil and pain, two characters will find something pure and wonderful and lasting to give purpose to enduring the hurts and disappointments and miseries.

Without the true love and happy ending, I don’t know what the goal of writing anything would be for me. Hardship-survival stories don’t inspire me because merely surviving isn’t life-affirming—it’s what we all do every day. Crime-solving stories don’t inspire me because crime is never-ending—reminding me of the futility of the pursuit of justice isn’t life-affirming. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy reading those books, but there’s no incentive for me to write them because they don’t promise the hope that inspires me to wring words from my recalcitrant brain and commit them to paper.

When I reinvent the world, I’m writing it with the lofty ideal of redeeming love and the hope for lasting happiness I wish the real world promised.

Every one of us deserves that, even if we find it only in the pages of a story.