Note: This was originally published on wacie.com on June 4, 2013.

I won’t even deny it. I read romance novels.

It started with a benign curiosity. I’d see them in supermarkets, libraries, yard sales, grandparents’ houses. I knew all about these books; I’d heard about the overtly manly men, the diminutive but well-endowed women, the over-the-top sexual descriptions and unintentionally hilarious euphemisms. Despite that, I couldn’t help but feel drawn to them. I was attracted to the titles written in soft, sprawling script, the long windblown locks of the heroine, the unbuttoned shirts of the hero (and sometimes also his long windblown locks as well). To me, these books were beautiful, and when I finally had the chance, when I was a teenager in high school, I got one from the library. I got another. I came home with armfuls of them. I bought them online and filled my shelves with them. I hid them from my parents, but not so carefully. When I was found out, my mother only said that she wished I’d start reading “intellectual books” again.

I was enthralled by the first one I ever read. It was full of excitement, adventure, passion, and I shed a few tears at the end. The next one I read wasn’t as satisfying, but I still enjoyed it. Then, the more I read, the more I found wrong with them. I got frustrated by the male characters and their overbearing maleness, the females and their helplessness against it, and the general idea that love somehow solves everything in a matter of days, including abandonment issues, daddy issues, conflicting personalities, stalker tendencies, the list goes on. I got so annoyed by it that I stopped reading them.

I started reading them again a couple of years ago. Even though these books irritated me, I still kept them, even though there were certainly times I’d considered donating them to Goodwill or selling them all on eBay. When I began to take writing a bit more seriously, I gave them another go. After all, the women writing these books were actually getting published and selling, so they must be doing something right, right? Certainly there’s something to be learned here, even if the plots are flimsy, the characters are weak and stereotypical, and the sex scenes are the only decent parts of the book. I decided to mix a few in with my classic literature, poignant memoirs, and teen fiction.

I have learned many things from reading romance novels. The most important thing, probably, is that I’ve learned how not to write, or better yet, I’ve learned more about the kinds of stories I want to write. For instance, I really dislike it when authors spell out the rest of the characters’ lives. I know some people like that kind of closure, but I kind of like deciding for myself what happens to them. When I’m reading an ending about how two people who detested each other upon meeting fall in love after having fantastic earth-shattering sex, I don’t really want to know that right after they got married and bought a house and got a dog, they got pregnant with twins, or how the twins grew up and one went to Harvard and the other only got into the crappy state college, but her parents love her anyway, and they lived happily ever the end. I don’t really care. Not only do I feel like I’ve been fed a ton of useless information, I feel like this ending leaves very little room for realistic events. I guess that in a romantic fantasyland, bad things never happen, unless it’s to help facilitate true love. In real life, bad things happen to good people. Things like illness and poverty constantly affect people who don’t deserve it. Real people cheat on their spouses, even when they love them. Real people have vices and addictions and weaknesses. Real people have real problems that can’t be solved by love alone. I think that’s what my problem is with these books, they’re for people who want to forget that reality is a cruel, unforgiving thing.

Despite that, I have something to confess: these books make me feel inadequate as a woman. If these are books written for women, why don’t I enjoy them? Why do I struggle to finish them? Why do I roll my eyes so much while I’m reading? Do I not want to find true love? Do I not want to be wanted by a man? Do I not want to be cherished, desired, placed upon a pedestal?

Actually, romance novels aren’t the only thing that make me feel inadequate. I’m 27, and all my friends are married, engaged to be married, or desperately searching for a husband. They’re pregnant, trying to become pregnant, or ogling every baby that goes by. I don’t want any of those things. I don’t want to be a wife or a mother; I don’t want much more than I already have. I want someone I can watch Cops with while we drink beer. I want someone with the same lust for knowledge and culture that I have. I want someone I can stay up all night with, just talking about nothing in particular. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Then why do I feel like I’ve failed at being a woman?