Happily Never After: The Ugly Side of Romantic Fiction and Its Effects on Marriage

In general, when someone says they enjoy reading for a hobby, one assumes that person has a wholesome hobby. However, reading of modern romance novels is often used as a means of entertainment or escape for women, and this activity can be far from beneficial.

One can see two predominant impacts from long-term or obsessive reading of romance novels. Modern romance novels are problematic in two ways: they may create unrealistic relationship expectations and are largely erotic or pornographic, leading the reader into a disordered perspective on love, sexuality, relationships, and marriage. In pastoral counseling, it is important to understand the issues that can arise out of long-term exposure to romance novels and how those problems can affect relationships.

A Billion-Dollar Industry

The romance novel industry continues to grow globally. It is a billion-dollar industry that outperforms all other book genres. Approximately 82%¹ of romance novel readers are female. Increasingly, romance novels depict graphic or near-graphic sexual activity. As the industry grows, with it expands the availability and the intake and acceptance of pornography as the norm.

With the intense romanticization of love and the addictive nature of romance novels, marital dissatisfaction often acts a byproduct to the readers. Women who are avid romance novel readers can come to believe their lives and relationships are lacking based on the more exciting romantic and sexual lives of the women in the books they read.

Readers can fall in love with the idealized and overly romantic version of love. The attraction to these books and the romantic fantasies they create can be much like an addiction. “Women get addicted to romance books in the same way that men get addicted to photographs and videos.”² The persistent reading of modern romance novels has a high propensity to lead to a misplacement and/or disorder of desire within the reader.

Trouble in the Christian World

Even the Christian romance novels can lead to marital dissatisfaction because of the idealization of the characters within. While they do not have the pornographic elements, these novels can contribute to the disordering of a woman’s desires and expectations.

These “novels give women unrealistic views about what to expect out of a relationship because they, well, romanticize love.”³

Both secular and Christian romance novels may lead to an excess of fantasizing and leave a woman lonelier, emptier, and spiritually damaged. Both secular and Christian romance novels encourage women to fantasize about romanticized notions of love, about different lives, and about other men. This type of novel can lead to discontentment and an inability to connect with others in a psychologically healthy manner. Not to mention, it can tempt someone into sin far more easily.

Secret Pornography

Unfortunately, many women are secretly involved with pornography through reading modern romance novels. Readers can have a hard time distinguishing between industry-categorized “erotic” romance novels and non-pornographic counterparts.

Whether by accident or choice, women caught up in reading many of today’s commercially released romance novels often read pornography. Fifty Shades of Grey, a highly pornographic “romance” novel (which became a trilogy and film) sold over 150 million copies worldwide and was the bestselling book of its decade. This novel mainstreamed sexual violence and boosted the sexual bondage industry in sales. For many women, reading this type of novel has become not only a hobby, but a compulsion.

As Elizabeth Van Sickel explains, “Romance addiction is a highly fantasy-driven manifestation of sex and love addiction.”⁴ Similar to visual pornography, these erotically written novels present a disordered view of relationships and sexuality that is both addictive and arousing to the reader.

God’s Design for Sexuality

God designed human beings for love, so it is natural for a woman to be interested in love. “God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image . . . God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church §2331)

Being drawn to romantic relationships is part of our vocation as humans; we have a natural draw toward communion — union in marriage. For that reason, the romance novel industry exists, and it grows more lucrative over time as it cashes in on women’s natural yearnings for love and connection. The titillating sexuality in the novels brings distortion into the mind of the reader and can have a devastating effect on a woman’s aptitude for forming healthy bonds of communion with her husband or her future husband.

We are whole persons, not the animals romance novels make us out to be. Our sexuality is wrapped up in all that we are. “Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.” (CCC §2332)

Repeated exposure to today’s highly sexualized romance novels can lead to disordered thinking and expectations. These novels can stir one to enter several different areas of sin.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church teaches:

Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials. (CCC §2254)

Addressing audiovisual and broadcasting technology, His Holiness St. Pope John Paul II speaks of pornography as something that “violates the deep order of the gift and of reciprocal gift-giving, which is inscribed in femininity and masculinity across the whole structure of being human.”⁵

The same holds true for literature. In reading of and fantasizing about the sexual relationships of the characters in a book, one is violating that foundation of reciprocal “gift-giving.” In the reading of these novels, one objectifies the male and female for the sake of the sexual fantasy and/or titillation of the reader. In doing this, one expects to receive, rather than to give.

Sin and the Adultery of Lust

Holy Scripture tell us in Genesis 3, the serpent came to the woman (Eve) and appealed to her about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. We remember: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” (Gen 3:6, NRSV)

The woman noted the fruit of the tree was edible, she took delight in the appearance of it and desired to become wise, so she stepped into the temptation, ate the fruit, then she shared it with her husband. The serpent appealed to her delight and desire, including her yearning to be like God and know the difference between good and evil. Later in the same chapter in Genesis, upon speaking with Adam and Eve about their sin, God pronounces the following to the woman: “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Gen 3:16)

As a consequence for her sin, besides declaring she shall have pain in childbirth, God made very clear that a woman would have a desire for her husband. The serpent appealed to and manipulated said desire on many levels and she made the erroneous decision to sin, then led the man into sin.

God set the order straight — women will desire their husbands and the husbands shall rule in the relationship. What exists in our hearts, including desire, has moral value.

“Moral value is connected with the dynamic process of man’s innermost (being). To reach it, it is not enough to stop “on the surface” of human actions, but one must penetrate precisely the interior.”⁶ It is not just the acts of the body that matter but also the state of the heart.

In Holy Scripture, we can see that truth in Matthew 5:27–28 which addresses the interior: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt 5:27–28, NIV) If looking at someone with lust is a sin, the same would hold for a heart full of lustful fantasies, even if about imaginary characters, as it is about the condition of the heart, not the act, in this case. Therefore, romance novels cause women to lust, and therefore, commit adultery.

Normalizing Sin

Romance novels set in the present day celebrate sexual relations outside marriage, making them a “norm.” Mention of contraceptives in the form of the birth control pill and condoms are common in books of our time, supposedly reflecting the normal life of women.

Rana Barar wrote about her experience with the genre: “Contraception appears much more often than one would think in romance novels. In at least half the romance novels I’ve read, pills, condoms, and even IUDs are mentioned.”⁷ Contraceptive use as well as abortion has been normalized throughout the world. Infallible Church doctrine teaches contraception is a mortal sin. Paul VI wrote in Humane Vitae, “Excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation — whether as an end or as a means.”⁸

In addition to normalizing extramarital relations and contraception, pornography objectifies humanity, and in the romance novel genre, this objectification is hidden under the guise of “romantic” women’s literature. Many women half-jokingly refer to such novels as “Mommy Porn,” or “guilty pleasures” to diminish the seriousness of the sin by making it sound cute and welcome in the neighborhood.

The covers of the books deliberately attract women and mask the fact that the book has pornographic content. Erin Galloway, the associate director of publicity at the Berkley Publishing group, said that “a portion of the books’ appeal came in the mysterious covers. ‘If (we) just have a cover with an innocuous image, no one will know that I’m reading a very, very sexy book.’”⁹

If the titles and covers revealed the contents inside of books, more Christian women might be reluctant to read them. Shame can serve a positive purpose; it provides a boundary that gives us pause as we approach sin. Shame can be protective. It can be a preventative to help us stop before we give in to concupiscence by engaging in entertainment that will corrupt our hearts and minds and damage us spiritually.

Romance Addiction

Pornography has a dangerous, corrupting effect. It distorts reality. In Love and Responsibility, Pope St. John Paul II wrote:

Pornography is not merely a mistake or an error — it is a tendency. Once the deformed image becomes equipped with the prerogatives of artistic beauty, a greater possibility exists that it will be accepted and engrafted in the consciousness and will of the recipients. For concerning this point, the human will very often display a great susceptibility to accepting a deformed image of reality.¹⁰

A book by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, titled A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire, states the difference between sexual fantasies between men and women. “There’s a fascinating parallel between what may be the greatest sexual self-delusion in men, and the greatest sexual self-delusion in women. Men are quite prone to believing they are inducing feelings of erotic ecstasy in their partner through their own sexual prowess,” they write. “Women, on the other hand, are more easily manipulated by expressions of love.”¹¹

Romance novels manage to feed into a woman’s most natural desire to be loved and desired by her husband, yet the input she receives is a highly disordered portrayal of romantic and often sexual fantasies. Engaging in romantic or erotic literature causes a detachment from the spousal meaning of the body, and leads the reader to participate in objectification and/or lust.

These books provide a false narrative for understanding how male/female relationships should be conducted. As Elizabeth Van Sickel puts it, “Romance addiction can begin to intertwine with sexual addiction, as romance novels or films often carry an erotic element. Similar to what is felt in love addiction, the message portrayed through these novels is that you cannot be happy without a romantic relationship, and if a relationship is difficult, it must not be true love.”¹²

The desired male in the books is nearly always an “alpha male.” (Studies vary but they place the number of true alpha males in the population as somewhere between 10 and 12 percent.) A Catholic blogger and formerly avid romance novel reader described her addiction and part of the common narrative as follows:

The male leads in these books are everything a man should be. That’s not to say they’re perfect — there’s usually a sordid past or some emotional (or physical) scarring going on — after all, we want these characters to be believable! Usually, they have a problem being a little too demanding, bossy, heavy handed, etc. with the leading lady as well. And then BAM! They fall in love, and suddenly this guy is falling all over himself to change all the negative parts of his personality to accommodate his beloved.¹³

Her novel reading became a compulsion and affected her marriage. Candidly, she revealed how her perspective on her husband was affected by the books:

The problem is that when I’m escaping into worlds where the men are constantly trying to prove their love by trying to change, I end up looking at my own husband and wondering why he isn’t quite so malleable. Suddenly, my unconditional love and acceptance of him as a man created in the image and likeness of God slowly shifts into frustration that he’s not the man I’ve created in the image and likeness of the romance novel character.

False Empowerment

Feminists, as well as the romance novel industry, falsely portray the books as “empowering for women.”

For example, one women’s magazine asserts, “In fact, there are lots of erotic books that can be quite sexy and sexual without demeaning women and can even empower women. You need to look for books with a central female character who is both sexually active and in charge of her own life and desires.”¹⁴

Laurelin Paige, prolific romance novel author of over 100 books, stated, “Women aren’t supposed to feel sexy or lose their virginity or want to have a sexual relationship. These books are taking us where our minds and hearts always have been, making it more acceptable and comfortable for us to be the sexual beings we were born to be.”¹⁵

Book reviewer Sadie Trombetta remarked, “Romance novels celebrate female sexuality and pleasure, and encourage women to follow suit by setting powerful examples through sexually liberated characters.”¹⁶

Feminists decry any criticism or questioning of the nature and impact of these novels as lies that come from “the patriarchy” that do not want women to challenge social norms. Simply asking questions goes against the narrative our culture tells women that erotic romance literature empowers and liberates. Feminists put forth the belief that through reading erotica, women can improve their marriage. The prevailing cultural attitude toward these books enables women to leap over the barrier of shame and directly into sin.

“Harmless” Entertainment

Our Christian sub-culture often tells women that Christian romance novels are harmless and even wholesome. We see the word “Christian” and immediately think “safe” and “beneficial.”

Some of these Christian romance novels may be wholesome, yet nearly all can be accused of being harmful in the sense that they can create unrealistic expectations of marriage and relationships between men and women, for all have the “happily-ever-after” endings. The novels by and large are primarily “clean” romance novels but still can lead to fantasizing, discontent, and division in relationships. They can also lead to an addiction of obsessive escapism through reading.

A common cultural argument for the reading of romance novels states that compared to filmed pornography, nobody gets hurt. “It’s just fantasy.” However, the fantasies in romance novels are not only unrealistic and unreasonable, they still objectify the characters. Even the “Christianization” of this type of novel can create an escape to an artificial illusion of relationships and people. The men and women in real life cannot compare to these characters that are developed to engage the reader’s romantic fantasies. It is a lie that these books are harmless or empowering entertainment.

Exposing Fantasies

We are to live lives full of life and love. In his question-and-answer blog, Father Thomas Berg, a professor of Moral Theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary, wrote: “Christians, of course, are not called simply to avoid dirty books and movies. Rather, we avoid these things because we are called to live — positively, joyfully, and enthusiastically — the virtue of chastity, which protects, affirms and celebrates the God-given gift of our sexuality. Christians have always been called to be different: even in the way Christian husbands and wives make love to each other.”¹⁷

One must exercise wisdom and compassion in ministering with someone who may have a romance novel addiction. Pastorally, one may ask someone who reads them and struggles in her marriage: did the books lead her to appreciate and love her husband more, or does he pale in comparison? Do they increase or diminish her happiness with him, with their relationship? Do the books point her to the reality of a one-flesh union or to the fantasies of one’s own desires?

Most of the romance-focused books end at marriage between the two primary characters, so one can ask the person to discuss what they think happens after the wedding. What does the reader believe normal life after marriage looks like in her mind for those characters, and does she believe these fantasies were realistic? In counseling, one should discuss the purpose of marriage and ask how it is portrayed in her books. Is it just winning the man and having a wedding? Does she expect perpetual adoration from anyone in her real life? Has she ever seen a relationship like that?

When we expose the fantasies for what they really are, we can help the reader see the impact on the lives and relationships that these books touch. In counseling, one may instruct on how these books demean both women and men through objectification and the truth that authentic empowerment does not reside in participation in sin.

When hearing a group of Christian women discussing these books and their book clubs, it is important to speak up. Many women do not understand God made them in His image and views them as precious and gifts. Many do not understand what the call to holiness means in their lives.

The Church should seek to expose the lies these books contain and the danger in reading them. These books help further the deification of desire in our culture. Luke 12:34 tells us, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

We all must consider how we spend our time and what we focus on. We need to be mindful of what we take in, for it will influence the way we live. We are responsible for the state of our hearts. Jesus equated lust with adultery — it’s not just about what we do physically, it is about what we think and allow ourselves to dwell on. We must maintain our moral compass in purity and holiness. “If we are to bring the gospel of life to the heart of every man and woman, the first step is to allow ourselves to ‘be transformed by the renewal of our mind’ (Romans 12:2), by living it authentically.”¹⁸

Exiting Addiction

On her book tour for Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in an Age of Indulgence, psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke spoke of her own addiction¹⁹ to these novels and the addictive impact they have on one’s dopamine levels.

It is important to have compassion for someone who may have an addiction to these novels. Addiction causes double-mindedness. One intrinsically knows there is a problem, but the addiction causes them to do everything in their power to keep feeding that addiction. They lose the “unity of the person” spoken about in the Catechism that is protected by chastity. “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.” (CCC §2338)

Living a life of inner conflict and deteriorating integrity is a painful and difficult way to live and often requires therapeutic counseling to resolve the conflict, and in the case of addiction, to exit it. If trying to provide spiritual directional aid to the person, they must know if they had an addiction to this material and if they were denying or hiding it, as that would help indicate the level of their suffering so that adequate help could be attained for them. These addictions often stem from and mask long-term psychological issues such as trauma and anxiety that should be managed by a professional.

Reading modern romance novels intrudes in the renewal of the mind by providing an escapism that glorifies extramarital sex and dehumanizes people by reducing them to objects of desire and mere caricatures to engage the fantasies of women. It would be important in counseling to understand why the person is reading them and why they seek escapism in something contrary to their faith. The point would not be to shame them out of reading such material, but to explain how damaging the books are to their mental and spiritual health as well as their relationships or potential relationships.

If the woman is an avid reader, there are thousands of good books to read outside of romance-focused literature. While weaning off the addictive novels may be a trial at first, the taste for good literature would hopefully take hold and replace the desire for erotic novels. A writer named Ellen Gable²⁰ has written Catholic-based novels that include information on Theology of the Body and Natural Family Planning; her books might be a good place to start. However, if the person has a compulsion for romance literature, it would not be wise to direct them to more romance literature. Instead, refocus their hobby in another direction. One may suggest free online courses in Catholic theology, or “do it yourself” crafts or other wholesome interests. There are many free courses and instructional videos available on sites such as YouTube. If there is a struggle to stop reading the novels, using Ms. Gable’s novels could be a means to wean them off the addiction. Regardless, someone with an addiction generally indicates the need for professional counseling.

This statement from Mary Healy in Men and Women are from Eden closes this discussion well:

The seemingly small choices for good or evil made by seemingly insignificant people can have immense repercussions for the future. Every single person has a crucial and irreplaceable role, the importance of which will not be revealed until the drama is played out. God calls each of us to choose the good, even at risk to ourselves. He calls us to infuse every dimension of the cultural landscape with the good news of the gospel of life- tirelessly persevering and with unshakeable confidence in the ultimate triumph of the risen Lord.²¹

Most romance novels, whether Christian or secular, do not contribute to the cultural landscape in a positive manner. They open the mind to false expectations and may lead the reader toward sin. Continued reading of romance novels may increase discontent, for they only bring fantasy and escape; they do not usher in happiness or joy in the real lives of the reader. They do not contribute to the spreading of the Gospel or the truth about mankind. These books objectify and denigrate men and women by reducing them in their literary activities and descriptions to mere husks to serve the fantasy of the reader and the monetary greed of the industry. As a regular hobby, reading these novels can be poisonous and may have detrimental effects on the lives of the readers as well as those around them. To heal this addiction, we must redirect these hobbies to something more beneficial that aligns more with Scripture. Otherwise, we risk failing marriages and shattered views of our sexuality, our spouses, and our vocation in Christ.