If you and your female companion are having problems in your relationship and she’s reading lots and lots of romance books, you might want to blame the romance books.

FYI…a healthy, happy relationship isn’t going to go on the rocks because of a bunch of romance books.  It’s just not.  In fact, a healthy, happy relationship can actually be enhanced by said romance books, but that’s not the point of this PSA.

Relationships take work, on both sides, and there is just no way around this.  My guy and I have been together for almost 21 years now-this summer will mark the 16th anniversary of our wedding and in no way has it been easy.  But we’re happy.  We take the bumpy days along with the beautiful ones and we never once forget the fact that we promised for better or worse and we never expected the I do to mean it’s all smooth sailing from here.

Marriages require work.  But a healthy, happy one isn’t going to go down the tubes because she reads. Or because he reads.  And she isn’t going to expect you turn into a strapping 6’2 dude with six pack abs, a smoldering stare, etc, etc.  Really, because we also don’t expect we’ll turn into the heroine we’re reading about.

Think about it…if you read, are you expecting to turn into whatever character you read about?  Think you’ll put down the book and your wife has suddenly presto-chango’d herself into the female de jour of the book?

Or if you play video games, are you going to turn into whatever character of your choice may be?

It’s make believe.  And it’s outright silliness to think a normal, well-adjusted woman expects anything out of a fictional book except enjoyment.

*all opinions, all mine, your opinion may vary, but I’ve yet to meet a woman who honestly thought reading a book was going to make her husband morph into Christian/Wrath/Roarke/Mr. Darcy/Romeo/etc, etc, etc

**rant inspired by comments in this piece here.