Why do we love our romances with male leads who are bad, broken, possessive, and, frankly, out of control? This may come as a shocker, but women gravitate towards these bad boys, and I think it has a lot to do with it being fantasy and not real life. Maybe it’s the drama that keeps us intrigued or the mystery, but we can’t seem to get away from these book boyfriends. It’s definitely a toxic relationship.
But why is that? We, as women, talk about how we want emotional maturity, sensitivity, compassion, and kindness in men, and yet, the romance books that are topping the best seller lists aren’t exactly delivering those kinds of dudes. Let’s be honest, we have no problem reading our smut with these kinds of guys torturing the female leads and somehow finding redemption later on — we just don’t want these men in real life. We love the drama as long as it’s not us.
The funny thing is, I’ve read stories with emotionally available men who are cute and sweet and funny. But these guys are somehow the third wheel in the stories, or the writer has them do something completely out of character to make the reader second guess everything or hate them altogether. It’s almost like the writer started writing a guy the main female could really vibe with over their true main male lead, and decided they had to make this second guy do something so despicable that the reader is back in the arms of the toxic lover once again.
Too bad. They could’ve been marriage goals.
Either way, there are two kinds of broken male leads — the ones who are made into an unwilling hero and the ones who never grow up. A lot of times, any redemption arc they may have feels forced or rushed. This especially happens in the newer dark romances that I’ve read. It’s always the same emotional turmoil with the heroines as well. They love the way the guy makes them feel, especially during those intimate moments — lust, essentially –not about whether this dude is going to be a good partner in the long run. To be honest, I wish there a dating show with fictional romance characters to see if the relationship would make it past the ending the of the book.
Sometimes I finish a story and bet on how long they’d make it because it would never last in the real world.
Personally, I read stories with characters like this for the drama, but even then it can be too much. There’s only so much of “I can fix him” I can take before it starts getting repetitive with the same mistakes. You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again. Some of these female characters are saints for how much crap they put up with from the male.
I think this is why a lot of my books feature healthier relationships with men who are more mature in certain situations. Don’t get me wrong. My books have some problematic men, but they’re typically the villains, not the lovers. Quite different. It’s like we’ve blurred those lines in dark romances recently, and I wonder if that can be harmful to impressionable women. Teenagers read a lot of romance as much as parents would like to think otherwise. Are our books setting examples for them? Are we attributing to the delusion that if you love a man enough, even through all his red flags, he’ll change? I’m not saying we need to censor what we write because a teen might pick up our books at a flea market, but I do wonder if we should do better.
These are simply thoughts, but what do you think? Should we finally give the charming, sweet guys a chance?
Author Lauren Eason 