Despite my stories reflecting the fleshy fruits of my vivid imagination, they are populated by characters who reflect most flesh-and-blood people roaming the earth. The situations that occur between the pages of my novels arise out of interpersonal interactions between those characters. And those interactions aren't always ideal. My characters experience miscommunication and misunderstanding and sometimes drift to the edge of irreparable relationship ruin. Sound familiar?
In fact, fiction novels MUST contain conflict. And conflict occurs when two individuals in a relationship (in my case, romantic relationship) can't see eye-to-eye about something that they both value very highly. This is very apparent in The Right and Left Hands of Love. The dispute between Will (Boone) and Chris is so acute that it appears they're never going to resolve it. And--what did I do in the midst of their quarrel?--I took away their phones!!
Intelligent and mature people who can examine their desires, their motives, and their contributions to conflict (that is, people like you and me who have the ability to be introspective) can resolve disputes in their interpersonal and romantic relationships by using that introspection to sort out the ways they're causing the dissension. It takes two to tango, remember? And, despite popular opinion, it is never just one partner's fault when conflict arises and especially when it worsens.
That's not to say that one of the partners can abuse the other and spread the blame for the treatment equally between them. Abuse of any kind is a different animal. And it IS just one partner's fault. Don't ever go there. Those relationships aren't meant to last.
Did I use the phrase "intelligent and mature" above? Why do you suppose romantic fiction novels have happy endings? Because the two principal characters figure out their own fault in the conflict and they do what needs to be done to bridge the relationship gap and put it back on course.
It isn't rocket science.
If people invented in a writer's mind can achieve happy and thriving romantic relationships, I sure don't see why WE can't. Find a mature and intelligent person and ask them how their fifty-year marriage lasted as long as it did. They'll tell you it wasn't easy. There were angry words. There were tears. There were a lot of rocks on the relationship road. The key to their success was knowing that they valued the life they shared with their partner more than everything else and there was no conflict when it came to making it last.
Romance novels are microcosms of the real world. If they can end happy, what's stopping us?
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