Selfish Love And The Big Misunderstanding

I want to elaborate on the theme I touched upon in my previous blog – the idea of selfish love. It is often said that there are two sides to every story, and it could similarly be said that there are two sides to every romantic relationship. That’s what makes writing romance novels so interesting. Look at any piece of romantic fiction and you will find situations where a female character sees something in a certain way while her male love interest has a completely different point of view. It’s all about how individuals uniquely interpret the facts of a situation.

Often in romance novels authors will engineer a deliberate misunderstanding (aka The Big Misunderstanding) to give their story a twist, but a clever author need never rely on a contrived and trumped-up misunderstanding as a plot device – rather there are numerous natural misunderstandings that happen between members of the opposite sex all the time which could be utilised to drive the story forward, and these are often a result of characters interpreting situations purely from their own perspectives.

Let me illustrate this point by attaching a section from my second novel Lord Fenmore’s Wager:

“From that moment on, Diana’s evening seemed to deteriorate. Quite a few gentlemen asked her to dance with them as the evening progressed but the one man, whom she really wished would notice her, didn’t. She had hoped—foolishly she supposed—that the Earl would ask her to stand up with him, but he failed to approach her. And what made it infinitely worse was that he had asked his cousin Gertrude to dance! She knew that he was probably obligated to ask Gertrude to dance—it would seem odd to the assembled company if he ignored his cousin—however this reasoning did not succeed in suppressing the ache in her heart when she thought of the way in which the Earl had favoured his cousin, whom she knew he held in low esteem, over herself. It showed how little he must think of her.

What Diana didn’t realise, however, was that the Earl’s behaviour actually indicated how much he thought of her. When he had seen her dancing with the Vicar, he’d felt a strong desire to walk across the room, pull her into his arms, and declare to the world that she was his. He’d resisted the urge to do so, but had discerned uncomfortably—and grimly—that the strong emotion holding him in its grip was jealousy. And he had no desire to feel jealous. He had no desire to feel anything at all for Diana Hamilton, and the realisation, suddenly, that he did feel something for her—something rather more than physical attraction— disturbed him deeply. To the point that he decided that the best way for him to put her from his mind was to avoid her completely until she left Fenmore on Monday. Once she was no longer living in his home, it would be easier for him to forget his unfortunate infatuation with her. Because that was all it was, he was convinced. An infatuation. Not love—never love. Only fools believed in that deceptive emotion.”

As an author, you are constantly trying to understand your characters. This might sound silly as it could be argued that once you’ve created a character you should understand your own creation. But this isn’t necessarily the case… In the current book I’m writing I’ve created a male character that I don’t understand all that well. He started off in my mind in one way, but when I tried to develop him further, I began to have doubts as to what motivated him, and I had to go back to the drawing board (or in this instance the writing pad), and reassess my portrayal of him.

Authors are forced by their art to learn the skill of putting themselves into the shoes of others. That’s why writing creatively can be so draining – you’re creating a separate reality for each character in your book and in order for your story to pull at the reader’s heart-strings and come across as authentic, each character’s reality has to be convincing.

However, no matter how draining it is, I infinitely appreciate how writing has trained me to see real-life situations in a more objective way. Of course it’s possible to attempt to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and still horribly misunderstand their perspective, but at least trying to understand someone else’s viewpoint (even if you don’t succeed every time) is an incredibly important skill to learn if you’re intent on building happy relationships with people.

The idea of selfish love – where you believe that your desires are naturally the desires of other people – is a trap that everyone falls into at some point or other, I imagine. But once you realise that your dream date (a candle-lit dinner with romantic music in the background) could be completely different from your partner’s dream date (going on a day-long hiking trip in the mountains) that’s when the fun can begin as you put yourself in shoes you never expected to be wearing (hiking boots instead of high heels!) and set off on a journey of exploration.

Read The Dashing Debutante, Lord Fenmore’s Wager and Send and Receive