Romance Novels WTF

<p><strong>A thoughtful discussion about relationships in today's world. We consider how expectations around romance and marriage have changed over time, and the importance of shared purpose within a partnership.</strong></p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> [00:00:00] pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.</p><p>Yeah. Apparently no.</p><p>Would you like to know more?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> We were having a conversation this morning in the car and Simone has telling me, she's like, Oh, well there, there's this amazing thing where it turns out I can get these popular romance books for free. And so I listened to them to go to bed every night.</p><p>Nothing puts you to sleep like a romance novel. But you have to stop listening to them all after a certain point. Go into this because I found this fascinating and telling about modern society. Yeah. So not all romance novels end with like the will they part, you know, where like the couple finally forms and comes together.</p><p>And like, sometimes there, there are periods at which couples do like start becoming couple ish way earlier in the [00:01:00] novel. And the problem that I have when this happens is that I can't know the books after that. Like in the beginning, it's fun because you're like, well, what's going to happen? I mean, you know what's going to happen, but what's going to happen?</p><p>How is it going to happen? Oh, these people are driving each other crazy. The tension is so fun. But once it does happen, it becomes intolerable and I think the reason why is suddenly it's basically all about toxic relationships. It's all about drama. It's about one person you know, lying to the other.</p><p>It's about tension. It's about breaking up after that point or someone's not being faithful. More than that, I think when you were describing it to me this morning. You were like, it keeps focusing on the interdynamics of their relationship. Yeah, like even when it's pleasant, yeah. Instead of immediately switching, they get in a relationship and then they say, Oh, now you're a couple.</p><p>Now what are you going to achieve together? Which should [00:02:00] be, yeah. And it's interesting that you have this different framing of, okay, well, once you've sorted out the partner thing, Then you focus on what you're going to do with that person, right? Like that should be the point. And I think what this says about larger society is that people have a totally messed up perception of what relationships are all about, as is indicated by romance novels, which is to say that relationships are all about how you feel and how your partner feels.</p><p>And. you know, after you get in a relationship, it's either about how, how in love you are and how you do all these things for each other and how, Oh my gosh, how romantic it is. And you're all, it's all pleasure all the time and amazing. Or it's about, Oh, he's not listening to me enough. You know, Oh, this tension, or I have to lie to him about this, or he's lying to me about something.</p><p>So it's all about feelings, feelings, feelings, all feelings, feelings, feelings. And it's not at all about. Yeah. I mean, the whole point of becoming a couple is you, you, you then as a unit can achieve more than you would ever achieve by yourself. And also your [00:03:00] partner can help you become a better person.</p><p>Now, sometimes that transformation takes place during the courting process. And these books were like, you know, the, the, the protagonists will change and become better people over time, or they'll help one person become a better person. But like once they become together, yeah, it just like everything falls apart.</p><p>And I don't know why a woman would want to get in a relationship like or get married in the first place if she assumed that that was what was on the other end, just like, you know, making each other feel good, which I actually see a lot of relationships like this. And I think a lot of relationship breakdown is the misunderstanding.</p><p>And I think it comes from women more than men, potentially due to engaging in these sort of books and stuff. Yeah, the societal norms that these books are establishing. That once you're married, you're a single unit. You are basically a single person from that point on. You know, one of the things that you sometimes do when you like to piss off regressives, is you call yourself...</p><p>Mrs. Malcolm James Collins. Yeah, because that's the traditional way of doing it. [00:04:00] And the reason for that is because when people got married, they became a single unit, a single entity. They're, they're no longer with the question about how do we get along with each other? It became, okay, what are we going to do?</p><p>Like, how are we going to change the world? What do we need to do for our family? And that many hard cultures are more traditional cultures still understand this. Of course, all of them have been eaten around at the edges, like. As we say, cultures start hard and then society and the world sort of acts like acid, like softening them and softening them.</p><p>So you'll see bits where they begin to change and have this more romance perspective of relationships where after the relationship starts, then the question is, how does this person make me feel? Right. And the quality of the relationship is judged by the feeling this creates in the other person, and then they need to make those feelings and the oscillation of those feelings a constant game, right? Because it's about, okay, how can I masturbate this instinct? How can my partner masturbate this instinct?</p><p>How can they ensure that I am feeling [00:05:00] whatever, content with myself, loved, cared for, paid attention to, protected yeah. So marriages became completely within this context completely about how the other person makes you feel.</p><p>Mm-Hmm. . And of course when you're focused on that, then you create challenges around that in the marriage. Mm-Hmm. when, how you feel is irrelevant to the marriage. Largely speaking, when the marriage is about what you can accomplish together, there are still ways a marriage can fail or begin to feel like it's failing.</p><p>Like Simone and I. When we have a crisis in our marriage, it's like, we're being very unproductive this year. Yeah, it's always like, whether or not we're achieving our shared goals, it's not about like, how do you make me feel? Or your work output. I'm like, your work output has gone down significantly recently, Simone.</p><p>We need to talk about this. But then it's typically an action oriented conversation. It's how do we improve your work output? Yeah. And what's interesting is I went to Amazon and I looked up the like five top five bestselling [00:06:00] romance novels at this time. And even one of them was about a, an already married couple that.</p><p>Came into marriage trouble because the husband specifically had become so focused on making his business work That he I guess like stopped paying so much attention to his wife who in turn had Made many sacrifices to help the business grow as well that is to say like she went for it like she helped him build up his business and went to networking events To help him.</p><p>And then she felt like she was being neglected. And so she like walks out on him and like the book is pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.</p><p>Yeah. Apparently no. So like the one, so when you look at, for example, all the top five best selling Romans. Books on Amazon right now the one common theme among all of them is that [00:07:00] the men are just like insanely in love with. The women, like period that's like, and like, Oh, like they can do no wrong.</p><p>They're in love with them. Like in many of these women have many problematic elements, but still like the men are just like, that's, that's the theme, but I think that's a very common issue or common theme in both male and female porn is that like the, the partner of the other gender, the fantasy partner is super, super into you.</p><p>That is to say your, your insert into the Mary Jane or whatever they call the man version of that. And it was, it was just so weird to read about like these, these book reviews about, Oh, like good for her for walking out, you know, after he neglected her. And I'm like, wait, sorry. I'm wait, they built. a business together and are now billionaires.</p><p>And she feels like he puts too much time into the work that they've jointly worked really hard to what, hold on. But [00:08:00] also like, I know this happens. I know this happens. You know, there's plenty of real life stories of wives being like, Oh, you put too much time into work. What about me? And like, it's, it's very strange.</p><p>I'll tell you what one of my pet peeves is when women do this. Who are homemakers and they have like less than four kids. Yeah. If you have like two kids or three kids and I've seen, you know, in our personal life, we've seen women who have like only like two kids or three kids and they have full time childcare and they're still like, why isn't my husband?</p><p>Spending enough time with me. It's like, of course you're living a life of ennui. You're doing nothing. And can't you like make some other friends? Like part of me is also like, does it, does it have to be your husband? I mean, like, yeah, sure. He's probably great. No, I mean, a person who lives that pointless of an existence, if they had one role, which was childcare and they have now outsourced that role you know, of course they're going to feel, but I think, you know, that's, that's actually, maybe that's another theme of these [00:09:00] books is that these women.</p><p>are inherently special to these men. In many cases, they are inept. They are not, they are inexperienced. They are not particularly smart. In many cases, they're like actively defective in some way, but the men love them anyway. So I think there's also this kind of expectation that you as a woman can, can be useless, but still come into a relationship and be idolized and worshipped.</p><p>With no merit, like, I just, I mean, how are people ever going to end up in relationships now? Like if these are the... The fantasies that women are enjoying, I, I don't, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Well, I mean, it's, it's hard. So, so one of the things we'd say is if we live in a fallen world, it is difficult, very difficult to secure a good partner in this environment, which is why you need to be willing to make compromises.</p><p>You know, we did the other video, you're not going to find a wife. One of the things we mean with this is [00:10:00] I believe that. Not everyone can be successful in this current market. Certainly not. But many more people can be successful than are successful by increasing the parameters of the women that they are considering both geographically, you know, looking at women in other geographics and looks wise.</p><p>I'm like, you, you typically need to compromise on. Multiple things. If you're going to find, well, so ironically, ironically, the male leads in these books actually represent what real high value men need to be doing, which is like getting these pathetic women and like falling in love with them. I'm just saying, something can also be read from these.</p><p>It's that women like this feeling. And then this is something that I think the red pill gets really wrong. When you are trying to secure a woman for just Sex you know, coming on too strong can really turn them away. Like, like coming on too dedicated or anything like that, that can turn them away.</p><p>Absolutely. But when you have a woman who you are married [00:11:00] to in, in a longterm relationship with, they actually do want that. They do want you constantly telling them they're the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Constantly reinforcement. You're the most beautiful woman in the room. Constantly telling them how lucky you feel to be married.</p><p>That's one of the reasons why I can't. novels. Once it gets to that stage. Cause I'm like, you know, but don't I do that to you? Or do I not? You do also vomit in my mouth when you do it for me. I mean, it's, it's so sweet. I just also feel guilty because one, I have oversaturated you with appreciation so that when you see it in other environments, you're like, yeah, I, yeah, it's I feel, I feel, you know, conflict, but I do think that that is the correct thing to do.</p><p>And it does also the standard. that women expect. Well, but here's where you, where you don't fit the norm, which is that like, even though these women constantly fail, these men forgive them. These women are productive. The men love them anyway. Like if I stopped being productive, you'd be like, so when are you [00:12:00] leaving?</p><p>Like. When can you? I know I would come to you like one of those bosses, which is like, we need to talk about your productivity. Oh no. You would Elon Musk me, right? You would say, if you were my employee, I'd fire you. No, no, no. I wouldn't do that. But I would come to you and I would give you a productivity plan where I'd be like, okay, you have this long to increase your productivity back up to these numbers.</p><p>And we'll move forward from there. That never happens in these romance novels. That never happens in I value you as a person, but I just don't value people that much. So let's talk hard numbers here. Why, why aren't you bringing in as much as you used to? What did surprise me? And you know, this is actually something we haven't talked about the podcast, but we do talk about in the pragmatist guide to sexuality and relationships, I think is what romance novels.</p><p>Do you indicate about what women find to be really attractive? And I think what's telling and interesting is how this shows up differently in the top [00:13:00] five bestselling romance novels on Amazon today. So the common themes, as I'm sure you remember from the book is the man is wealthy, he is powerful and he's high status, right?</p><p>Like that's. It doesn't matter if he's good or evil. And this very much shows up in all the top five books. So one of the top five books basically the female ends up being the nanny for a pro baseball player for his baby son. For like a, for a summer period or like some short period of year. But of course, like they fall in love during that.</p><p>And there's a tension of like, Oh, she's planning on leaving, but like, what will happen? Obviously we know. Then the other one a woman finds herself forced into marriage with a mob boss. But it turns out that he's really nice to her. Oh there's another one in which a woman has a terrible breakup and then ends up living in the house of her best friend's brother.</p><p>And they pretend to be dating to like get people in their lives off their backs, either about having kids or just being in a relationship. But then, Oh, but, but they start to fall in love. But then the girl [00:14:00] has self esteem issues, but he just worships her. And then another one and this is interesting in that it's somewhat deviates from, Oh, I should have mentioned that the, the brother, the best friend's brother lives in a mansion and is like a millionaire, of course, then there's the one with the marriage falling apart that I told you about.</p><p>There's another one where. This like local town war hero or something again, enters a farce to pretend that he's dating a girl who is from the wrong side of the tracks and not respected as part of a bet. And of course they fall in love with during that, but of course he's like the top guy in the community, even if he's not super wealthy.</p><p>The final one, which is interesting is the, the, the man in question is a. Vigilante who goes after like sex traffickers and evil people and like secretly wants to overthrow the US government, but then becomes obsessed with the female lead and stalks her against her will. So it's definitely more of a, like, non con kind of romance, but I, I'm assuming that they signal his dominance and [00:15:00] capability in his competence as a.</p><p>Vigilante. So he's like scary, but competent, like maybe he falls more into like the mob boss kind of category. Like he's bad, but he's also very good. But I do think that it's, it's important for people to be aware of like, what actually is attractive. 1 being seen as attractive by the male interest. And 2.</p><p>By the male interest being powerful in some way, but it doesn't have to only be money. It doesn't have to only be status. He doesn't have to be the perfect golden boy war hero, but he can be. He doesn't have to be the scary vigilante, but he can be. He doesn't have to be a mob boss, but he can be. He doesn't have to be the billionaire, but he can be.</p><p>You have to be like something. And I think it shows that like two guys, like if I guess if you want to like romance novel, hack your life as a guy, although you're ending up with this vapid feelings based relationship, which I very much don't appreciate. Is you have to find some field that you can be the best in and be the best in it.</p><p>So maybe you're the best, like gamer, maybe you're the best, like finance analyst nerd. But you have to be [00:16:00] like the best. And then you have to show like extreme levels of attraction to and devotion to the woman. But in a way where like. But I mean, this is probably not a good idea. This is catching a woman who's optimizing for a spouse around the feelings that it provides her instead of the productivity boost it gives her and the ability to achieve her goals that it gives her.</p><p>Or, and I think really the ideal spouse, and this is something we see in our society, a lot is, is you're choosing the person with women to men who inspires you the most. I think a lot of women, you know, I, I work with a lot of younger women, right? Like Gen Z women and stuff like that. And the common trait I'm seeing in what they want is they don't know what they want to dedicate their lives to yet.</p><p>They're sort of like. I want to find somebody who is dedicated their life to say, yeah, I'll just hitch my horse to that wagon. [00:17:00] Right. But that's what they're really looking for in a partner. And I say, this is like the highest tier, highest quality woman that you're going to find, which is a woman who's really looking.</p><p>For an inspiration that they can hitch their wagon to and work towards every day. Because when I talk to Gen Z guys, they often have some like, or at least worthwhile Gen Z guys, some inspiration. They already care about some goal that they're aiming towards. And they're like, yeah, this is what my life is about.</p><p>Whereas with women, it's often much more vague. And I think this is why women more broadly. When they don't find a guy that they can hitch their wagon to, they end up hitching their wagon to like mainstream societal causes that are sort of very vanilla, like the environment or something. Or yoga. Oh my God.</p><p>How many yoga girlfriends have we heard about from high performing men? Yes. Would you say just never date a yoga girlfriend? Yeah. Don't date. Yeah. If that's, if that's her thing, like I don't care if she does it for like flexibility and [00:18:00] balance. Fantastic. You know, I'm sure it'll make her great in bed, but like, Not a fitzer thing.</p><p>Not if she identifies with it. Oh god. No like big red flag. Yeah Well, and I'd say that some things that people might think red flags might not be like you were a vegan when I met you Not vegan, vegetarian. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm never giving up cheese. Gee whiz You were a vegetarian when I met you and I can think a lot of guys would be like, oh, that's a big red flag It's like, no women, when they're looking for something to dedicate themselves to, they'll choose a lot of like vague societally approved things until they meet somebody who inspires them.</p><p>Like, like really high quality women. And these are the women who are meeting you because they're interested in what you're interested in or they're interested in the, like, like the way that you were able to think and why it's important. And why it's worth dedicating oneself to much more than they're looking for somebody who masturbates a set of emotional feelings.</p><p>And any woman, I mean, I think one thing we see in these books and in society more broadly, [00:19:00] you can think, oh, I've done this great thing for my wife by masturbating, You know, making it so that she's a stay at home woman and she has full time childcare. I'd say that most people, as soon as you've done that, you've destroyed your marriage.</p><p>That's doing the wife a severe disservice. That's like a one way ticket to depression. Yeah. She now has nothing she's doing all day, every day, except finding problems in her life. Now, do you think a lack of meaning is going to make your life happier? Yeah. That's why women cheat. That's why they have the time to cheat.</p><p>Like people might like insinuate. I love somebody in the comments insinuating. You might like. Be cheating on me or something. She doesn't have the time. Like there, there, it is not feasible. It is, it is, it is infeasible given the way that we work in the ways that we spend time on. So yeah. And also the fact that I find everyone else disgusting.</p><p>Well, I know that I'm just talking about logistic feasibility. Yeah. But if you've left your wife at home all day and you've given her full time, what else is she supposed to do? Well, especially [00:20:00] if she lives for the feelings and that's the thing is, is, you know, if you have a wife, you live for nothing else.</p><p>If you have no purpose in life. And I, I think that this also when we're talking about, because we've talked about it from a, I think a more secular perspective, like, like a cause that you care about or something like that. But if you're from like a hard religious tradition, what does this mean? It means that, That every day within your relationship, you're saying, what is serving God best?</p><p>Okay. You, you, you do not ask, how do I make my partner feel? You know, you can be like, well, God cares about my feelings. God does not care about your feelings. Okay. He's got a much bigger s**t going on in the world today. Right now. You should be asking yourself, what does he want for this world? And how can you increase.</p><p>That through the way that you're working together in your marriage, and as soon as you stop caring about the feelings, it's much easier for them to just naturally maximize themselves. As we talked about in other videos. Absolutely. Yeah.</p><p>So what else can we take [00:21:00] away from this? I, I guess we're, if we don't want our, our daughters reading romance novels and normalizing that this is what a desirable relationship is, or this is what romance is, where can we send them? I mean, I, I guess we have internally like our own canon or like movies that we want our kids to all watch together like as a family and talk about because we think that they set good examples.</p><p>But I mean, are there any good examples of a a couple that does actually come together and work on something other than selfish means? Team Rocket. But they're the villains, Malcolm, no one... So, so, this is actually interesting. I and, and I think we talked about this in another podcast. Most healthy relationships.</p><p>Oh, Morticia. Oh no, but they really care about each other's feelings or in some other way seen as what's the word I'm looking for here? Like transgressive. Yeah. But even, even Gomez and Morticia are romantic in that traditional way of being like, You know, [00:22:00] steamy romance and love and dancing, but if you, when you, and you'll notice this immediate, you'll be like, oh, that's a good couple.</p><p>Typically good couples are villains or in some other way coded as transgressive because being a couple that's focused on a mission and that is happy is in many ways, inherently transgressive of the value set that progressive society is giving to women. It, it needs to tell them that this isn't possible because it is not possible within a progressive optimization function.</p><p>It is not possible within a progressive optimization function because the progressive optimization function is hedonistic at its core. It's do whatever you want to feel good about yourself. And that always leads to conflict in relationship because each individual isn't working towards some larger goal, they're working towards themselves.</p><p>And so that always leads progressive relationships to break down. And so that is why this, this beast in our society must tell people you cannot be happy. In this [00:23:00] way, you, you, you are going to have this conflict because any relationship based on that progressive societal model is going to have that conflict.</p><p>And that's the really sad thing about this urban monoculture in our society. Is it the core thing that it's offering people saying, Oh, you can be happy all the time. You just do whatever you want. Don't worry. Like we will support you identify however you want. We will support you be whoever you want. We will support you.</p><p>But sadly, like when you look at something like a marriage, this structurally leads both people to be systemically less happy than they would be if they had lived for a higher purpose. And that is really fascinating and, and kind of sad. It's kind of sad that so many people in our society have opted into those relationships and feel this deep ennui and this deep unhappiness and their lives and their relationships have become about how they make each other feel.</p><p>Yeah. Well, I love you, Simone. I'm happy. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, the [00:24:00] Dungeons and Dragons movie, except they weren't a couple, but like the, the two surrogate parents in the Dungeons and Dragons movie. Yeah, but they weren't married. I know, but it's the closest I can come to a relationship that endures over the years where they have a kid and they both are working toward larger things.</p><p>And not each other's feelings. They're also a lot like, like a modern relationship in that they don't, they're not exclusive, you know, like whatever. Not our relationship. I don't know if that's, we, we've talked about this in other videos. I don't know if that is long-term functional. There's some people experimenting with it now.</p><p>Yeah. And it may work out, it may not actually. Funny, I think the best hope of a durable polyamorous culture is the one that Tate is pioneering with his brother and their Oh, the industrial model they have going on. Yeah, it's interesting. All the Tater Tots running around. Tater Tots? I hope that they call them that, the Tater Tots.</p><p>How could they not call them the Tater Tots? They obviously call them the Tater Tots, clearly. I'm insulted if they [00:25:00] don't. I, I, yeah, yeah. You are lovely, Sinon. I love you, Malcolm. I'm glad that, you know, we're happy with our relationship. So keep that going, please.</p> <br /><br />This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe</a>