Aside from the motel out on Route 9, I’m wondering if there is a suitable place for an affair. Most people would agree that affairs are a serious subject, whether you’re talking about the neighbors, an article in the New York Times or an author’s next book. Extracurricular sex is an emotion-filled event regardless of which side of the bed you fall—betrayer or the betrayed.
A recent piece in the New York Times handles the topic of sex outside a marriage from both an analytical and emotional perspective. The article delves deep into the affair of a woman named Cynthia, her reasons for the affair (read great sex here) and the subsequent trauma of what occurs when her lover drops dead quite unexpectedly. The article goes on to offer well-honed wisdom and ultimately a happy ending for Cynthia and her husband, who we learn knew of the affair all along. The story is neatly packaged, making for an engaging read. Having never had an affair, I read the article as an interested bystander. As a romance writer, I was enthralled on a completely different level.
The article distracted me with its various plot points: 1) If Cynthia’s lover hadn’t dropped dead, how might the affair have resolved? 2) I did think the whole premise of the NYT article made for a great novel. 3) You could never use said premise in a true romance novel—not “as is.” While affairs are tough to navigate in real life, they may be even trickier for the romance writer. Let me explain:
In recent years much of what constitutes a traditional love story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and so on… has become more malleable. Bad boys make for the best heroes, and if there’s a little prison time involved, so much the better. Heroines had better be sharp thinkers, seriously employed with their own businesses, if possible. If there’s rescuing to be done, both parties must stand at the precipice of peril and share equally in the saving. Welcome and long live the rules of modern romance.
What hasn’t changed and isn’t salable to readers is a down and dirty affair. This isn’t an affair of extenuating circumstance—the one where the character of the husband is a monster. Such a tired storyline would, of course, give the reader ample room for justification and sympathy. But I’d like to think those easy-peasy plotlines have gone the way of dime-store novels. Readers are savvier—they simply expect more from their love story.
So the question becomes, can a romance writer create a likable, engaging novel based on an everyday affair? What if the husband were just boring? What if the couple had simply grown apart? How about if the woman met a man and found herself saying, “Uh oh, here’s the right guy. The one I’m not married to…” They’re all relatable themes. But I don’t know that you can ever get readers to root for the couple born out of these circumstances.
Add to this a sexual component. A real life affair, like Cynthia’s, was all about great sex. What happens to the same steamy page-turning love scene when cheaters are cast? My guess is it disintegrates faster than an after-sex cigarette. What works between the sheets for beloved characters, likely ends up on a bed of nails when the motivation is less than honorable.
The truth is readers want to fall in love with your characters. They want to root for the positive romance. I suspect there’s no place for Cynthias of the real world in romance novels—not unless it turns out that her husband accidently bumps into his high school sweetheart, just as Cynthia simultaneously gets hit by a bus. For as much as the romance novel has evolved—and I believe it has—readers still want their love stories to come with unchallengeable happy endings.
