AITA?: Questioning My Hatred for Romance’s Most-Despised Trope
I’ve taken a long hard look in the mirror and decided I’ll no longer say that I wholesale hate one of the most, if not the most, despised tropes in romance. You know the one I’m talking about. We all love to hate it:
Miscommunication
I first started questioning my hatred about two years ago when I read and loved a book featuring lack of communication as a major plot point—Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez. I laughed and cried and I wondered to myself, why do I get so frustrated with this trope? The miscommunication, insecurities, jealousy and short-lived secrets were excruciating as a reader, but both characters had undergone recent heartbreak and were tender. Abby made me believe that Bri and Jacob had reasons to fear openness and withhold parts of themselves.
As I questioned my dislike for the plot device, it also occurred to me, “if this were television, I would wait seasons and not be as annoyed as I am in books.” I probably can’t count how many episodes I wanted to shake Jim Halpert and tell him, “just tell Pam how you feel!” But the wait made PB+J’s final union on The Office all the sweeter.
I’ve read several books recently that feel like a case-study in miscommunication. Some of you are wondering, give me a list so I can avoid those, please. I can sympathize.
But I’ve also started to give much more grace to fictional characters and the authors who write them. It’s like one day I woke up and thought, wait, am I the a**hole, here?
Because do I really think I’m better than these characters?
When I’m troubled by fear, trauma, rejection, or grief, do I not also avoid, hide, overreact, underreact, fight, flee, fawn, freeze, and even lie depending on the situation? Do I always communicate clearly? Do I always come to relationships (even my longest-held, most-cherished) with vulnerability and honesty?
I think the issue with romance novels is I often get a bird’s eye view, especially with first-person perspective and dual point-of-view. I’m getting to read the characters’ inner monologues and I want to shout at them to speak up, to take a risk, to jump in.
But I don’t have a bird’s eye view of my own life; when I’m in it, I can be downright awful at confrontation, at speaking my mind, at healthy, mature communication.
Of course, there’s nuance to my reformed opinion on this trope. The length of time characters withhold secrets or lie, their motivations for doing so, and the author’s ability to make the plot believable are all factors. But overall I’m trying to get to place where I don’t expect a lot more from fictional characters than I do from myself.
Vulnerability is scary. Communication is hard and uncomfortable sometimes. I want characters to be braver, less insecure, and more open to receiving love. But you know, what? I want that for myself, too. So I’m choosing to offer a little more empathy than judgment to the characters who miscommunicate from now on while also choosing to offer myself the same.
