Romance, Lust, and Marriage

Today, we’re used to the idea that people should marry for romantic reasons and that if you’re in love with someone, you will sooner or later also want to have sex with them and you will eventually want to marry them. Romance, lust, and marriage belong together to a degree. They are, however, three different kinds of relationships. The romantic relationship is different from the erotic relationship and both are different from the social relationship (which is marriage, of course). What does that mean for you as a writer?

Take romantic relationships and let’s take a look at the relationship of Guinevere and Lancelot in Arthurian legends. As long as their relationship was only romantic, everything was fine. At the time at which the first version of the legends was written down, knights were expected to have a romantic relationship with a high-born lady (who often was married already) and dedicate their fights to her, at least in fiction. They’d sing her praise - if they were able to, that is - and they’d sometimes be allowed to carry a handkerchief or other little memento of her with them during their adventures. Lancelot confessing romantic feelings for Guinevere in court, even with her husband present, was perfectly fine and allowed - it even was a compliment to Arthur and Guinevere, because the women who were worshipped that way were considered pure and perfect.

The problem in Arthurian legends comes when they cross the border into another kind of relationship: the erotic one. Sex with the high-born lady one worshipped was not allowed. Guinevere ‘lowering’ herself to a sexual relationship with Lancelot was what made them both cheaters.

On the other hand, it has been considered perfectly fine for men (especially high-ranking ones) to have a sexual relationship outside of marriage, either long- or short-term. They could have a mistress or several, as long as they could afford it. Alternatively, or at the same time, they could also see a prostitute whenever they felt like it. Sex was something which wasn’t necessarily connected to marriage, either. A couple needed offspring, an heir at least, but where else the husband spent his seed (and where else the wife might find solace and fun, if discreetly so) didn’t matter.

In modern times, we still have the idea of ‘friends with benefits’ - of two people in another kind of relationship than a social or romantic one who can occasionally have sex with each other.

Marriage has been an affair to be arranged for a long time - right into the twentieth century, as it were. For an arranged marriage, the feelings of the two people involved didn’t play a role. As today with matchmaking businesses, there often were professional or semi-professional agents involved who found good matches for a marriage, even if the idea of a ‘good match’ was a different one. For farmers, that might mean the daughter of a neighbouring farmer who’d bring along a field or two in close proximity to the ones of farmer looking for a daughter-in-law or a wife. For a merchant, it might mean the daughter of another merchant who had connections to a different area of the world. For a nobleman, politics often played a role in the choice - ensuring peace, enlarging the own area, getting a few steps closer to the throne.

For a long time, marriage was a matter of finances and social standing, not of love as a such. That’s not bad per se, though. Many arranged marriages worked out well enough, because the two people entering that marriage knew what they were in for. There was no love between them, but respect can grow, nevertheless. They were living together, raising children, making memories. Instead of love and/or lust, there was familiarity and the acceptance of society. That can be enough, provided nothing more is expected - and for a long time, nothing more was expected.

For a writer, that means that not every relationship between two people must have all three components: romance, lust, and marriage. A romantic relationship which never translates in anything else is fine. Two friends who go on adventures together and sometimes spend the night with each other, too, can be a great story. A marriage which was arranged and within which a couple develops a mutual respect and faces all problems of life can make for a good story as well. It’s all a question of what you want to show, what you want to write about.

At the same time, it also doesn’t mean you need to have a romantic relationship in every story you write. Personally, I feel like a lot of stories, especially in action movies, have a romance tacked on as a sub-plot, just because either the script writer, the director, or the producers feel that every story needs that romance sub-plot, not because it makes any sense within the story. Not every action hero needs to have a girlfriend in the end. Not every female lead needs to be matched up with the male one by the time the credits roll.

Also, don’t get me started on the whole ‘will they, won’t they’ subject. It’s not so much a problem for movies or standalone novels, because they only have a limited time to spend on the relationship, but it’s a huge problem with series, no matter whether it’s TV series or novel series (or serialised novels, but those aren’t quite that common any longer). At some point, you have to owe up to the ‘will they, won’t they’ and in quite some cases, that point could have come much earlier, because it was quite obvious from the beginning. Instead, you could give them one type of relationship at the beginning and then see them move into another one during the series. Imagine starting a series with two people getting into an arranged marriage, only to have them find that they also start to fall in love with each other over time. Only here, it’s not within one story, it’s within a long series of stories during which their relationship is not the main point, but political intrigues or strange mysteries may be.

Back to the three types of relationships, though. It often helps to have an eye on the past to see whether or not all three types have to be present at all times. They don’t have to be, as I pointed out above. Even while the audience expects it today, that doesn’t mean you have to cater to that expectation. Sometimes, not doing so makes a much better story, after all. Be brave - dare to write relationships you find interesting, even if they’re not the common type.