Love & Books Redux: Part 2

8th February, 2010 2 Comments

As I re-read all the original Love & Books posts, a theme began to emerge that I discussed in Redux Part 1.  It’s not the act of reading or the books themselves that attract us to other people, but what the books say about them and their world view and whether or not that image fits with the values of the viewer.  We judge them based on our own experiences and beliefs, which for readers are often developed through books.  In the original Love & Books post “Judge The One You’re With” I wrote:

Possibly one of the reasons we judge people based on the books we read is that we recognize how books have shaped our perceptions of the world.  Similar to the way romantic comedies slightly color how women hope to have their own “meet-cute,” books can do the same, and not just in regard to meeting the love of our lives.  We change our eating habits, our politics, our fascination with slugs, and so on because we have a relationship with the books as well as with a gamut of emotions that are manipulated by the words on the page. 

Recently, I began reading the site Ophelia’s Webb thanks to a guest series titled “All You Need.”  Each writer takes a stab at exploring what love is to them.  Carlos Miceli explored the idea of what love really is and the fact that movies often color our expectations in the post “Is It Really Love?“  In the comments, readers of the blog discussed how movies shape our desires and perceptions of love.  Books do the same thing.  Ask any ardent fan of Jane Austen and they will often tell you that they are waiting on their own Mr. Darcy.  Austen is considered to be the grandmother of the “chick-lit” novel–books about meeting someone and falling in love. 

However, her themes often run deeper than modern ”chick-lit”, addressing circumstances of women in her own time.  I pointed out in the comments that love as we know it today is very different from what it once was.  Austen’s heroines married because they had to.  Because women had no income or rights other than what was provided by father, brother, or husband. Lizzie Bennett is one of the earliest examples of a literary woman insisting on marrying for love in a time where liking your husband meant you lucked out.  Not all of Austen’s characters marry for love the way Lizzie and her sister Jane do.  Marianne in Sense & Sensibility falls in love as it is presented in movies–the heady and passionate whirlwind of lust–only to have her heart broken before agreeing to marry the constant, loyal, and kind Colonel Brandon who can provide for her.

Love alone can’t carry a relationship because while we all share a generalized view, our own personal definitions of the word vary, and we all require our own concept of traits that create a successful relationship and make up a cohesive whole that we consider love.  There is more to it than fluffy clouds and long days spent in bed.  Love for each person is an amalgamation of feelings and values, one of the most agreed upon being respect.  It is a key ingredient in love that makes both arranged marriages and marriages for love work.  If you cannot respect your partner, how can you expect to like them, much less love them?

Much as we may want our partner to share our love of reading, what is more important is simply their ability to respect our need to find time to read.  Likewise, we must respect them for their literary choices and give them time to pursue the things that they enjoy–things that make us love them for who they are in the first place.  When I asked “Could You Love A Non-Reader?” it was reiterated to me that respect was a key component in making love what it is.

Ultimately, the key to a strong relationship is respect between both partners.  As much as the avid reader may want to date another reader, we can’t always predict who we fall in love with.  Sometimes that other person does not read much, if at all.  This is where respect comes into play.  One reader, Linda, let us know that in past relationships she was made to feel guilty about the time she spent reading and not paying attention to the other person.  The guilting from her partners was not respectful to her interests.  Linda is now married.  ”My husband respects my choice to read and tries not to interrupt me while I’m reading.”  Referring back to Marge, reading is a hobby and we need to respect our partner’s choices to spend time  on their hobbies, whether they be reading, building a tiny ship in a bottle, or learning circus hula-hooping, and in turn we require them to respect our choices.

Related posts:

1. Love & Books Redux – Part 1 After the Love & Books series was completed, I occasionally...
2. Love & Books Redux: Part 3 I still don’t understand, and don’t believe I ever will,...
3. Love & Books: Could You Love A Non-Reader? After our brief little side-trip to the moon, we’re back...
4. Love & Books: Judge The One You’re With We’re coming to a close with the Love & Books...
5. Love & Books Redux: Part 4 And so we come to the end of the return...

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