Not Your Trauma Muse: Romantic Realism’s Antidote to Struggle Love

Spotting—and scrapping—the toxic tropes hiding in your love life (and your drafts)

“I just— I just— I want to hang out for a couple more hours. And I knew you were ready to leave, so—” My boyfriend was stuttering. He only did that when he was lying.

He let the unfinished sentence hang in the air between us, and I watched his right eyelid begin to twitch. Another tell. I looked at him head on, hoping that this time, maybe he might be shamed into doing the right thing.

“So— you good?” he pressed. “Can I—”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice expressionless. “Go. Have fun.”

He had at least enough common decency to wait until I let myself into my dorm room before lifting a hand in a half-hearted wave, turning and leaving me there.

I went inside, and cried.

He didn’t just ‘want to hang out for a couple more hours’. I’d clocked the looks exchanged between him and the girl with the shoulder-length, curly auburn hair. The girl with the ridiculous (to my ear anyway) French name. She was undeniably beautiful though; the daughter of a modestly famous Black American jazz singer and a French aristocrat. Or at least that’s what everyone said. Her father might just have been some average, un-aristocratic Frenchman, but it certainly made for a better story, her being the illegitimate, biracial daughter of French nobility. Much later, I would hear from a mutual friend that her mother’s music had been nominated to be preserved in the Library of Congress, and as for the pretty girl with the stupid French name? I don’t know what became of her; we weren’t friends for obvious reasons. Still, I would use her backstory for one of my characters. Everything’s raw material after all, if you’re a writer. But I digress.

He wasn’t just an accomplished liar and cheater, my boyfriend; he was funny and fun, exciting and unpredictable. He and I riffed off each other effortlessly and loved the same things and mocked the same things, and had the best damn sex of our young lives. Or perhaps I should speak for myself. Because he certainly had a lot more—and a lot more varied, I would come to find out—sex than I could ever have imagined.

At the time, I was young and silly enough to believe he was worth crying over. And the rapid-fire highs and lows, the transgressions, the confessions, the fights, the breakups and makeups were, to my nineteen-year-old self, the hallmarks of a grand romance. The kind of love that every girl dreamed of, if like me, she had grown up on a steady diet of mawkish romance novels where women endured a painful deflowering by an almost callous lover who, after putting her through all kinds of emotional hell, later softens and declares his undying love.

Romance needs Conflict, not Casualties

We have a term for that now—‘struggle love’. I can’t imagine you haven’t heard of it but in the very unlikely event you haven’t, let’s simplify: struggle love refers to a relationship dynamic that sees pain, sacrifice and suffering as the best evidence of devotion. It glorifies enduring dysfunction—often under the guise of loyalty, a “ride or die” mentality, or the belief that love must be earned through trials.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time when we started talking about struggle love in Black American culture. Probably around the 2010s when think pieces began to appear in Essence, and in online discourse about the toxic relationships we saw in shows like Love & Hip-Hop, and Basketball Wives; or we heard rapped about, or sung about in edgier R&B tunes. And to this day, Black women reflect on the relationships some of us saw modeled in our own families—long-suffering women and errant men—and debate whether “you young girls today” even understand what it means to be in a committed relationship.

And now, as that debate rages on, the polar opposite viewpoint has taken shape, championed by women who believe a partner should come ready-made. The no-struggle girlies (don’t bother Googling that, I made it up just now) encourage women to cut their losses early if there’s any sign of strife or struggle in the offing (‘don’t fall in love with nobody’s potential’, ‘you ain’t sign up to be his momma!’, ‘leave that man alone to go work on hisself’). In other words, only completely self-actualized partners need apply. Oh, and he’d better be able to financially support you too, even if you’re fully capable of supporting yourself.

Not All Battlefields: Why Romantic Realism Rejects the ‘Love = Pain’ AND the Love = No Pain Myths

But I’m not here to moralize. We’re all entitled to set the terms of the life and relationships we will accept. But I write about a love somewhere between those two extremes. I call it ‘romantic realism’. Romantic realism embraces the friction inherent in merging two autonomous lives, and rejects the glorification of suffering as a prerequisite for devotion.

Romantic realism is a belief that love—even one that comes with significant challenges—should ultimately be generative, not corrosive.

But how do you spot the difference? If that’s a question you have, it’s not a stupid one. Just about everyone who’s ever felt romantic love for another person may have faced a moment when they had to ask: should I accept this? Is this too much to ask of myself just because I’m committed, or ‘in love’?

And in romance novels as in life, there is a definite tipping point. The protagonist (if we’re talking about real life, that would be you, in case you’re wondering) cannot be made to willingly endure too much otherwise she will lose the reader’s empathy, her own self-respect, and her lover will also be seen as irredeemable.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty on the distinction:

• Struggle Love: “We suffer, therefore we love.”

• Romantic Realism: “We grow, therefore we love.”

• Struggle Love: Measures depth by scars.

• Romantic Realism: Measures depth by roots.

The Romantic Realist knows that in life, as in fiction, genuine love is neither a fairy tale nor a war zone. Love shouldn’t be a battlefield, it should be a sanctuary.

If you want my checklist for how to write romantic realism without tripping into the struggle love trope, it’s available below for paid subscribers, and as a downloadable.