You know what? It would be great if every relationship we ever got into was a perfect, Edward-loves-Bella kind of relationship, but most relationships aren’t like that. In fact, almost no relationship is like that. No, cancel that, there’s no “almost” about it — there is NO relationship like that. At least, not all the time.
The beginnings of our relationships seem to be the time when they are most charmed, the time when the other person can do no wrong and we’re both floating on air. If we could portray our life as a movie, this would be the montage scene where we skip around with our new partner, dab each others’ noses in ice cream, and fill our time with giggles and kittens, date nights and baking projects.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ll admit to liking Twilight. But real life isn’t like that at all. Real life is more often filled with break-ups and betrayals, power struggles and one person screaming for attention while the other person turns away. Relationships rarely find two people on equal footing, all the time. They rarely last forever. And they’re just plain messy.
I get why we want to read about simplistic relationships in fiction. It’s a nice distraction from the messiness of our daily life. But when I started writing The Portal and the Panther, one of my goals was to write about relationships that were just a wee bit more complex than Edward-loves-Bella. I wanted my characters to deal with some of the same struggles that the rest of us go through. I didn’t want any fairy tale romances in this fairy tale, and if I can keep you guessing about the protagonist’s relationship status with his two female friends, then I’ve done my job.
photo credit: Kalexanderson via photopin cc