 Romance/Love: July 11, 2012 Issue [#5151] |
  Romance/Love
This week: Different Kinds of Couples Edited by: Jeff  
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
-- Albert Einstein
Romance/Love Trivia of the Week: Jayne Ann Krentz uses three different names for her three different subgenres of romance writing. Jane Ann Krentz writes contemporary romantic suspense stories, while the pseudonymous Amanda Quick writes historical romantic suspense tales. The equally pseudonymous Jayne Castle writes futuristic/paranormal romantic suspense novels.
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DIFFERENT KINDS OF COUPLES
This past weekend, my brother (finally!) got married to his girlfriend/fiancee of eight years. As I was preparing my best man speech, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the ways in which my brother and I (and our spouses) are different. My wife and I push each other... we're never satisfied by just letting the other one skate by without pushing them to do more. I push her to finish her higher education and believe that she can be a better teacher. She pushes me to never settle for doing a mediocre job at work, with the housecleaning, with our anniversary plans, etc. We are both better people for the way we push each other to strive for more and never settle for less than our best.
My brother and his wife, on the other hand, don't seem to push each other too often. They're okay just being themselves... he loves her just the way she is, and she loves him just the way he is. As a result, they haven't really lost much of that vibrant love for life they had in their youth. Water balloon fights, soccer games, and goofy Facebook pictures are common occurrences when they're spending time with their friends. And there are times when we look at each other and scratch our heads. Why is his wife so tough on him? Why is his wife still okay with him shooting Nerf balls at his friends? Just like my wife and I sometimes wonder why they don't expect more from each other and themselves, I'm sure they look at us and wonder why we aren't more relaxed and just go with the flow... why we always have to push each other for more.
What I realized at the wedding is that there are all different kinds of couples. Not all relationship dynamics make sense to everybody else and sometimes you have couples who are great together and really make it work even if they live a lifestyle or have a relationship that's completely contrary to the kind that has been successful for you. My mother and father have a very laid back relationship (man, I hope no one in my family is on WdC... I'm really airing all our laundry!   ), which is in complete contrast to other couples who have roller coaster relationships, always fighting and making up, tempers flaring just as hotly as passions. Who's to say what the better approach to a relationship is? Some would look at my parents and think they have a very boring, uneventful life. Others would look at them and think a life relatively free of ups and downs, where everything is just pretty consistently "good," is a pretty sweet deal.
The danger of judging other people's relationships is when we start to think of them as better or worse than our own when, in reality, they're merely different. That is not to say there aren't bad relationships out there... Good Lord, have I seen some bad ones. But a relationship isn't bad just because it's different. Just because a couple bickers in public doesn't mean they aren't equally as passionately in love with one another when they get home. Just because a couple doesn't push each other to live up to their maximum potential doesn't mean that they're not doing it (i.e. having a relationship) right. Just because a couple doesn't do things the way you do them doesn't mean they're not just as good together as you and yours are.
My brother and my wife and his wife and I haven't always seen eye to eye on a lot of things. But I took a very important lesson away from the wedding, which was that even though we don't live our lives they way they do (and vice versa), neither one of us is better off than the other. We all love our spouses just as much; we're just very different in the type of relationship we have with our significant others.
When it comes to writing, this realization gives us an incredible opportunity to explore how others live. Just because the author is the laid back consistent type of relationship guy (or gal), it doesn't mean all of his or her characters have to have a similar relationship dynamic. In fact, it might be kind of fun to explore a different kind of relationship, where your characters are a couple who fight and make up, or nag at one another but only because they want their partner to live up to their full potential. And if you have a more frenetic relationship in real life, consider writing about a more even-keeled couple and how they approach their problems. As writers, we have the opportunity to explore entire worlds that are foreign to our real lives... and that includes character couples and their different types of relationships.
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following romantic items:
"Why didn’t you come to my wedding?" "I had a call." "Stop," she demands with her palm held out like a traffic cop. "I called and your team and they said you took a sick day. You don’t take sick days." "I didn't want to be there," he confesses. "Why?"
Footfalls of maidens slide lithely over tile and parquetry; footfalls of boy grooms scuff to the dismay of the mansion caretakers. Tux and gown hand and hand past crown moulded doors, captured ambiance of a setting sun from chandeliers hung on high. The day I was born, born the day of the prom. I smiled cordially, and my date fawned.
Sally Hawkins was covered in soot, on her knees scrubbing the steel grates of the noisy, vibrating, broiling hot engine room. She wore a dulled out black and red striped crop top and a gray bandana that was once some other color. Her gaucho pants were torn and sewn back together in several places. She walked amongst the machinery with her bucket and mop and scrub brush in dingy, bare feet. Two large engine rats played with each other near her, keeping her company and occasionally making her smile with their tomfoolery.
"Tell me, Alexander Alardys, why are you here? The Dragon doesn't look kindly on Polish spies prying on his captains." Dochia peered at him from under her leather face mask. He faltered under her scrutiny, and she saw the fear in his eyes when she mentioned the Dragon. "This matter is personal my lord. Duncan is captive in his own dungeon, and his life hangs on a thread.", Alexander blurted. Dochia was thankful for her leather face mask and gripped the armrests of her chair.
I feel his large strong hands guiding me along a gravel path to an unknown destination. I hear his voice warning me where to place my feet and I can just picture his cute wide smile of excitement. We pause for a moment and his rough hands tighten around my wrists as he inhales and exhales slowly. I tentatively ask if he is alright, he reassures me that he's fine and we begin walking again. The terrain under my thin flats changes to soft grass and we weave in and out, avoiding obstacles. I begin smelling flowers and his hands begin to moisten from nervousness. My face scrunches under my blindfold as I grab his hands and rub my thumbs across them to calm him down. He sighs loudly again, this time in relief as we quickly make our way up hill. We walk in a straight line now, all the obstacles gone and I hear my adorable boyfriend laugh quietly bringing a smile to my face.
Mark shook his sweaty gloves, staring across the race track toward the stands where he knew Vicki and her father were sitting. He didn’t think about the money he had given up, and he didn’t care about his busted car with its busted tire and Lord-knew-what-else wrong now. The Credit Suisse advertisement that he had rammed into before stopping during his final lap around the track, just before the finish line, stuck oblong in the dirt a few feet away. It served as a symbol delivering his final decision concerning brand-representation and his impending marriage to Vicki that no verbalized word from him could have gotten across with as much force. Mark had always been the type to add insult to injury, but even he had to admit this public defiance took it to a whole other level. She wouldn’t forgive him for this one.
The early morning hour of nautical twilight launched a hungry flock of seagulls, their desperate wails an audible truth of life on the sea. It was clear and quiet and an unexpected calmness was all that remained of an ordinarily turbulent wave. Lying across the bow of the tiny sailboat he glared with eager anticipation, though patiently, over the side. He would reach down from time to time to touch the crystalline water, sending tiny ripples, shattering his perfect likeness that lay cast upon the surface.
"Maybe this will help to kill the slow moving monotonous drone tick tock of the clock". I whisper to myself as I grab a pen and try a comfortable posture as I sit back in my room, scribbling madly in my journal with some incredible newly found zest. It's almost as if Im frenzied, trying to escape an unavoidable feeling of illnesss. It's the most absurd of phrases. Even I dont know what it means. I convince myself. It's quiet all around. Too quiet, too peaceful. The kind of quietness that makes the sound of a raindrop falling on the roof sound like a crass cacophany. Yes, probably the quietness is what I cant deal with. Being used to an eternal buzz of activity, I honestly detest the strange sadness that comes with this quietness.
Julia and Drew got into the blue blazer with the intention of going to Family Video and then she’d drop him off back at home. She had plans. “You’re not gonna be long are you? You know what you want right?” she asked her husband of four years. “Yeah but can you run by Eric’s house first?” Julia rolled her eyes but nodded her head. Eric was his brother but that didn’t mean she like him. Their relationship was so bad she normally went nowhere near his house. She’d even park at the neighboring business.
“Where has she gone?” Jessica said, her voice a wail of grief. Auntie Simone and Grandma Frannie exchanged a look that Jessica didn’t see, couldn’t see since her eyes were streaming with tears. “We’ll find her.” Frannie embraced her daughter-in-law with two thin arms that not only comforted but offered a tinkling spell of assurance. “How far could she walk? The woods call to her, you know that, Jessica. The child rambles about poking at mushrooms, gathering mosses, talking with the forest animals -- her buffer against loneliness with her father so far away.”
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This is my first Romance/Love newsletter; please feel free to comment on this one and we'll discuss it next time! 
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