Confessions of a Terminally Single Romance Novelist
Most people would consider life to have only two guaranteed events, birth and death. My mother would add a graduate degree and marriage to that list, both preferably cleared by the age of twenty-nine. Within that timeframe, I managed to be born, and to get the degree...but as I edged deeper into my thirties and remained terminally single, my family got increasingly anxious. You’re being too picky, my mother told me. Your expectations are too high.
That’s an accusation that most romance readers are familiar with, to some extent: we hold unrealistic expectations about love. As a professional romantic who makes a living writing those love stories, surely my expectations must be even higher. But while it may be unrealistic to expect a real life hero to be a billionaire Navy SEAL with six pack abs who moonlights as a Viking cowboy, it is not unrealistic to expect love, kindness, and respect—and yes, even orgasms, if that’s something that’s important to you—from a partner.
At speaking engagements, I always emphasize this point, because I fear fellow romantics have also been programmed to believe they are setting their sights too high. I fear it, because until recently and despite what I’ve publicly proclaimed, I didn’t quite believe it for myself.
I don’t claim that this is the experience of all heterosexual South Asian American women. But for me, personally, the second I hit my twenties and the clock on my marriageable prospects began to tick, I felt a mounting pressure to turn myself into an asset, useful to someone so I could define myself around them. I dreamt of my future husband and family’s future, instead of my own.
Intellectually, I knew I had value as an individual...partially because the romance novels I’d devoured since the age of 12 had told me so. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that everything I did or didn’t do was part of an elaborate Good Place-ish points total, but not a total that got me into heaven or hell. Oh no, that would have been easier. This was a total that would determine what kind of man I’d marry, or if I’d marry anyone at all.
Young and never married? +1800. Get a tattoo? -150. Attend a prestigious law school? +600. Not a size four? -1000. Enjoy sex? +320. Enjoy it a little too much? -50. Published novels? +800. Oh, but romance novels? -400.
It would be one thing if I didn’t want a relationship, but I was a diehard romantic well before I picked up my first romance. So out into the dating market I went, clutching my value to my chest. The men were allotted points too, I discovered, but it seemed it was far easier for them to rack them up and harder for them to lose. Society forgave more of their mistakes and shortcomings, so I forgave them, too. While I wrote heroines who stood firm in their right to have it all, I made sure my guy had it all.
Still, no matter how deep I shoved my own wants and needs, more than one ex tossed the “too high expectations” accusation at me during our exit interviews. I didn’t know how to tell those men and my worried family the truth: I wasn’t being picky. Just the opposite. I was so hyper-conscious of not having those dreaded unrealistic expectations that I tolerated the person I was with, even if they only met the bare minimum. After all, there was that unwritten, inexplicable points system tallying in the background, and I was losing hard-won points simply by the passage of time. If I had to settle for less than a grand romance, so be it. That was reality, or so I’d been told.
One night, I met a man. On our first date, he took me to a rooftop bar overlooking the brightest lights of Los Angeles. I cracked a nerdy joke about taxes, and he took my hand and asked for my ring size. Cynical as any modern single woman in her thirties, I rolled my eyes and brushed the line off. “Doesn’t this feel different?” he insisted.
I deflected again, but in my heart, the hope that I’d shoved deep into a casket shivered awake. Was he also a fellow romantic? Had he also been forced to bury his expectations down deep?
I fell for him, at some point. Nothing he did was remarkable or rose to the level of romance novel heroism, but it inched just a hair higher than my lowest expectations: Reliably returning my calls and texts, praising my brain and ambitions, making coffee for me.
When his initial romantic gestures disappeared, I told myself that was fine; I’m a pragmatic person as well. When Valentine’s Day and my birthday came and went with nothing more than quick texts, I told myself that was fine, too...some people’s love languages didn’t lean toward presents. When the sex was mostly focused on him or when he told me that he didn’t like to cuddle, I told myself it was fine, I could buy a vibrator and a body pillow.
After all, we had similar upbringings. He was ambitious and successful and mostly kind, and had a family I could easily fit into. These were the things I’d been raised to consider when seeking a potential mate. Not whether we were sexually compatible, or if our senses of humor perfectly aligned.
One night, about nine months in, I ran out of patience when he kept needling me about something. I told him to stop it, that it hurt my feelings. He grew visibly angry, said “I don’t give a fuck about your feelings,” and stormed upstairs.
Sitting at his kitchen counter, I thought about picking up my car keys and leaving. That was what any of my heroines would have done. That’s what I would have told a stranger to do. But I heard the whispers in my ear, about what I was worth, and I went upstairs. I grew increasingly upset as we fought for hours, not so much because of the argument, but because of what my gut was telling me. This isn’t what you want or need. You’ll be so unhappy if you stay.
Don’t be picky, my head immediately countered. This could be the best you get. Temper your expectations.
After he told me I was too emotional and got in bed, I popped half a Xanax to stop my sobbing. It was one of the rare times I’d used the medicine outside of the airplane rides it had been prescribed for. I envisioned years of popping pills...and then I shoved that image out of my head. It was fine.
He grew distant over the next few months, and the more distant he grew, the more anxious I became. I inflated his best qualities in my mind and tried to drown out the worst ones. I took more pills to sleep, so I wouldn’t have to think about the points or being alone. In a plot twist I didn’t see coming, my mother firmly told me to end things with him—that she’d rather I be happy and alone over miserable but technically in a relationship.
The week before the one-year anniversary of that rooftop date, I called him to talk through my misgivings. I had spent all day working on my next book, and I’d practiced the words I wanted to say by writing them into my character’s mouths. I was optimistic. After all, my hero and heroine respected each other’s needs. Why couldn’t we do the same in real life?
Calmly, logically, I told him how ignored and anxious I felt. He was stunned to realize there was any problem at all...which stunned me. Then he responded with the words that struck the death knell of our relationship.
“I’m really uncomfortable that you have these expectations of me.”
“You mean my expectations of you are too high?” I was prepared to counter that familiar accusation. I wasn’t prepared for his curveball.
“No. I’m uncomfortable that you have any expectations of me. I don’t have any of you,” he said.
Except…that wasn’t true. I’d helped with his work even when I had my own deadlines, coached him on his career, stroked his ego, stocked his favorite beer in my fridge, made his life more comfortable. He’d had expectations of me, explicit or not, and I’d gone above and beyond in meeting them, which was why he’d been perfectly happy to coast along until I spoke up.
The week after our breakup, I happened to be binge watching Netflix’s You, a thriller about an obsessive man who stalks and kills in the name of a twisted form of love. I joked to my brother, “Well, at least none of my exes have been serial killers.”
My 20-year-old brother looked at me with far too much pity and wisdom. “Sis, if that’s your bar, it’s in the earth’s mantle.”
Oof.
I went back to writing my book with puffy eyes and a clearer head. Nothing had changed in my imaginary world, but everything had shifted in my real one. As I deleted words, I deleted the points system in the back of my mind. As I adjusted dialogue, I adjusted my personal bar. I had to. It was a trap, these men who feared being held to any expectations at all. They’d always make me feel like my expectations were unrealistic, because expecting anything would always be too much.
That’s no way to live. A relationship is nothing but a series of expectations, one plot point at a time. I wouldn’t impose that kind of mind game on my characters, so how could I impose it on myself?
A while after that relationship ended, I found myself with another man. He made me feel relaxed and happy. He was funny and considerate and nice, nicer than anyone I’d dated in a while.
Perhaps, I thought, eyeing him next to me, too nice. What was his game? Was he trying to lull me into a false sense of safety so he could do his worst? Was this a You situation?
“I don’t understand how you’re still single,” he said, which is a cute thing to say to a date.
“I was just wondering if you’re going to kill me,” I squeaked back, which, judging by his face, is a weird thing to say to a date.
“Why would you think that?”
Because I’m still scrubbing the programming that told me being romantic is foolish and misery is more realistic than happiness. It was only like our fourth date, though, so instead of explaining all that, I settled for, “No reason.”
It may have taken me until my mid-thirties, but now, I finally believe what I’ve been telling other people for a decade, what romances have been telling me for most of my life. Love, and kindness, and respect—and yes, orgasms—are not asking for too much. Feeling secure and happy is the bare minimum of what any relationship should deliver. Returning texts and not ghosting and showing general interest are good things, but if they are the bar, then my baby brother is right: It is subterranean.
When the world tells me I’m too picky or that my points are decreasing, I’ll return to the utterly achievable aspirational world found in between the covers of a romance novel. The ones I have on my keeper shelf affirm that I don’t have to prove my value to a mate by being useful or successful, that I don’t have to be perfect. And it’s not unrealistic to expect my partner to be the best version of themselves...or for us to be happier together than we are alone.
Somewhere out there, there’s someone who badly wants to rise to the occasion and clear the reasonable high bar I’ve set with flying leaps. If he can do that, it’s okay if he’s not a billionaire Navy SEAL with six pack abs who moonlights as a Viking cowboy.
Though, hey. If he is, then that’s okay, too.
Alisha Rai is the author of award-winning contemporary romance novels. The second book in her Modern Lovers series, Girl Gone Viral, came out in April. You may recognize her from her viral tweet.
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