I talk a good deal about porn over on The Generous Husband, and often I get some fellow saying “What about romance novels?”

Often it seems like a “Don’t look at my sin, look at her sin” kind of thing or a way of downplaying his sin. However, the point is valid.

When I was 20 (in 1980!) I was in the breakroom at work. A co-worker in her forties had left a romance novel and I picked it up. I was shocked at the several page sexual encounter I saw, described in great detail. So yeah, some of that stuff is full on porn. There are no images, but they’re not needed because women are sexually affected more by ideas than pictures.

Other books are less blatantly sexual. Either the sex is hidden in euphemisms (“she felt the hardness of his thighs” or “he penetrated her to the centre of her being”) or it’s alluded to without being described. 

What all of these books have in common are men who don’t act in ways real men act. In some the man is driven to an extreme state of lust, then he gladly backs off because the woman is not ready. The men show an unreal level of awareness of what the women want and what they’re thinking. They seem to be all about endless sacrificing and doing with nothing in return and they are all experts at being romantic. They are unreal men, a fantasy man that every woman wants but can never have because such men don’t exist. In short, they are like the fantasy woman of porn; they offer something that does not exist and in the process sow dissatisfaction with reality.

If you’re reading such books or doing the movie versions, please give it some prayerful consideration. Even if there is no sin being portrayed, are you being fed a false reality that makes you think badly about your husband?

~ Paul – I’m XY, and I had to put that book down before I embarrassed myself!

♥ #CouplesQuestion: What recent news story caught your attention? Why?

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