Are there any legitimately great romance novels on par with the classics or is the entire genre trash?

>>24545284 (OP)
Yes. The great alone
Lmfao. I loved it, I am a woman.

>>24545284 (OP)
In the postmodern era, love has been quite forcefully stifled or (implicitly) dismissed as an uninteresting part of the human experience.

Sexuality is more liberated and represented than ever (and still unveiled constantly, to the point of absurdity) but love is poorly defined in the public conscious, owing to the fact that most people are literally too stupid to understand or REALLY experience it.

People are afraid to love, or to even truly acknowledge the existence of such a thing. So in contemporary media, we hungrily consume the idealized, slurry content of romance. Writers skirt around the subject of love by writing reductive, anxious wattpad pulp or by building fantastical, outrageous settings in which the romance takes place. Love is never addressed directly.

Love in literature is used to stimulate the unfulfilled "wanting brain" in much the same way erotica stimulates your sexual organs, but it's hardly ever explored or allowed to unfurl.

>>24545433
Give us a little more. What would you say true love is like compared to the poorly defined version, definite it a little, help me understand. What would love addressed directly look like in your opinion? Where should an author go, what terrain needs to be crossed? How does love stimulate the wanting brain? I'd really appreciate an effortpost on love, not just for literary efforts but I'm stuck in some strange ennui.

>>24545668
I think the biggest misconception about love that people have is that it's a way to fulfill the emotional needs of the self. People want love, they long for it, as if it's a sort of hunger that would ordinarily be sated, and when it isn't, something is wrong. They believe that love realized can only come from an external source, and therefore must be pursued or waited for, but love isn't a goal that is reached through effort - it's a state of being.

When loving anything (our partner, a friend, a pet, the city we live in), we get it back. It feels good to love, to give, to help, to be vulnerable and to trust (even in the looming shadow of pain and loss) - so the true form of interpersonal love is one in which we enrich one another through this shared tenderness. It's not about longing and clawing and wanting to drink our fill of "love".

Love in literature is almost always presented from this completely selfish, inward perspective: stories of love operate on the scale of "unfinished" individuals who prescriptively require love in order to step into themselves, and its stakes remain purely personal - unless forcibly applied to a larger situation through fairy tale magic (e.g. if love is not realized, our heroes won't be able to topple the totalitarian regime á la YA novels) Besides that though, the way love has to work on the interpersonal scale is largely coincidental (or rather, the most practical way for it to happen because of human development), but spiritually, it's not just about loving a specific person.

True love to me is the way the self makes the conscious decision to forgive, cherish and gift itself to the world. The love of another (the love of anything, really) is also an expression of the love of the self, because of the absolution and reassurance that we ourselves receive through the act of loving. That coming into being has, in some ways, been worth it.

If the ideal form of interpersonal romance is it being unconditional (where the quirks and flaws of the person are not only inconsequential, but become the very source of the unquantifiable love and fascination we have with them), then to me the ideal love is being able to practice this unconditionality towards existence itself. Therefore, the stake of true love is the entire world - and as we find how we fit into each others love (lets call it relationships) we realize that all of us in our own ways, fit into the love of the world.

>>24546044
The problem with contemporary love is that human beings are now so deeply conditioned towards consumption that love and relationships have become commodities in and of themselves - medialization (and to a smaller extent, an almost complete loss of faith in the insitutions related to person-love such as marriage and family) have exacerbated the "negative" or "hurtful" aspects of the practice of love, making people disinterested in it altogether.

In the practical sense, people respond dismissively to the idea of true romance - they behave in risk-averse ways, they optimize, develop courting or relationship strategies: they do their best to conceive of love as a program or some kind of game that can be rigged with the correct inputs. The result is rampant bio-essentialism, dating coaches, couples therapy, situationships, tug of wars of trust and other, similarly desperate responses.

>>24546077
>>24546044
>>24545433
>3 dubs in a row

>>24546217
Holy shit

>Be OP
>Post the GOAT romance novel
>"are there any legitimately great novels?"

>>24546217

>>24546077
So what do I do, anon. I'm extremely lonely and like you said I conceive of the Other just as something to make that feeling go away. What's the proper way if I can't commit?

>>24547203
Outside of just ad-hominems, genuinely what do I do? I'm doing alright in my career, I look decent and my social skills aren't terrible, but my love life has been a complete disaster. I know it's schop's now cliche and boring hedgehog thing, he advises to just stay alone which I've done for many years but I'm starting to feel like a corpse. What now? Any non-gay solution?

>>24547203
>>24547237
I've found that TRYING to love everyone regardless of what they can do for you is the right way forward. The important bit is TRYING, since as a task, it's practically impossible. The world is full of assholes and people who haven't done anything wrong, but you just plain don't like them.

You can't just swallow the bad things in life (like loneliness, a shit tier job or a bad upbringing) and it's not healthy to ignore them. You have to measure the pain of life, and then extend love in spite of it: at first, towards yourself. Always towards yourself. And then, once you're secure by yourself, every other interaction will become that much lighter, that much more inconsequential, yet all the more playful and full of potential.

I don't know your exact situation, but you have to accept that no matter how many people surround you, you're at your own mercy. Chasing women and always showing your belly will hollow you out and you will be used and abused - hardening yourself and retreating from the world will not make anyone miss you or even acknowledge your absence. People are much too busy with their own troubles.

See yourself for the man you are, the man you can become. Forget the retarded archetypes. You are a being of your own. You can't do everything, no one can. But you are worthy of love. You have to trust that you are capable of good things, and that you're full of the love that you can gift to the world at any moment. You don't have to wait for it. Let go of this idea that you're saving it for one special person.

Being able to love oneself and to love outwardly with no shame or anxiety is quite possibly the single most attractive trait a human being can have anyways, but beyond that, whenever I try doing it, I find that it massively improves my mindset and attitude - towards other people, but especially myself. It's an incredibly effective self-esteem boost.

Pain is inevitable. But the hot, sudden pain of failure and shame passes quickly. You dust yourself off and you get on with your life. The slow pain of never having tried will haunt you until the end of your days.

Basically I can tell you fucking anything here on this taiwanese basket weaving forum, but if you don't see for yourself, it's utterly pointless and might not ever truly stick. Get the fuck out there, get hurt, and learn.

>>24547370
Thanks man

>>24545433
>People are afraid to love, or to even truly acknowledge the existence of such a thing. So in contemporary media, we hungrily consume the idealized, slurry content of romance. Writers skirt around the subject of love by writing reductive, anxious wattpad pulp or by building fantastical, outrageous settings in which the romance takes place. Love is never addressed directly.
>Love in literature is used to stimulate the unfulfilled "wanting brain" in much the same way erotica stimulates your sexual organs, but it's hardly ever explored or allowed to unfurl.
What would you like to see instead? I'm writing something similar at the moment

As a sad fuck I was just pouring my desires onto the page but I kinda get what you mean it's just wish-fulfillment, to search for satisfaction in external circumstances. Is that what you're getting at? Have you read any Levinas?

Cold Mountain.

No. Not Brokeback Mountain, the gay cowboy mountain. Cold Mountain. The one with Appalachian sweetheart Penelope pining for her Confederate Odysseus.

>>24547203
>>>24547237
>What now? Any non-gay solution?
There is no solution

>>24545284 (OP)
no