Getting ready for the April reread of The Messy Truth About Love. Here’s the scoop set to publish tomorrow:
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Unhealthy Relationships and Romance Books
When I was 18 (this was in the early 1990’s), I was a small town girl living in a very conservative community where God, Family, and Country were the trifecta of life. Everyone had guns and used them for hunting season. It was commonplace to get married young—barely out of high school—to your high school sweetheart. All those beliefs perpetuated year after year. I say this to give you a frame of reference about my perspective at 18. I wanted to go to college, but I was the first one in my family to think about it. We didn’t have a lot of money or know-how about how to get there, but I did think: maybe there’s something else.
One thing I loved: reading.
We had one bookstore and a library. That’s where you could find me if I could find my way to either place.
As an adolescent, my favorite reads were romances. I started with the Sunfire Romances (long live the love triangle) and moved on to Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams books (oh the drama), and eventually I found my way to the adult romances reading Lavyrle Spencer and Judith McNaught (so that’s how sex works). I suspect that these readings shaped my belief system about my identity as it related to “romance” and relationships, though to be fair, I had an excellent model of a respectful relationship between my parents.
Like any adolescent, I was ready to test the waters of relationships, and that’s where things got skewed. My fundamentalist, church background—reinforced by my parents—insisted that I shouldn’t date until I was sixteen. When I did venture into the dating arena, I was given a “purity ring” to reinforce chastity (no sex until there was a “ring on it”, peeps) which also loaded on a heap of guilt when it came to experimentation. Finally, I had this “romanticized” version of what it meant to be in a relationship, and no clarity on what an unhealthy one looked like.
Fast forward to 2022.
I didn’t marry my high school sweetheart. I moved away from that small town. I did get to college by the skin of my teeth and graduated. I did marry my college sweetheart and have been a mother to two amazing kids. I got my masters, have worked with teens, and I still read.
Last year, I read the tiktok, booktok sensation Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. It’s an entertaining book, and while I’m about to be critical of it; please know that this commentary isn’t a knock on the author or her ability to write a catchy book that draws a reader in. This is not that kind of criticism.
When I finished and set Ugly Love down, I walked away from it with my stomach in knots. At first I couldn’t figure out why. It’s about a young woman in her early twenties who’s starting over in a new place. She’s just gotten a job as a nurse and moves in with her brother as a stop-gap until she can find her own place. Living across the hall is her brother’s best friend. There’s a lot of sexual chemistry between them, and so they both consent to a relationship with “no strings.” Except, like most “sex-only” relationships, feelings happen. What ensues is a story highlighting an often unhealthy and manipulative relationship rooted in emotional bankruptcy and trauma. Like any romance read, it ends with the “happily-ever-after” but after reflecting on what had bothered me about it, I realized I had read a glorified version of “If I stick around, I can fix him”, and I felt so sad for 18-year-old me. Why? That girl would have taken the message to heart. I wouldn’t have been able to separate the “romanticized” ideals with reality, even knowing it was fiction.
Which then made me wonder: how many young women 18+ are reading books like Ugly Love (and believe me when I say there’s a lot of stories like this perpetuating a kind of “I can fix him” message) and taking to heart that message? Being set up to accept abusive behavior in a partner because it’s important to be “committed” or if she just “works harder”, then everything will turn out okay.
When I wrote The Stories Stars Tell, there was catharsis for me—the girl steeped in purity culture—to let go of those unhealthy messages about personal empowerment. I didn’t start the story knowing that was where it ended up. I didn’t start The Messy Truth About Love thinking that I would look at that unhealthy packaging of a relationship as “normal” and deconstruct it by reinforcing a healthy relationship. But that’s where it went.
And so that’s what I hope readers are able to take away from The Messy Truth About Love. Sometimes we don’t know we're in an unhealthy situation until we’re able to step out of it and look back as we walk away. And maybe, just maybe, The Messy Truth About Love will be the story someone needs to see their own situation or prevent one. I can hope.
Relationships: Isolation versus Autonomy
Storytime!
When I met my now husband, I wasn’t in the best mental space. I was a first-year college student who hadn’t left her hometown for a bunch of reasons, and ended up enrolled at her local college. A fortuitous convergence of events, really, because had it not worked out this way, I wouldn’t have met my guy. But that doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing. Nope. Both of us were willing to work through the junk in each of our individual lives (not always in pretty ways) to be together. But when we were younger and full of our insecurities, we weren’t always healthy in our approach to our own lives both on our own and together. My life became about him. His became about my adoration of him. While we didn’t display those red-flag tendencies (see graphic below), both of us potentially could have fallen into this trap.
Aging is a great perspective builder. Having been together for over twenty-five years, we aren’t the same two people we were in our early twenties (thank goodness). I’m happy to report that time, education, and experience has supported us to be a better version of a couple. A healthy one (see graphic). He’s pursuing his dreams and supports me in pursuing mine (and vice versa), both of us recognize the strengths each of us bring to the relationship to make us better as a couple.
In the Messy Truth About Love, Hannah and Seth had a crush on one another in high school but other than a make-out session, that’s as far as it went. Seth mentions that being with Hannah “was like climbing a mountain he didn’t have the tools to climb.” Having been the victim of child abuse, Seth has done work on himself with therapy when he and Hannah reconnect. He’s becoming a better version of himself with access to better tools. Hannah, however, is getting out of a relationship that unfolds waving red flags at the reader. In the story when Hannah and Seth reconnect as more self-aware people, they have to work through the individual spaces in their own experiences and figure out what that looks like as a couple. It isn’t always pretty.
The Messy Truth About Love was a difficult book to write for the very reason it takes the reader into uncomfortable places in unhealthy relationships. One of the common bits of feedback I have gotten, however, is how important the story is to share. How many people who have read it mentioned they have identified in some way with the journey and wished they’d had something like this book to help them through the confusion. It isn’t a preachy book, but hopefully it’s one that provides perspective that each person has value in and of themselves beyond any relationship that they might be using to define them.
The Messy Truth About Love is available for preorder and signed copies can be purchased up to September 6. It publishes on September 6, 2022.
Me at 18… In hindsight, I wonder why I was so insecure.
Unhealthy Relationships: The Love Bomb
When I was seventeen and eighteen, I was a model. I wanted to go to New York City and eventually become an actor. The truth was, however, I was very insecure in my own skin. Insecurities are totally normal, but looking back, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t follow that “dream.” My soft heart, naive understanding of the world, and insecure mindset would have been a terrible combination in a cutthroat world like that.
Those are also qualities that are easily manipulated.
When I was writing The Messy Truth About Love, I went back to this girl when I started writing Hannah. Though Hannah isn’t me (she’s a fictional character), I thought about how insecurities informed the way I interacted with the world and was curious about how that might be true for Hannah. It made me wonder: What happened to Hannah? I had to dive into Hannah’s character’s past to truly understand her present and began to see the red flags of a young woman who’d suffered through an abusive relationship. A deep dive into kinds of behaviors people might experience and not necessarily identify as a red flag to potential abuse sparked my curiosity. One red flag was waved time and again: Love bombing.
What is Love Bombing? In a nutshell, it’s the extreme romantic attention offered quickly and intensely as a means to influence feelings and is often a tactic used by narcissists to control their partners.
Keep in mind, I am not a psychologist or a therapist. What I’m sharing with you is what I’ve learned as a writer through research (if you feel you might be in an abusive relationship, PLEASE GET HELP IMMEDIATELY). This is a scene I wrote for The Messy Truth About Love. It ended up on the cutting room floor in final edits due to pacing issues, here’s a part of it showcasing what love bombing might look like:
The trees flew past as if they were moving, rather than the car speeding down the highway on the way toward the Oregon coast. Sebastian had planned something special for our first Valentine’s Day celebration. It was technically our fourth date, but since our first coffee date, we’d spent at least some part of everyday together the last several weeks. He made it so hard not to be crazy about him.
As if he’d read my thoughts, he reached across the center console and took my hand in his. “I’m so glad you’re here with me,” he said and smiled. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m so excited for your surprise. To show you how much you mean to me.”
My heart tightened in my chest, and I squeezed his hand with mine. “Me too,” I said, offering a smile.
We rode in silence for another few miles. Sebastian sang along to the playlist he’d made. He’d titled it “Our first Valentine’s Day.”
“Do you think we’re moving too fast?” I asked.
It was only our fourth date, after all. We’d met for coffee the day after meeting in the library. I still got that warm glow remembering what he’d said, “that first time I saw you, Hannah. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to breathe again without talking to you.” I’d made a quip, and he smiled, his eyes twinkling, and said, “Good thing you talked to me.”
The second date had been to a rib place in Salem. We’d worn bibs and gotten messy faces, laughed, and talked about our lives. He’d shared about his crazy ex-girlfriend who had been ultra-controlling, and how that experience had shaped his struggle to put himself out there again. I’d shared with him that I’d never really had a boyfriend, a few near misses but several crushes, one I thought about from time to time. Sebastian had smiled and said, “lucky for me.” I kept my shame about the night my father died to myself. On that date, I’d reached out and used my thumb to clean off a spot of sauce near the corner of his mouth that he’d missed with his napkin. Sebastian’s eyes had met mine, and there was a shift between us toward something more physical. We shared our first kiss against his car before returning to his apartment to watch a movie. It was weak-kneed wonderful.
Our third date was to an art museum in Portland. We’d wandered the halls hand in hand, stopping to kiss. Sebastian snuck nips at my neck, wrapped me in his arms, held me tightly against him. “Hannah Fleming. You’ve got me all tied up in knots,” he’d said against my skin. After, as we walked back to the car, he’d pulled me into a floral shop and bought me as many bouquets of roses as I could hold. When we’d made it back to his car, he’d driven us to a park next to the river where we’d made out like teenagers, surrounded by roses. We talked about our dreams, and I walked in my apartment with him that night feeling as if it had been a dream.
Though this kind of attention can initially seem acceptable in the intensity of a “new relationship”, attempting to identify the giver’s motives is important to ascertain their sincerity. Love bombing can lead to more problematic and abusive behaviors like gaslighting and isolation, and isn’t the only time those in a relationship might experience it. Love bombing can also occur after explosive fights or abusive episodes when the abuser desires to “smooth over” their abuse by using effusive words and actions to manipulate a victim toward “forgiveness.” One of the quickest ways to identify whether you are the victim of Love Bombing is to ask yourself if you feel manipulated.
For example:
Your partner describes you in a manner that is flattering and seems to put you on a pedestal to “worship” you. The words they use might be exactly what you need to hear, speaking to you on a very emotional level.
The Love Bomber in this instance is manipulating the emotional connection with words but also setting up future “isolation” since no one can “live up” to you.
Your partner might offer you high praise and then in the next breath belittle you to “keep it real.”
The Love Bomber isn’t about you or the relationship but rather controlling you via your emotions. This will serve to manipulate and unbalance you, feeding into your insecurities to showcase how dedicated the Love Bomber is to you.
Your partner loves public displays of affection, with social media posts or showing you off because they are so “in love” or so “lucky” to be with you.
This elaborate display for a Love Bomber is the means to present the “perfect” romance giving them the attention they crave rather and building an authentic relationship with you.
Your partner showers you with grandiose gifts. We love receiving gifts, right? These gifts come with price tags.
A Love Bomber will use the gift as a means to showcase their devotion and remind you of what they have done for you. This will make you “feel bad” for all they have done which in turn keeps you locked in the relationship.
Your partner showers you with early “I love yous” and then withdraws the affection without cause.
Remember a Love Bomber is all about manipulating your emotions. Drawing you into an intensely emotional relationship and then “leave you hanging” is a classic means of manipulation.
Perhaps you recognize some of the above signs in your relationship, but you aren’t sure if you’re being manipulated? Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Ask yourself: Am I comfortable with this person’s attention or is it a “bit much”?
Remember that a true Love Bomb is a manipulation tactic. If the attention feels too big and self-serving (for the giver), it probably is. Trust your instincts.
Ask yourself: Am I afraid to confront my partner for fear of their reaction?
Your desire to keep the peace might be more connected to an abusive response by your partner who might berate you, gaslight you, or guilt you.
Ask yourself: Is my partner respecting my boundaries?
A partner who ignores your boundaries isn’t offering mutual respect. For example, perhaps you told your partner you are planning a night out with your friends. Your partner agrees but on the date of the event, begins to use emotional tactics to manipulate you to not go. Or maybe you’re out and your partner shows up to “crash”. These techniques exemplify crossing boundaries.
While I can’t say I know everything about this topic, (I don’t and I’m not a psychologist or therapist which is who I urge you to discuss your experiences with) I wanted to offer some bits I learned in my research. Here are some additional resources to guide you:
Relationships: Beware Gaslighting
This isn’t a blog to explore the how, the what, the what-to-do with respect to gaslighting. Remember I’m not a psychologist or a therapist, just an author who’s done a bit of research for their book (Here’s a link to a resource written by someone more in-the-know than I am). The purpose of this blog is to consider gaslighting in terms of the “everyday” relationship. Ultimately, this sinister form of manipulation culminates when the victim questions their sanity, but that’s not how gaslighting begins.
Relationships are tricky creatures from the get-go. Typically two people with distinct personalities are working to come together and maintain a bond. This is difficult for two people with completely healthy approaches to relationships and communication. Add complicating factors like mental health issues, trauma and/or abuse, addictions, different perspectives, varied life experiences, so on and so forth, and the playing field went from being rolling hills to the Rocky Mountains.
Gaslighting, then, is one of those insidious tools used between partners to manipulate the other’s emotions. Like the love bomb, it isn’t necessarily something that is easily identifiable, especially when trust has been established in a relationship and if you aren’t sure what to look for. Here’s an example of how gaslighting might look in a typical relationship:
Let’s pretend you’ve had the feeling that your partner isn’t being completely honest with you about what they’ve been doing. Your spidey-senses are tingling, so you decide it's time to ask about some things you’ve noticed, at least to calm your insecurities. When you ask your partner about the late nights and the strange hushed phone call from the other night, your partner twists your questions back on you as if what you’ve made are accusations, and suddenly you’re being accused of being a liar. That perhaps you’re “making up '' mysterious phone calls and accusing your partner of being late because you’re doing something wrong while they’re away. Your partner might say, “Guilty people make accusations about what they’re doing wrong to deflect, afterall.” Your partner’s guilt trip about your lack of trust and oversensitivity throws you off since that’s not what your intentions were. Right? Maybe your partner is right. You struggle to recalibrate your thoughts, because what started as just a conversation to “clear the air” has you defending yourself, doubting your intentions and your feelings, along with doubting your instincts.
The thing is, even normal, everyday, regular people can deploy a “gaslight”. This isn’t only a tool of the shady or the narcissist or the sociopath. It is a learned tool—a form of avoidance and deflection—which makes it important to be able to identify one and call the behavior out immediately. In The Messy Truth About Love, Hannah’s ex-boyfriend used this technique, calling her “over-sensitive” and “dramatic”. The awful thing about persistent gaslighting even in a “typical” relationship is the ugly way it preys on beliefs about self, feeding on insecurities and forcing those wounds to grow and fester.
If your partner uses this tool, it's important to call it out for what it is. You might need help with this, so find help! And if your situation is abusive, seek help immediately.
The WHY Behind The Messy Truth About Love
The Messy Truth About Love has been out for over a month now and I waited to write this post to avoid any spoilers, but I think its safe to explore this topic further without harming your reading experience. But in case you want to read The Messy Truth About Love without them, then probably stop reading NOW.
Here are the trigger warnings, just in case you need them
Ready to read more behind-the-scenes? Scroll for more…
When I set out to write The Messy Truth About Love, I had no idea that it was going to dive into an abusive relationship. In fact, since I was writing about Seth (a reoccurring character from The Ugly Truth) I thought his mental health recovery in the midst of his own childhood abuse situation would be as dark as I dove. Only Hannah made me look closer at her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Sebastian. And suddenly, I was researching abusive relationships and the warning signs.
I’d planned to publish the following “Author’s Note” here, but before I did, in a fortuitous convergence of events, I was listening to a recent episode of Crime Junkies Podcast that aligned with my own purpose. It was the story of Yeardley Love.
Yeardley was a fourth-year college lacrosse player when her life was cut short in a domestic violence event. Her on-and-off-again boyfriend, also a fourth year college lacrosse player, in a fit of drunken rage, attacked her, killing her. He was arrested, found guilty of 2nd degree murder, and sentenced to 23 years in prison. That can’t bring back Yeardley to her loved ones, but they sought to honor her memory. In order to combat the pervasive way domestic violence haunts our society, Yeardley’s family started the One Love Foundation to offer education and support, specifically to college students, as they navigate their relationships. I plan on supporting with a portion of the proceeds from The Messy Truth About Love.
Here’s why (from my Author’s Note):
In 2020 the #blackandwhite challenge circulated on social media. Women posted a black and white picture of themselves to highlight empowered women, only I remember learning after the fact that the impetus of the black and white photos got lost as if we were playing a game of telephone. The origin of that particular “challenge” was rooted in Turkey when women woke up to yet another black and white photo in the newspaper of another murdered woman. This time it was of Pinar Gultekin, a 27-year-old Turkish woman who’d been murdered—strangled, burned, then buried in concrete—by her ex-boyfriend in what was called an “honour killing.” Why? Because she told him “No.” Because she didn’t want to date him. Because she had moved on, he hadn’t and decided to choose for her. The unfortunate reality is that Gultekin’s photo in the newspaper was one of many black and white photos of murdered women in Turkey. Fed up and needing a way to fight back, Turkish women created the black and white photo reminder to increase awareness about the horrifically high femicide rates, specifically in Turkey, at the hands of their intimate partners.
They wanted change.
Pilar Gulekin’s story might have appeared in black and white—a photo and words on the page—but her life was lived in color, in a collection of experiences and relationships that made her a real human. Just like the many other stories and statistics we’re able to access in black and white, but rarely offer the color image.
Consider these black and white statistics from the United Nations and the World Health Organization:
Of the approximately 3.9 billion women in the world, over 736 million of them have been subjected to physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. It roughly estimates to 1 in 3 women though this statistic doesn’t include sexual harassment.
Most violence against women is committed by intimate partners or former husbands, and for those women who have been in an intimate relationship, 16% of those women will experience violence perpetrated by their partner against them.
In 2020, 81,000 women and girls were killed, and over half of those were at the hands of their intimate partner or other family member (and that’s only the ones we know about).
Less than 40% of women who experience violence at the hands of family or an intimate partner seek help, and less than 10% of those reach out to law enforcement.
Globally, violence against women disproportionately affects women in lower-middle- income situations.
I’m a fan of Crime Junkies (the true-crime podcast) and watching true crime documentaries. I’m not exactly sure why that is, though due to their popularity, I know I’m not alone. Though many of these stories shared offer context and work to flesh out the truth for the victim, I wonder if they provide the listener with a voyeuristic ability to stand outside of it. As if we’re passing by a terrible car accident and need to see the gruesome reality but sigh with relief that it didn’t include us. What gets to me about these stories: most of the cases are crimes against women. I wish I was surprised by this, but the unfortunate (and frighteningly pervasive attitude) is that violence against women is the norm, and worse, the undercurrent that somehow it was probably her fault.
No one does black and white voyeurism better than Americans. We’re great about looking at a black and white photo of a woman who’s been murdered in Turkey and distancing ourselves from it. It isn’t in our country, right?
Except there are black and white statistics that say it is. A study done by Asher and Lyric about women traveling on their own in the world and how they might consider their safety relative to various locations in the world. Asher and Lyric ranked the countries using datapoints that examined things like “walking alone at night,” the country’s “homicide rates against women,” “nonpartner sexual violence,” and “partner sexual violence,” as well as “attitudes about women and violence against women in general.” Out of the 50 countries examined, want to know where the United States lined up? Nineteenth with a C- sandwiched between Tunisia and Ukraine. And get this, the United States ranked 7th highest for intimate partner violence (Only Brazil, Morocco, India, Thailand, Turkey, and Chile ranked higher in that category). Turkey was 5th.
Take that in for a moment. Turkey—where Pilar Gultekin was killed for telling her former boyfriend “no”—was only two spots higher than the United States.
We want to distance ourselves and claim that kind of violence doesn’t happen in the United States, but those black and white statistics don’t lie, those black and white photos in newspapers, and the words written to offer the latest true-crime story offer us surface level truth. We look closer—and every single one of us should be looking closer—tell us a deeper truth. Each of those faces, every single one of those names, and every statistic is linked to a full-color story. Like Yeardley Love.
Hannah’s experience in The Messy Truth About Love is meant to showcase the subversive way abuse occurs in an intimate partnership. I’m going to go out on a limb and make the claim that women don’t walk into a relationship thinking it will be or become abusive. Then once immersed in that situation, getting out of it isn’t a black and white solution of just walking away (even if we’d like it to be). How does one leave without financial stability? What if there are children? Does she have supportive friends and family to help her? What if she goes to school with her abuser, like Hannah? And even if a woman leaves, what if their partner doesn’t get the message? What if he doesn’t adhere to the law? Or what if there aren’t any laws to protect her?
Hannah’s experience in this story is mild (I needed a positive and hopeful ending, folks). She’s a singular perspective. The truth is that the women most adversely affected by these black and white statistics are women of color, women immersed in low socio-economic circumstances, trans women. I can’t trivialize women’s experiences to say that their stories all wind up hopeful and positive like Hannah’s. There are too many cold-case files, too many murders, too many statistics, too many young children without mothers, too many stories to say that women’s stories aren’t happy or hopeful. It’s heartbreaking.
I need hope.
And yet, I don’t have anything very hopeful to offer with respect to this issue. I don’t have that glimmer of light to say: “Look! We can get better.” Only after I wrote this, our nation’s highest court overturned the landmark Roe versus Wade reversing women’s bodily autonomy. So my hope meter feels like it’s running a little low. Why? While body rights may seem a separate issue from intimate partner violence, they aren’t that disparate. Both issues communicate an attitude about women and where her agency lies, both of which say it’s outside of her own autonomy and in the hands of someone else. As Americans we want to distance ourselves and say intimate partner violence isn’t an American problem, but it is. It’s a national problem. It’s a global problem.
If you are a woman in trouble, please reach out. Here are some national resources for you:
https://www.thehotline.org/ or 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
https://www.rainn.org/ or 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
https://www.joinonelove.org/ (a great resources to temperature check your own relationship. There’s an app as well and everything is confidential.
Please call 9-1-1 if you are in immediate danger
4 Things You Should Know about The Messy Truth About Love Before Reading
This book feels different to me somehow. I’m not exactly sure why, but for those of you who’ve followed the books since the beginning, maybe you’ll be able to tell me why this one feels different? And maybe it’s just me being insecure. (LOL).
Here’s what I think you need to know walking into it:
It’s a Second Chance Love Story
I enjoy the idea of getting a do-over. This one isn’t like the later in life do-over in The Letters She Left Behind with Adam and Alex who are in their forties. Instead, this is a retry between two characters—Seth and Hannah—who had crushes on one another in high school, but didn’t really have the opportunity to see where it might take them. That’s where the do-over happens, because now they are both in college, they’ve had some real-world experiences to teach them new lessons and they can try this again (and hopefully get it right).
It’s a Slow Burn
I wouldn’t want you walking into this book thinking: Oh. Since it’s a new adult college book, there’s probably lots of sex. There is some, but it takes a while to get there, my friends, and it isn’t overtly explicit. Think The Stories Stars Tell or In the Echo of this Ghost Town level rather than the typical “new adult” kind of book you might have read. I would rate it as an 18+ but I think it’s appropriate for a 16+ audience.
There are Trigger Warnings
If it’s a book by me, then chances are it’s got a trigger warning or two. This one isn’t any different. Here’s the trigger warning letter if it’s important for you to know.
I’m Proud of this Story
This was a difficult story to write. It wasn’t because of the content so much as it was writing a story about characters I already knew and were growing up. It feels like there’s a lot more pressure attached to getting that right because unlike new characters in which readers don’t have any preconceived ideas, these characters already have people who love them.
I think I did it. Seth still feels like Seth to me, only four years older. Hannah is still Hannah only more developed. Abby and Gabe make an appearance, and they also feel true to who they would be on this timeline.
The thing is: I was afraid to write this book. And I did it anyway. So that’s something to be proud of.
And there you have it. Four things… Four weeks and counting.