From the page to the quote: Can we apply the rules of the romance novel to real life?

By Melisa Machuca, author of the novel Measure the thread
www.melisamachuca.com/

There’s something that happens when we close a love book: for a few seconds, everything seems to make sense. Not because the story was perfect, but because it was coherent. Because what the characters felt found a way to say themselves, to sustain themselves, to get somewhere. Then we return to real life and that logic is broken. No one says exactly what they feel, the times don’t match, the answers don’t come when they should. And there the question appears, although we do not always formulate it like this: how much of what we read can exist outside of fiction?

For years we read stories where everything seemed to have a clear order. Two people meet, something upsets them, the conflict appears, what seemed to be progressing is broken and, after going through that tension, the bond is reconfigured. Not always easy, not always without damage, but with a direction. The romantic novel – incorrectly called “pink” – built a logic that, beyond its variations, repeated a promise: love is worth it.

The problem is not that promise. The problem is what we do with it.

Because at some point we start to transfer those rules to real life as if they worked the same. As if the other had to say what is always said in books at the right time. As if conflict were necessarily a stage that leads to something better. As if every story had a meaning that is revealed at the end.

And life is not always written like that.

There are links that do not advance, that do not evolve, that do not reach that point of clarity where everything fits. There are silences that are not explained, decisions that do not have an elegant closure, people who do not return. And when that happens, the distance between what we expect—because we learned it by reading—and what really happens becomes difficult to sustain.

However, reducing the romance novel to a fantasy is also a simplification.

Because what these stories do is not teach how things should happen, but insist on something deeper: that love, when it is reciprocal, finds a way to happen, to exist. That is not built solely on ambiguity, on constant doubt, on the infinite interpretation of minimal gestures. In fiction, the moment in which two characters are chosen is not coincidental. It is a consequence of a journey, of an accumulation of decisions that, at some point, become explicit.

And that, in real life, matters too.

Not in the exact way it happens in the books, but in essence. Because there is a difference between complex and confusing. Between the deep and the uncertain. Between a story that needs time and another that never ends up being defined. The romantic novel, in that sense, does not offer a perfect model, but it does offer an idea that remains valid: love is not sustained by intuition alone.

It is sustained by actions.

Perhaps therein lies the true possible transfer from fiction to reality. Not in expecting grand gestures, unexpected statements or closed endings, but in recognizing that a bond needs to be said, chosen and sustained in a concrete way. That intensity does not replace clarity. That feeling a lot does not always mean being in a story that moves forward.

For a long time, the romance novel was ridiculed for its apparent predictability. Because of its repeated structures, because of its expected outcomes. But in that questioning something more uncomfortable was lost from sight: that, in those stories, there is an emotional coherence that is often missing in real life.

In books, when someone loves, they act accordingly.

Not always good, not always without errors, but with a recognizable direction. There is no place for ties sustained solely in doubt. There are no stories that are built on the basis of what could be but never ends up being. And perhaps that is why they continue to be read, even by those who say they do not believe in them.

Because, deep down, it is not about life imitating fiction. It is that fiction, sometimes, reveals what in life we ​​avoid seeing.

That not every link is worth waiting for.
That not every unfinished story is deep.
That not everything that generates intensity has a destiny.

And also, on the other side, when there is love, it shows.

Not because it is perfect, but because it is clear. Because it doesn’t need to be interpreted all the time. Because it does not leave the other in a constant state of uncertainty. Because, even with his difficulties, he finds ways to sustain himself in the concrete.

Perhaps we cannot apply the rules of the romance novel to real life in narrative terms. Life has no chapters, it does not organize times, it does not guarantee outcomes. But we can stay with something simpler and, at the same time, more demanding: not settling for stories where love never ends appearing.

In a world where ambiguity has become the norm, where indefinition is often disguised as depth, romantic novels continue to insist on something that is uncomfortable: love, when it exists, is not hidden.

It doesn’t have to have a perfect ending. But it does need to really exist.

And that, more than a fictional rule, is a decision that we can still make.