Dear Ms. Draven,
I recently moved in with my boyfriend. The apartment is kind of small so there isn’t much in the way of privacy. One night, while my boyfriend was cooking dinner, I glanced at his computer screen and discovered that he was having sex with some other woman. I thought we had something special but how can I trust him now?
– Having Second Thoughts
Dear Having Second Thoughts:
In Romancelandia, heroes are never caught having cybersex. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, most romance heroes who aren’t Dukes from Regency England are cowboys, firemen, or vampire hunters–none of whom know how to work computers, much less use them as sex toys. Even those billionaire bad boys from Harlequin Presents always have pretty secretaries to type for them. And if you get the rare Silhouette Desire tycoon who has made his vast fortune in technology, he’s too driven by his desire to get even with his abusive father workaholic nature to even surf the web much less whisper sweet cybernothings in another woman’s ear.
The only heroes in Romancelandia who can competently use a computer are super-spies or those loving beta heroes in one of the hearth and home romance lines that are so sweet they’ll rot your teeth. And a beta hero boyfriend would never get caught having cybersex with someone else because he’d feel horribly guilty about keeping something from you. That is, if he was smart enough to know he was cheating.
I note that your boyfriend was cooking you dinner, which means that he might be more of a beta hero. (The fact that he’s not whisking you off to his mansion in South America is another clue.) Also, the fact that he didn’t even bother to hide the evidence on his computer screen suggests he might be a little bit clueless.
Now, in Romancelandia, you would not confront your boyfriend with this evidence. You would stew about it, and maybe pack your bags and leave, thinking this just confirms all your fears about ever trusting a man again. And in Romancelandia, your beta hero would chase you. Wooing you with flowers and music and a thousand other romantic gestures that real men never even think of.
Then, just when he’s starting to win you back, you would finally tell him that it can’t ever work between you because you discovered that he was having cybersex with another woman. Instead of dumping you for your passive-aggressive behavior, he would explain that it was all just a big misunderstanding. You’d find out that his gay best friend was using his computer and that the girl on the other end of the screen was actually a dude. Much laughter would ensue, you’d realize that you needed to work on your communication skills and live happily ever after.
That’s how it works in Romancelandia. In real life, however, you probably confronted him about it right away and he probably told you it wasn’t a big deal. That he didn’t know the girl, never planned to meet her, and was just engaging in a type of fantasy–not unlike the kind of fantasy women engage in when reading romance novels.
The problem with this argument is that cybersex is an interactive activity. Your boyfriend reads, then responds, then reads some more, then responds, until an intimacy is achieved with another person. And maybe you could be cool with that–maybe you could watch and it would give you ideas. Certainly, it’s about the least risky threesome you could ever manufacture. Maybe if he’d asked you, it could have spiced things up. But he obviously didn’t talk to you about it in advance, which means that it’s a kind of cheating.
If he never thought of it that way before, but he’s sorry now, you might consider giving him a second chance. Let’s find out what the other romance authors have to say.
~Stephanie Draven and the collective wisdom of Romancelandia
This is part 1 of the Romancelandia Advice series. If you or someone you know has a problem, click the ‘Contact Me’ button at the upper right hand of this website and hit me with your best shot.
While I’ve got your attention, I thought I might interest you in a few other things.
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