Dark Romance Rant
I’ve just been wondering about something, and I’m genuinely curious if anyone else thinks like me.
I’ve read a lot of romance and dark romance books, and I’ve watched a ridiculous amount of romance movies too, especially Western rom coms , but Bollywood and dramas as well.
And recently, I’ve realised that I’ve started to really dislike dark romance.
Sometimes the plot itself is actually good, but it gets buried under so much smut that the story almost becomes secondary.
Other times, the idea is good, but the execution is just really poor.
But there’s one thing that bothers me more than anything else.
Why is it that in what feels like 99% of these books, movies and dramas, when a man treats the female lead like absolute shit, she still chooses him in the end?
I’m such a sucker for second male leads because, half the time, I genuinely think they have better chemistry with the female character than the actual male lead does.
They treat her well, respect her, support her and are actually there for her and yet somehow she almost never chooses them. Instead, she goes back to the dude who treated her terribly.
And I’ve noticed this outside dark romance too.
I’ve been binge watching loads of old rom coms from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, and so many of the male leads are players.
The movie doesn’t even just imply it, we literally see them with different women. Then the female lead meets him, they have chemistry, they bond, and suddenly she’s completely smitten with him.
Sometimes she even knows exactly what kind of past he has, and I’m sitting there thinking, Girl, what exactly are you seeing that I’m not? 😭
At first I wondered if it was just a Western movie thing, but I’ve seen similar patterns in Bollywood and dramas too.
And dark romance takes it to another level. Whether it’s mafia romance, billionaire romance or whatever else, I’m always wondering: what does this man actually have that makes her want him this badly?
Okay, he has a bad past. Fine. People can change. I don’t believe someone should be judged forever because of who they used to be.
But I’m talking about what he does to her.
He humiliates her. Says horrible things to her. Calls her names. Manhandles her. Hurts her. Sometimes he cheats emotionally or physically.
He completely destroys her trust and then he does the absolute bare minimum, gives some tiny apology that the book calls “groveling,” and suddenly she’s fighting this uncontrollable attraction towards him again.
Why?
Is that supposed to be love?
Because if love means, “This person treated me horribly, but I can’t stay away from him because I love him,” then where exactly does self-respect come into it?
If that’s genuinely what falling in love is supposed to look like, then respectfully, I’m good. 😭
I genuinely cannot remember reading a dark romance where the female lead eventually looks at everything he has done to her and thinks, You know what? I might love you, but I love myself enough to leave.
And then she actually leaves him for good.
Or my personal favourite possibility, she chooses the second male lead who has actually treated her well the entire time.
I would love to read a romance that spends the whole book convincing us the toxic guy is the male lead, only for the female lead to eventually realise that attraction isn’t enough and choose the other man.
And it makes me wonder whether this whole “women love bad boys” thing actually has any truth to it, or whether fiction has just repeated it so many times that we’ve accepted it as romantic.
I was watching a movie recently where this nerdy guy tries asking these attractive girls out, and they basically humiliate him.
Then another girl comes along and pretends to be his ex. She makes it sound like they had an amazing relationship and that he was incredible in bed, and suddenly the exact same girls who rejected him start finding him attractive.
And I was just sitting there like… do women actually like this? Lmao
Because I genuinely don’t understand it.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but a man becoming unavailable, toxic, promiscuous or desired by loads of other women doesn’t suddenly make him more attractive to me. If anything, I’m going in the opposite direction.
Give me the man who is loyal, respectful, obsessed with one woman and actually treats her well.
Why does that guy never get picked?