For die-hard fans who spent their adolescent years on fanfiction hosting sites like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own, figuring out how to separate fanfiction from real-life relationships can be troubling.
Reading fanfiction is a form of escapism. What better way to escape reality than becoming totally immersed as the main character of your favorite self-insert? It seems innocent enough, but when fantasies about your favorite characters and your relationship with a romantic partner have to coexist, the line between reality and fiction can get blurry. This can lead to unmanaged expectations, resentment and even harmful ideologies. So, does reading fanfiction hurt relationships? And if it does, is there a way to safely enjoy these stories?
Managing Expectations
If fanfiction served as your first introduction of sorts to the world of dating and relationships, you may have preconceived ideas of what a relationship should be like.
On r/LongDistance, one user worries about how fanfiction will affect her long-distance relationship. In particular, she fears that a rift may form between her and her partner, with fanfiction creating unrealistic expectations for what her relationship should look like.
This user’s experience with fanfiction is a perfect example of what can actually happen when people fail to manage expectations in romantic relationships. Looking at the world of fanfiction, the issue tends to lie in the one-sidedness of the narrative.
Aurisha Smolarski, a licensed marriage and family therapist, weighs in. “Reading fanfiction can create expectations around idealized situations that have outcomes that can be manifested by the writer,” Smolarski says. “In real life, there is another person who has their own feelings that can’t actually be written in and are often unpredictable. It can create the expectation around perfect communication, perfect responses or the perfect ending.” The nature of fiction is also a factor in fostering unreasonable standards for relationships.
Stories need to be exciting to keep the readers turning pages. “It can set up the expectation that there are constant high levels of excitement or drama in a relationship, making the mundane less exciting encounters that are part of a normal romantic relationship feel disappointing,” Smolarski says.
The hard truth is real life is boring sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
The “R-Word”
Few things disintegrate a once-healthy relationship faster than burgeoning resentment. Anger builds, tension rises and your partner feels miles away in the same room. “Resentment usually comes from unmet needs,” says Smolarski. “That can create a sense of imbalance that usually results from a lack of open communication. It can lead to an erosion of trust and contribute to increased conflict, dissatisfaction or disconnection.”
In the context of fanfiction, resentment grows from the unrealistic expectations garnered by stories. “Someone may discover more about themselves through being that main character, and they may develop a sense that their real-life partner cannot be like or provide them with that fantasy that they’ve created,” Smolarski says.
While resentment can stem from reading fanfiction, the issue more so represents a lack of communication between romantic partners.
How Far Is Too Far?
Self-insert fanfiction can be an outlet for self-exploration. Some common tropes in fanfiction pertain to the way people meet and fall in love, such as friends to lovers. Others explore emotional conflict and resolution such as hurt/comfort. Any of these types of stories can be useful tools for discovering and understanding what experiences you want from a relationship and what qualities you want in a partner.
Other common tropes idealize the reader, often female, being in a subordinate position to her male love interest. These stories feature morally grey topics like criminal activity and aspects of control and coercion. The mafia trope is a common example of this concept. It’s a theme in which characters belong to organized crime groups. The reader’s love interest is often the leader of the group.
If you’re wondering why someone would want to live a life of crime married to a domineering mafia leader, you’re not alone. If you want nothing more than to live a life of crime married to a domineering mafia leader, you’re also not alone.
This thread on r/FanFiction sums up the allure. Extremes, danger, and the taboo are downright sexy.
But are these tropes mirrors of an ideal romance, or something darker? “It’s perpetuating the stereotypical male-dominated scenario,” Smolarski says. “The ideal is a perpetuation of those unbalanced dynamics in a relationship.”
According to Smolarski, indulging in such fanfiction can be healthy–if you’re aware of what it means to you. “It’s an imaginary play that allows people to process their own experiences or feelings or traumas and perhaps regain a sense of power,” she says. “In that sense, it can be used in a healing way, but it has to be done with intentional awareness.”
Rewrite The Narrative
The good news is, if you love a steamy self-insert, you don’t have to give it up. The key is to maintain healthy communication within your relationship. This means sharing your wants and needs openly with your partner and listening to theirs.
Oh, and keeping secrets is out. You don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty details of your latest read if that’s not your thing, but if you’re actively keeping what you read from your partner, you should ask yourself why you feel like you have to hide.
“If it’s used as a way to express yourself, to explore your thoughts and feelings in a fantasy space that’s brought back into the relationship, it can be a useful tool,” says Smolarski. Love is complicated. There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to relationships. It comes down to what works best for you and your partner.
If reading fanfiction is causing a rift in your romance, shift the narrative and use fantasy as a tool for growth.
