3 Ways Fictional Marriages Can Sabotage Real Ones—and How To Get It Right

Fiction #3: My spouse will respond to me in the way I want—and if they don’t, there’s something wrong.

Truth #3: My spouse is a very different person from me, with a different makeup in many ways—and thus is unlikely to always respond the way I want even though they deeply care about me.

One of the most pernicious ramifications of fictional portrayals of women in hard or soft porn, and of men in erotica and romance stories, is how these portrayals subconsciously set up completely unrealistic expectations for how our spouse “should” behave and act in certain situations.

For example, most men in this culture have regularly seen either hard-core pornography or soft-core erotic scenes in the average streaming TV series—and don’t realize just how much it has shaped their view of what mutual, loving intimacy is and what their wife “should” want when it comes to sex. After all, the women in those erotic scenes are always eager for it. Not only does her bad, emotional day at work not get in the way of her libido—it sparks her to want to hop into bed to feel better. Needless to say, many real-life women are wired quite differently. Although one in four women do have a higher desire than their husbands (according to our most recent research), in most marriages the husband has the higher drive. And although such a husband may not be surprised that his wife wants a listening ear as soon as she gets home from the emotional day at work, he may be very surprised if he reaches for her later that night and discovers she is not eagerly hoping for sexual comfort. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about sex (or about him)—but it does mean that she is wired differently than he is.

Or, when the heroine in the romance novels gets weepy, worried, and withdrawn after a fight, the hero always pursues her to find out what’s wrong and reassure her of his undying affection. That is, of course, what many real-life women wish would happen! But in real life we can’t think that is what should happen. Why? Because after a fight a man is highly likely to want to withdraw, too! Not because he doesn’t care but because he may instinctively want time and space to process what just happened, address his own hurt or anger and/or think about what to do next.

It is so crucial to realize that the real, warm, caring person we are married to isn’t any less warm or caring just because they are real. Just because they are not consistent with the fictional portrayals we see all around us. Let’s learn to not only avoid the fictional expectations—but also to love and celebrate the person our spouse really is.