So I’ll be honest I started reading erotica when I was 12, thanks wattpad. Obviously I had no business doing that. However none that I’m older I’m able to recognize that a lot of romance books today are only popular because of the sex in them and not the plot. The plots are absolutely horrible. For example I once saw a dark romance book in which the mmc slaughtered the family of the fmc yet he smiled at her and asked if she was OK and of course she fell for him. Everyone in the comments was just swooning over it too.
It’s genuinely concerning. There’s definitely layers to this but woman should not be finding men who assualt, yell, cheat, or abuse the fmc as romantic. I feel like calling it dark romance is just a disservice to dark romance. There is nothing romancing about someone putting a gun inside your vagina.
I used to live reading romance books. But I prefer to read manwhas and romance Mangas now. Or I’ll just read non-fiction.
You need to broaden your horizons. Lots of romance books do have problematic elements, but so do lots of non-romance books. A vast number of romance books contain no explicit scenes at all (and some are as explicit as the most explicit hardcore porn).
If you’re cherry-picking your examples from TikTok, Wattpad, Reddit, or Instagram, of course you’re running into the most heightened examples. But there’s romance out there that’s healthy, gentle, non-explicit (some is so closed door there’s not even kissing), etc.
As far as concerning? Do I worry when I see people want relationships they see in books that aren’t healthy? Sure; but believe me, the modeling of healthy family and relationship dynamics is a) pretty poor in most books and b) have you actually talked to readers who read mostly genre romance? They read it for the same reasons people who read thrillers, horror, mystery, and sci-fi do. Heightened emotions, drama, an escape from real life. And most people are able to separate fantasy from reality.
I might personally prefer romances that embody healthy relationships, but I in no way think that means other people aren’t as capable of differentiating what’s in their books from what they should want in life as I am. Romance readers aren’t less intelligent than lit readers or fantasy readers.