Romance Writing Mistake: The Big Bad Secret and Why It is a Writing Mistake

A common problem in romances is for one of the main protagonists to be suffering from a "secret." 

I've written elsewhere how irritating I generally find this approach. It entails forcing the reader to wait several chapters to discover what supposed awful issue will supposedly break up the couple. Of course, it won't...

I don't mind that the couple will stay together. The genre calls for that outcome. The problem is that as in Whedon's rather meta episode about fear in the haunted house, the secret rarely lives up to all the angst beforehand. 

Really, you couldn't just have told me?

However, another worse problem attends the "secret" with romances. In order to show that the couple belong together, the secret must be such that forgiveness or understanding is required. That is, the secret has to challenge the relationship--from which it will then recover. 

And occasionally this demands a superhuman feat of acceptance that simply cannot be accomplished in the few chapters allotted the climax.

Consequently, the writer cheats--or allows the main characters to cheat. The character with the secret demands forgiveness and understanding. At which point, a great irony kicks in--

Because the secret isn't the problem. The problem is the behavior attending the secret. 

In the latest book of this type I read, the main character with the secret puts the entire relationship on hold until the lover accepts the secret. "If you can't understand what I went through..." He takes a fairly complicated topic (the issue is drugs) and insists that his lover read the (fairly biased) material that he presents, all while insisting that he is being objective. He turns a traumatic event in the lover's life--that is completely disconnected from his own life--into being all about him. Now that you brought it up...

It is one thing to say, "I hope you accept me as I am." It is another to say, "You must react to me the way that I require." The issue becomes not about action--please don't treat me this way--which can still prove difficult but falls within the realm of possibility--but about a kind of mind game: You mustn't think about me that way; that is, you must never assume that a person who takes drugs is also an addict. Here are the proper attitudes you must assume instead. 

And the lover caves. 

Maybe the main character is right. Maybe the main character is wrong. But the behavior is a screaming red flag. At one point, the author has a friend say to the lover, "Run" in regards to the relationship. The reader is supposed to perceive this as lack of support.

My perception: RUN! RUN FAR! RUN FAST! RUN RUN RUN!

It's always about the writing.

Many of the negative reviews were upset that the author tackled a controversial subject "without trigger warnings." I thought this was daft. Amazon even offered to give me my money back. I thought this was ridiculous. I bought the book of my own free will. I'm a big girl. I can handle whatever the book throws at me. 

In any case, my objections come down to the writing. Interesting enough, a mostly positive review got this problem of secrets totally right--and entirely from a reader's perspective, which I appreciate in a review:

Then, when he finally reveals his past, I found the plot to be confusing. I’m super on board with the idea of life not being black and white—and judgments coming on way too fast, but I think after all they’d been through, Seb had a right to get upset with his past.

Yet, Marcus made it all sound like he was a victim only and Seb was in the wrong.

I’m not trying to imply that Marcus is in the wrong, but Seb absolutely wasn’t. So that whole defens[ive] attitude that Marcus had, simply made me feel worse for Seb. I think the point Marcus wanted [to make] could have still been made without calling everyone around him a hypocrite. No matter what circumstances someone is in, you cannot expect to receive zero judgments [especially] when you live on a dangerous line. Especially from people who care for you. I loved Marcus a lot but by the end, I started disliking him—and not because of his choices in the past, or his morals about those choices—but mostly because he seemed first to be sweet and then by the end, seemed irrational and defensive—just not like the character we first got to know. 

--Jacque Loftus