Should We Ban Romance Novels to Save Western Civilization?

by Claudio Bresciano

Every few years, the same debate resurfaces.

Pornography is destroying relationships. It is distorting men’s perception of sexuality. It is creating unrealistic expectations. It is replacing genuine human intimacy with simulation.

Millions of articles, documentaries, and studies attempt to demonstrate its harmful effects.

Yet almost no one dares to ask the symmetrical question.

If pornography distorts men’s expectations, could romance novels be doing something structurally similar to women?

The question is uncomfortable because it challenges a deeply rooted cultural assumption: some fantasies are considered dangerous, while others are seen as harmless — or even beneficial.

But psychologically, both may operate through remarkably similar mechanisms.

Two Sides of the Same Simulation

Perhaps the real issue has never been the specific content of these fantasies, but their ability to replace reality.

Pornography constructs a world in which the other person exists primarily as an object of immediate gratification.

Romance novels construct a world in which the other person exists primarily to fulfill limitless emotional needs.

In one case, the person disappears.

In the other, reality disappears.

Both worlds succeed because they eliminate everything that makes genuine relationships difficult: uncertainty, negotiation, imperfection, patience, compromise, and frustration.

Don Quixote Syndrome

Miguel de Cervantes understood this mechanism more than four centuries ago.

Don Quixote does not lose his mind because he reads.

He loses his mind because he can no longer distinguish literature from reality.

After consuming countless chivalric romances, he tries to force the real world to obey the rules of those stories.

Windmills must be giants.

Inns must be castles.

Peasant women must be princesses.

The problem was never the books.

The problem was trying to make reality conform to fictional laws.

Emma Bovary: The Romantic Counterpart

Gustave Flaubert created what may be the feminine counterpart to Don Quixote.

Emma Bovary devours romantic novels until she develops impossible expectations about love.

Her husband, Charles, is a decent, hardworking, and reliable man.

But to her, he is unbearably dull.

Why?

Because he does not exist inside a novel.

Emma longs for endless passion, perfect lovers, overwhelming emotions, and dramatic romance.

Since reality never lives up to those literary ideals, she rejects precisely the stability that could have brought her happiness.

Her pursuit of perfect love ends in financial ruin, despair, and ultimately suicide.

She does not fail because she loves too deeply.

She fails because she tries to live inside fiction.

The New Digital Don Quixote

Today, books are no longer the only source of fantasy.

Television series.

TikTok.

Instagram.

Wattpad.

Netflix.

All generate increasingly sophisticated versions of the same phenomenon.

The perfect man.

The perfect woman.

The perfect relationship.

Instant chemistry.

Eternal passion.

Cinematic reconciliations.

Conversations in which everyone always says exactly the right thing.

Modern algorithms learn which emotions we crave and generate stories optimized to maximize them.

Then we return home and discover something unsettling.

Real people were not written by screenwriters.

A Curious Cultural Asymmetry

It is fascinating to observe how differently society judges these two phenomena.

When a man develops unrealistic expectations after consuming pornography, we quickly speak of addiction, objectification, or cognitive distortion.

When a woman develops unrealistic expectations after consuming thousands of romantic narratives, we often describe it simply as “having high standards.”

Yet structurally, the two processes may be remarkably similar.

In both cases, direct experience is replaced by an idealized model.

In both cases, reality begins to feel inadequate.

In both cases, simulation starts competing with everyday life.

A TNA Perspective

The Theory of Axiomatic Necessity (TNA) offers another way to understand this phenomenon.

Every individual constructs an initial framework of expectations that functions as a boundary condition for future relationships.

If that boundary condition is built primarily from highly optimized fictional simulations designed to maximize emotional impact, then reality will inevitably appear defective.

Not because reality has become worse.

But because it was never designed to compete with fiction.

The problem does not originate in the operational dynamics of everyday relationships.

It begins much earlier, when the system adopts an impossible model as one of its foundational assumptions.

From that moment on, every real relationship appears disappointing.

Not because it truly is.

But because it is being measured against a phantom.

Is This Destroying Western Civilization?

Perhaps the question itself is misleading.

Romance novels do not destroy marriages any more than pornography automatically destroys sexuality.

What can become destructive is our inability to remember that both belong to the realm of fiction.

Civilizations remain stable when their members are willing to tolerate the inevitable friction of reality.

Human relationships are never perfect.

They never satisfy every emotional need.

They never eliminate conflict.

When a culture begins demanding permanent emotional perfection, stable relationships become increasingly difficult.

Not because people have become worse.

But because the ideals against which they compare reality have become impossible.

So… Should We Ban Romance Novels?

Probably not.

Banning fiction would be as absurd as banning windmills to prevent another Don Quixote.

The books were never the problem.

Neither were the movies.

Nor the screens.

The real problem begins when we forget that we are consuming representations and start using them as standards by which to judge reality itself.

Cervantes warned us centuries ago.

Flaubert did the same generations later.

Perhaps both were describing the very phenomenon that today’s algorithms amplify: a mind that, after consuming enough simulations, begins expecting the real world to behave like a carefully written novel.

And no civilization can sustain healthy relationships if millions of people gradually become more emotionally attached to perfectly designed fictional characters than to the wonderfully imperfect human beings who exist in real life.

“If you enjoyed this structural approach to human behavior, read my previous article on how we sculpt the riverbed of reality and why what we do always ‘is’.”