Dating Disasters·
FICTION FALLOUT
A couple's battle over fantasy and nonfiction reveals incompatible visions of adulthood, with one partner labeling fiction a danger to adulthood and love hanging in the balance.
Boundary or control move?
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He didn't just mock her fantasy novel, he told her fiction was rotting her brain and he didn't want to date someone who lives in stories instead of the real world.
For months, the poster says, she and her boyfriend had been a neat match in one very specific way: they both loved nonfiction. Their early connection ran through a "big Tudorian history phase," along with documentaries about Henry VIII and the tangled drama of succession. Reality-based shows were part of the shared routine, and for a while, that seemed to be enough.
She never stopped liking what she had always liked, though. High fantasy books and shows were still her thing, and at first, he didn't seem bothered that she wasn't into the same fictional worlds he wasn't into.
Then, over the past couple of months, the tone shifted.
He started backing away from the reality-based shows they used to watch together, and the comments began. Fiction, he said, was "just escapism for people who don't want to deal with real life." Fantasy, in his telling, was a waste of time. It wasn't just that he didn't enjoy it. He made it sound beneath adult attention altogether.
The annoyance got more visible in the room itself. When she watched fictional shows around him, he looked visibly irritated. When he saw her rereading a fantasy novel, he scoffed and said, "I don't understand how an adult can take that seriously."
Last night, he finally said the part that made the whole thing hard to shrug off.
He told her he "can't respect" that she wastes hours on makebelieve. He said fiction is "rotting my brain," and went further: he didn't want to date someone who lives in stories instead of the real world. According to the poster, he then made it explicit that he did not want that stuff in his home.
He said they needed to be on the same wavelength about what's worthy of their time.
She called it controlling and bizarre. He pushed back, saying it wasn't controlling at all. In his view, it was "a standard for the kind of life he wants to build."
He also told her that if she cared about intellectual growth, she'd stop reading and watching fictional media altogether and stick to nonfiction.
Now she says she feels uncomfortable, disrespected, and angry, and she does not know how to talk to him anymore.