Do men fall "in love" (romantic, sensual or desire) with fictional characters?

Can men fall in love with characters in novels? Of course they can.

Men and women fall in love with fictional characters of all kind. Think of the teen girl pining after a boy group, or the teen boy pining after a Playboy centerfold. Both are "in love" with – that is, they feel romantic and sexual interest for – a fiction. Because, of course, those media images are not real people, but a fiction created exactly for that purpose: that teen girls and boys fall in love with them.

There is some gender bias in what kind of fictitious character men and women fall in love with, with men preferring visual depictions of sexy women and women preferring narrative deptictions of strong, successful, and able men. Because of that preferrence, men fall in love more with characters in visual media, while women are more susceptible to literary characters (Shades of Grey) and celebrities (such as movie and music stars).

But not all men (nor women) are the same, and just as there are women who consume visual pornography, there are men who like to read, and some of them fall in love with characters in novels. I am an example of those.

During puberty, I very much wanted a girlfriend, but did not have the courage to approach any girl. I was so afraid of being rejected, that my default type of "relationship" became pining for girls from afar. I spent long afternoons imagining stories of how I would get to know and then interact with the girl I had a crush on. Those were stories similar to what I read: adventure stories, mostly, in the vein of Edith Blyton's Famous Five. In my daydreaming, I was the boy with the dangerous secret, and somehow that secret got me together with the girl – although my imangination never managed to go that far.

When I was around fourteen or fifteen, I began to read the novels of C. J. Cherryh. If you are familiar with the work of that author you will know that her early novels are full of some subliminal erotic or romantic tension that never leads to any kind of relationship and is in fact never named by the author or voiced by her characters. Then, in the Morgaine cycle, it becomes the overt structure of the narrative: the male protagonist falls in love with the elf-like warrior woman who forces him to serve as her knight. At first he serves her, because he must, but later, after she would have set him free, he continues to serve her out of love. A love that she does not feel and does not answer.

That relationship was such an exact image of what I felt for the girls in my life, that I fell in love with Morgaine, the female lead of the novels. And with her author, in turn. At that time I knew nothing about C. J. Cherryh, except that her name indicated a woman. I had never read an interview with her or seen a photograph of her. But I felt for her something of what I felt through her writing. Eventually I wrote a letter to her – that was before email, so I wrote on paper and by hand –, and actually received a very kind and friendly reply (which, although I didn't voice my feelings and she didn't address them, healed me of my crush – probably because her answer made me realize that she was actually a person apart from myself).

I still have the Morgaine novels in my shelf, but haven't read them in about thirty years. Today, I find the kind of relationship they depict self-abusive and prefer women who are approachable, both by being physically present and through their open behaviour. Nevertheless, when I look at those books, I still feel an echo of my past desire.

I have also had vague crushes on almost every female protagonist or love interest in all the books I have read. In fact, I would go so far as to say that any man who reads erotic or romantic stories, feels something erotic or romantic for the female characters in those novels. If he didn't feel sexual desire or romantic interest for those characters, he wouldn't read that kind of book. Because that is the purpose of reading fiction: to experience what the protagonists experience.

posted almost 8 years ago

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System‭

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I agree that it is possible to fall in love with female characters. I have on several occasions including that of shows. It isn't that I want THAT particular character, it's that I see many traits in the character I really want in a partner. This manifested with the right given personality makes it easy to fall for. Just like with everything else, not all personality and traits are appealing to everyone.

As you stated in OP, some people simply don't because they can't justify why someone can fall in love with something fake. Just like some people don't like long distance relationships because there is a lack of physical element to it even if the conversations and the person is real.

posted over 7 years ago

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ggiaquin16‭

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The good-girl-bad-boy thing has always bothered me philosophically. Yet, this scenario fulfills itself endlessly in real life. Perhaps it is a benefit to the OP she exercises this part of her psychology in a fantasy as opposed to an abusive relationship.

Men have other problems. Don't get me wromg, there's lots of other problems. Chief among them is the over-reliance on comeliness to develop global feelings of love.

One of the curiosities many people have is if there is a difference between "love" and "in love with ," and where desire fits into the equation.

I love lots of characters, think about them, even dream about them. But I've never felt desire or lust, even after spending dozens of hours (or hundreds of hours in my own work). I don't think I'm special--a pretty average dude, actually.

I've avoided porn for several years now for my own reasons, but there was no question of images producing desire and lust.

So, is it Men Are From Mars, and Women Are From Venus? Does attraction and desire follow love or in-love more often in one gender? What about the inverse: Does love or in-love follow attraction and desire more often in one gender?

I don't have these sociological answers for you. However, I can tell you women purchase 90% of the print books listed as Romance in the US. I'm not sure what conclusion I can globally draw from this. But I (personally) agree with your friend: Dudes may love characters from their books, but they don't love their characters. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Stu W‭

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I have written lots of sexy/romance/erotica stories, and I have created lots of compelling female characters that I have fallen in love with (and hate with, etc). I think many of my readers have done so too. This is a genre that generally begs for such a response -- and it's challenging to make a character within that genre who is not a cliche or stereotype.

In the last 30 or so years I think people are more inclined to fall in love with a TV or movie character than a character from a book. (The last book character I have fallen in love is Scarlett O'Hara!). In today's world, literary works tend to appeal more to people's intellectual side than to their emotional side.

Let me add that I WISH I fell in love with more female characters I read about. But I tend to read very odd things.

posted almost 8 years ago

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idiotprogrammer‭

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I tend to think of the process of writing a novel as follows: Invent a bunch of characters. Spend time with them until you fall in love. Then torture them to the brink of madness. The redeem or condemn them as you choose.

It seems to me very difficult to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe without falling in love with Lucy, LOTR without falling in love with Sam, Brideshead Revisited without falling in love with Sebastian, or The Power and the Glory without falling in love with the whiskey priest. Love seems indispensible from full engagement with these characters and their stories.

But you seem to be talking about something different. You seen to be talking about romantic love, and perhaps more specifically about erotic love. And on that score I am not so sure. Erotic love inherently seeks a consummation that no page can provide. (Mere pronography evokes lust at best.) Clearly one can crush on an actor or actress in a movie or TV show, but can one similarly crush on a character on the page? I'm not convinced. I think our love for characters is closer to friendship than to eros.

EDIT: Since the question has been edited significantly since I wrote the above answer, I will add this. The erotic impulse is founded in the lower brain's assessment of reproductive fitness. Men and women play very different roles in reproduction, and thus they look at very different qualities in making a reproductive assessment. The male assessment is clearly far more visual than the female. But also, the male satisfaction is far more fleeting than the female. The female assessment of reproductive fitness seeks a mate who will protect and provide for the young. Constancy is part of fantasy for the female in a way it is not for the male.

Also, males assess other males, and females assess other females, as potential reproductive rivals. So men and women are naturally repelled by each other's pornography.

This is at the biological level, of course. Our responses are quite different at the social level. But the pornographic and quasi-pornographic is pitched to the biological response. And therein lies the difference between Pride and Prejudice and 50 Shades of Gray.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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