While I was reading No Rings Attached, I took many notes. I've been doing this for all the books in Sapphic Book Bingo, because I'm trying to learn more about romance and writing styles. However, I took many more notes than usual for this particular book, and it's making it difficult for me to structure my analysis of it in a cohesive way.
There is definitely one topic in particular I wanted to make sure to talk about in depth, though, so I decided to delegate the topic to its own post: How No Rings Attached pushes back against the idea that talking with your lover about your feelings is an inherently good thing, and my own response to that concept.
This involves some spoilers on the themes and character development in No Rings Attached, but I'll try not to go into too many details. Mainly, I'm using the book as a foundation for talking about romance more broadly (including topics that affect real relationships).
I have already written a post about why I think it's good to be open and vulnerable in a romantic relationship. I feel very strongly about this idea, and I've been happy to see books that portray it as always being a good thing. For a while, I thought this was going to be one of those books.
The book has two leads, Lia and Grace. Lia is the one who believes in bringing emotions to the forefront--she's active about it, she's very good at doing it, and initially it's something that attracts Grace to her. But over time, Grace comes to resent Lia for this trait of hers, and eventually starts belittling her for it.
So how did this situation come to be?
Pressuring people to be in relationships
Technically I view this as a seperate topic, but since it's a major recurring idea in the book, and it is a topic that the book feeds into the topic of being open in relationships, I feel I need to go over it.
Several times, the book reiterates the point that not everyone needs to be in a romantic relationship, and that it doesn't matter what their reasons are for that being the case, what matters is that it's their personal choice. I want to make it clear that I agree with this point, too.
The reason this point is relevant to the story is because Grace is one such person who has decided that she is not going to get into any romantic relationships. Many of her reasons are connected to past trauma with people she's gotten close to, rather than because she doesn't want to be close to someone. But again, the point is that it doesn't matter what her reasons are, they are her own. She understands her own wants, needs, and boundaries, and how those things all interact and interplay with each other, and what choices make the most sense to her in that context. And she's decided that even though relationships come with pros and cons, all in all she prefers not to be in one.
But hopefully you can see how this ends up being problematic territory in a romance book where she is one of the two leads. It is practically a foregone conclusion that she is going to end up with someone, and since her particular background is one of trauma preventing her from getting into relationships, you can probably see how the story is going to involve her new lover helping her heal from that trauma. That's... not exactly what happens, but the fact remains that it is very easy to interpret the story as "correcting" Grace on her original standpoint.
So this point is something the characters wrestle with, as well. To her credit, Lia does her absolute best to respect Grace's boundaries and choices on this front. Not only does she acknowledge Grace's right to not be in a relationship before Grace ever has to give many details about it, but Lia continues to push against their mutual friend Rosie from trying to set them up with each other, even as it becomes more obvious that they're growing closer to each other.
Although this is all murky territory, I will say that I think it's entirely possible for a book to acknowledge that not everyone needs to be in relationships, while simultaneously acknowledging that it's okay for people to change their mind about what it is they want (and the change can go in the opposite direction!). Whether No Rings Attached succeeds at this in a respectful manner or not... is not really my concern right now. Again, I'm bringing up this topic in order to provide context for the main point of this post.
Arguments against opening up about feelings
Lia promises not to do anything with Grace that Grace would be uncomfortable with. But this turns out not to be a simple promise to fulfill.
The thing is, Grace does like Lia, a lot. And Grace does want to do some intimate things with her--dancing, kissing, cuddling. Maybe even some sexual stuff. Because the fact of the matter is Grace still has her own emotional responses to being with Lia, some more physical than others, and she wants to be able to indulge those feelings as they happen. And Lia enjoys being part of that, too, so it should be fine, right?
Every time Grace makes a move on Lia, though, Lia feels compelled to ask Grace what this means about her feelings for Lia, or what direction she wants to be going. And once Grace is asked this question enough times--often interrupting a kiss in progress--she starts getting irritated about it.
She has already stated more than once that she doesn't want a long-term relationship. When clarifying that she still likes partaking in certain romantic or sexual encounters, she also specifies that if Lia asks her what it means about what she's feeling, the answer is that Grace doesn't know. Grace is not interested in examining these feelings, but she is certain that she doesn't want a long-term relationship, so why is examination necessary in the first place? Can't the two of them just enjoy what they have in the moment for what it is?
Tied in with this are those previously mentioned feelings of being pressured to be in a relationship. Even though Lia says she doesn't want to pressure her, Lia also makes it clear that she'd love being in a long-term relationship with Grace if that were an option. Even if Lia weren't pressuring her, Rosie is definitely pressuring the both of them (only half-jokingly), and it's clear that Grace has already felt the same pressure from society as a whole to get into a relationship that most of us feel in real life.
Grace is already a people-pleaser, someone inclined to do things that people ask of her before ever questioning herself if she's actually okay with doing those things or not. Grace's growing relationship with Lia started with one of those types of requests, and it snowballed into following more suggestions from there. She doesn't want to be in a long-term relationship, but she also doesn't want to hurt or disappoint Lia, and Lia's constant wondering about whether the relationship might be going somewhere is just a reminder to Grace that she's hurting Lia, or will be forced to hurt Lia eventually when they finally seperate from each other.
When taking all of the above into consideration, I certainly had to stop and consider whether my own standpoint--that talking about feelings is always good--was a correct one. I had to stop and wonder about whether it was something that was actually invasive or pressuring in certain contexts, if avoiding talking about feelings in a relationship can be a good thing.
Well... I think what it comes down to is there's a lot of problems going on here that aren't really connected to opening up about emotions.
Toxic coping mechanisms
To Grace, it might seem like saying "I don't want a long-term relationship" should be enough. But it's not, it never is as long as someone is still in the middle of a relationship and actively testing the boundaries of that relationship.
Everyone has different definitions of what "romance" entails. Everyone has different wants, values, and expectations. Everyone has different boundaries. Everyone has different ideas of what the different stages of a relationship are, whether one particular action or another is something you only do when you're really close or not, or if it's actually something very light and casual.
If Lia wants to respect Grace's boundaries, and respect her desire not to get into a long-term relationship, she needs to be able to ask Grace what her definition of a long-term relationship even is. She can't just intuit it, especially when Grace suddenly starts getting more physically affectionate with her than she had in the past. If Lia has her own ideas about what the changes in physical contact mean, she needs to clarify if Grace's intentions are the same!
And yes, Grace says she doesn't know what all of her feelings mean. That's an okay state to be in, and an acceptable answer to the question. It doesn't mean Lia was wrong for asking the question, it doesn't mean it's okay to insult Lia for trying to communicate about these things.
I can see some of myself in Grace. Sometimes people will ask me a simple question and I'll subconsciously interpret it to be a judgment on me, and get defensive in response. But it's on me for doing that, not the person for asking a sincere question.
On a similar note, I am also a people-pleaser like Grace, and I worry what people will think of me if I don't go along with things they ask me to do--or even if they don't ask me to do something, I'll feel like I should go out of my way to please them if the opportunity comes up. But, again... that's not on other people, that's on me for reading something into the situation. (Most of the time.) And even if people do pressure me, it's still on me to stand up for myself and take the actions I want to take, or avoid the actions I don't want to take as the case may be.
Grace has her own trauma. It's different from mine, but it's still trauma, and it still affects how she interacts with people, just like mine affects how I interact with people. So I get that certain coping mechanisms come from having dealt with too many bad situations in the past. Once out of those situations, though, it's our responsibility to figure out how to dial back those instinctual inclinations and deal with situations in healthier ways.
If Grace is judging herself or feeling guilty, she doesn't have to. If she does, though, that doesn't give her the right to criticize Lia for doing something perfectly reasonable. It is not Lia's fault that Grace feels the pressure that she does. If Lia deals with Grace's sensitivity in a careless way, then the solution is for Grace to remove herself from Lia, not to insult Lia for making efforts to understand better.
And this is all still dealing with Grace. It doesn't get into another aspect that I think was overlooked too much in the book:
Lia has her own needs
A lot of focus is put on Grace's feelings and anxieties, and how hard it is for her to deal with the sense of pressure that comes from Lia testing the waters to see if Grace is interested in a deeper relationship. But the fact is that Lia is dealing with her own feelings of loneliness and responding to her own desires for emotional and physical affection, just like Grace is, and Lia has a right to respond to those needs as much as Grace has a right to respond to hers.
I do not see how offering the option of entering into a deeper relationship would ever harm anyone, in and of itself (so long as you respect whatever the person's response is and don't pressure them). Yes, Lia's offering it because she wants to be in one, but that's the whole thing of what makes a romantic relationship good--both people are invested in caring for each other and being cared for by the other. Not every match will work, but the ones that do are wonderful, and there's no way for them to happen unless at least one person goes "I don't know everything you're feeling about it, but I want you to know I think it would work from my end of things."
Now, just as Grace has a responsibility to her own actions, Lia also has a responsibility to her own. I felt multiple times that if Grace treated me the way she treated Lia--saying she's not interested in a relationship, then being very physically forward, then getting angry when I asked what the change of treatment was for--then I would've exited that relationship. If Lia felt the same way as me, then that would've been the ideal thing for her to do, too. But time and time again, she chose to stay, for better or for worse.
It also would've been nice, though, if Lia had stood up for her right to ask questions about the relationship so long as she was an active participant in that relationship. I think it set a bad precedent that she just let Grace badmouth her for trying to talk about it.
Isn't it okay for fictional relationships to have some toxic elements, though?
It... is... with some caveats, I should say.
Personally, I feel like, if the author is going to depict some toxic behavior, that author has a responsibility to point out (in one way or another) the fact that the behavior is toxic. This is why I would've felt better if Lia had stood up for her perfectly responsible and healthy relationship behavior, rather than let Grace have the final say on it. Or if Lia didn't do it, maybe another character in the story could have done it. Or the narration itself!
However, authors are human beings that carry their own baggage, too. They may bring some toxic elements into their own work without realizing it. I still think the work is worth criticizing if this ends up being the case--so that hopefully the toxic tendencies don't spread too far--but it's hard for me to really think less of the author if they're genuinely doing their best and it's understandable where the toxic elements might have come from. And like, not everyone is intimately familiar with all the reasons why open communication is so important, for example!
In this case, I do think the author Rachel Lacey recognized that something was wrong with how Grace handled relationships. Grace has to deal with some difficult self-reflection by the end of the book, and then she ends up going to therapy (which is good in part because she was getting dangerously close to treating Lia as her therapist instead).
But... whatever message Lacey was trying to send, I feel like it got muddled a bit, because I'm not 100% sure on what she thinks the end solutions were. I just feel like, whatever it was, it missed the actual mark, and the topic is important enough to me that I felt it deserved its own post.
A postscript about trauma
I mentioned earlier that sometimes I have a tendency to feel like people are judging me even when they're not. In taking responsibilty for my actions, I'm working on becoming more aware of when I react this way, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this post, in and of itself, was me being defensive on some level.
As noted, I felt the characters in the book (and by extension, the book itself) were very critical of a notion that is very important to me, the notion that open communication about feelings is important in a romantic relationship (or any relationship, honestly). It got to the point where I felt like I had to defend myself against the book, and this thought became overwhelming and distracting enough that it interfered with my analysis of it. I had to write this post before I could really concentrate on anything else about it.
This is something I've realized I've had to contend with when reading a lot of these books so far. I have my own trauma that I have to deal with from time to time, and the nature of the trauma is such that I don't think I have any realistic way of avoiding it. I don't really ever know what will trigger it, and sometimes stuff that seems outwardly boring and vanilla will trigger it (like One Walk in Winter), so it's not just a matter of avoiding certain topics or tags. I really feel like it comes out of nowhere, but even so, it seems to happen a lot.
I feel like it's been holding me back from making as much progress on this reading challenge as I've wanted. I'm not sure exactly how I want to deal with it, but I feel like I need to make a change of some sort.