Those of you who read Truly might remember that Allie, who is the heroine of Madly, comes very close to getting married for all the wrong reasons at the end of that book — but after talking to her sister decides, ultimately, to cancel her wedding to Matt.
As I thought about Allie — who she was, and what she had to learn in her own book to find happiness — I started to research, first, runaway brides. But everything I could find to read about runaway brides, which technically Allie is, seemed to have very little to say about what it felt like to be one.
I wanted to know what it felt like to be at the end of a long relationship, headed toward marriage, and then veer suddenly away and terminate the marriage, the relationship, the entire trajectory, all at once.
But of course, I do know what that feels like. Because I’m divorced.
The man who Allie meets and falls in love with is also divorced, for many good reasons, among them the chain of bad decisions that led to his very bad behavior in About Last Night. So it seemed only fitting for end-of-relationship themes to play a part in this book, as Allie and Winston have to work out what it is they have learned and need to learn in order to make the love they find work for them in the future.
It’s a subject we don’t look at very often in romance. We seem to want our characters to come together from significant difficulty, with significant difficulty, but we don’t seem to want any of that difficulty to come from their entanglement with their past in the form of other people. But the way I see it, these are our very most important entanglements.
Often, long relationships, including marriages, profoundly shape us as human beings. They teach us who we are and what we deserve, what our role is, how to make ourselves smaller, make ourselves different, make ourselves fit. Or, on the flip side, they teach us how to use other people to make ourselves more comfortable, how to get what we feel we’re owed by making ourselves bigger, making our loved ones different, forcing them to conform. These are relationships that hurt us, and when they end, they end with pain — but they can bring understanding, too, and help us clarify what we want for ourselves and from the people we love.
This is Allie’s journey in Madly, and Winston’s, too. Because it’s not only about finding that unicorn, the “good man” — it’s also about figuring out for yourself what you need, how you want him to treat you, and learning to express those needs — to insist on them — that ensures a happily ever after.
