A lie I’ve been told all my life, and believed for most of it, is that I am too much. I’ve felt different for as long as I can remember, but “too much” didn’t enter until I started being interested in romantic relationships. It started with my body being too big, just on the wrong side of petite. Then I asked too many questions, wanted too many answers. Later, my laugh was too loud. Leading into the ever predictable: I was no fun because I was too smart, a spoilsport. Couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut?
So I exercised more, tamped down my curiosity, turned down my laugh, dimmed my intelligence, and kept my mouth shut. Then I married the exact kind of man that type of woman attracts — one who liked the version of me that didn’t take up too much space, didn’t ask too many questions, and didn’t expect to be seen fully. I thought if I could be easy to love, I’d be safe. But you don’t stay safe by disappearing. You just stay small. Thankfully, that marriage ended in divorce.
Believing the lie that I was too much made me vulnerable to an abusive marriage. Internalizing that belief set the stage for a relationship where shrinking myself felt like love. Between the isolation my ex-husband enforced and the performance I put on to make others comfortable, I had no idea who I wanted to be. I knew who my parents wanted me to be—happy, safe, and obedient. Who my faith wanted me to be —wholesome and devout. What men wanted me to be—cute, a little sexy, agreeable. And who society wanted me to be—a girl boss caught in the grind of hustle culture. None of those felt right.
Enter romance.
I remember the exact moment romance changed me. I was driving to the beach to spend a week with my family at the beginning of my separation. I had just discovered audiobooks a few months before. (I didn’t yet know I had ADHD and how much audiobooks can help folks with learning disabilities.) For the four-hour drive, I downloaded Molly Harper’s Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs. In this book the heroine, Jane Jameson, is a tall, sassy, loud-mouth who gets both fired and shot dead in the first chapter. Not a small start or a small woman. I was delighted by Jane. She was smart and funny and wouldn’t let anyone fool her twice. Then I stopped and looked at my thought: I was delighted by a character who was smart, funny, loud, and strong. She wasn’t annoying or hard to get along with. The opposite—she was kind, set boundaries and held them, wasn’t afraid to take up exactly as much space as she needed. And I loved her. Easily. Romance told me what no one else had: I didn’t have to be small to be loved.
During that week at the beach, I inhaled the next four books in the series. Then I read nonstop for the next five years on my own before finding the online romance community through Twitter and later, the Fated Mates podcast. I built myself a new framework for what relationships could look like. Yes, romantic relationships, but for me, much more than that. It modeled what good friendship was and showed me that platonic love was just as important as romantic love (believing romantic relationships trump all others is another lie I believed). It gave me fictional practice at conflict, at navigating the unfair hurdles life throws at women, specifically, and all people who feel different or other.
More than anything else, reading romance showed me how “too much” women are loved with awe, not caution. Loved like their fire was the point, not the problem. They were messy, anxious, fat, brilliant, loud, awkward, sensitive, honest, unapologetic—and loved beyond reason. Not tolerated. Desired. Every time a heroine was too smart, too chaotic, too loud, and still got the guy, I became a little more whole.
Romance is criticized for setting unrealistic expectations for women. There is some romanticization of romantic love, certainly. Every book has a happily ever after, for example. My understanding of the fantasy in romance has changed over time. When I first started reading romance, I was an open wound, hurt more deeply than I ever had been before. I saw men on the pages who went to events they didn’t care about because their girl was into it. They apologized for their mistakes. These men enthusiastically went down on their partners in the bedroom. They emoted. Men who were in awe of how badass their lady was. All unknown to me. All inconceivable. All fantasy.
The more romance I read, the more therapy I had, and the more time passed, the more I figured out who I was and what I wanted. I had more experiences outside my sheltered upbringing and isolated marriage. I went on a lot of dates. Over time, I built a bigger family, became secure in who I was, and opened myself up to the idea of romantic love again. There were years when I thought that falling in love feelings were just for hormonal teenagers and idiots who hadn’t been hurt. I thought I’d outgrown butterflies. Turns out, I’d just started craving roots instead of wings. I wanted a love that was safe, slow, and solid. That desire isn’t fantastical at all. Every human is worthy of love. Not the perverse, weaponized version of love so many women are sold to keep them small and controlled, but the respectful kind that doesn’t demand silence, obedience, or self-erasure in return.
The older I get, the more I understand that “too much” isn’t a neutral descriptor—it’s a warning label slapped on people who disrupt the status quo. And it’s not just gendered, though it absolutely is that. The same traits that earn men respect—assertiveness, ambition, intensity—get women dismissed as too much. It’s also deeply ableist. Neurodivergent people, especially those of us who feel and express outside the narrow bounds of “acceptable,” are so often told we’re too sensitive, too reactive, too earnest, too exhausting. But the more I’ve stopped shrinking myself, the more I see how harmful that phrase is. Too much was never about who I was—it was about how uncomfortable my wholeness made other people.
Now, I’m reclaiming it. I am too much—too passionate, too curious, too confrontational, too unwilling to be anything but myself. And I love that about me. I don’t contort myself to be palatable anymore. I don’t dumb down anymore. Not my wit, not my feelings, not my voice. If you think I’m too much, then you need to reflect on what I’m celebrating in me that makes you uncomfortable. The women in romance novels showed me I don’t have to shrink to be worthy of love —I just have to find someone who sees me fully and says, “More, please.” And that includes me, too. I’m not just allowing my too-muchness—I’m thriving in it.
Romance didn’t just help me make peace with my too-muchness. It threw her a party.
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