Background: I’m female and have enjoyed rr in all of my romantic relationships, though I’m currently single.

On Thursday I took a trip down to San Diego, CA with my best friend to check out a romance bookstore out there called Meet Cute. The bookstore is wonderful and super LGBT inclusive, the people who work there are lovely and knowledgeable, and I love books.

Unfortunately, looking through an entire bookstore of romance novels, I wasn’t able to truly find a single even vaguely rr story on the shelves, even when I asked the staff. I was honestly amazed. An entire sexuality-inclusive romance bookstore and not one book that reflected how I experience relationships.

I’m always glad to see books that are inclusive gaining more traction (I had no problem finding books with bisexual characters or that prominently featured healthy kink), but I hate that I still can’t find a reflection of my kind of love on the shelves.

I legitimately started crying in the middle of the bookstore and had to step outside to collect myself over the feelings of overwhelming frustration and sadness I was hit with.

I still left with three new books that I’m extremely excited for, but I also left knowing that there’s more than space for me to write romance novels of my own, and that there’s plenty of people just like me who would be overcome with joy to find it.