Think of it in terms of an interest in loyalty and betrayal rather than Mills & Boon; there's a lot of romance in fiction that has nothing to do with the formulae of 'romance novels'.
What do you mean by that? I don't understand.
When you say that you don't read romance novels, I'm assuming that you're referring to the very specific sub-genre of book that is marketed as 'a romance novel' -- normally instantly identifiable by the cover style and often the title. Mills & Boon are famous for having published these production-line novels for over ninety years, and the books normally adhere to well-defined formulae that deliver exactly what the (female) reader expects. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/15/insider-guide-writing-mills-boon https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/pages/guidelines
Clearly there are also a very large number of other novels, from "The Sign of the Four" onwards, that also contain a romantic sub-plot of some sort but don't consist solely of 'will they/won't they' titillation, and I assume you're not eschewing all those. So when you say that you keep finding yourself coming up with ideas involving romance, I would conclude that it's probably other elements of a romantic subplot that appeal to your subconscious, e.g. conflicts of loyalty which may happen to be associated with emotional commitments to ideas versus people...
(I still recommend "The Yellow Poppy" as a good example of a story that contains a very powerful romantic strand but is not *about* romance, let alone about sexy young couples having it off with one another: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59937/pg59937-images.html )
I honestly do suspect that the appeal of romances where an 'ordinary girl' gets wooed by a criminal is the same as the "Bride of the Sheikh" (from Valentino onwards!) or "Seduced by the Duke" style: the strong, ruthless, dangerous man whose one vulnerable point is his inexplicable attraction towards the reader-insert heroine :-p
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When you say that you don't read romance novels, I'm assuming that you're referring to the very specific sub-genre of book that is marketed as 'a romance novel' -- normally instantly identifiable by the cover style and often the title. Mills & Boon are famous for having published these production-line novels for over ninety years, and the books normally adhere to well-defined formulae that deliver exactly what the (female) reader expects.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/15/insider-guide-writing-mills-boon
https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/pages/guidelines
Clearly there are also a very large number of other novels, from "The Sign of the Four" onwards, that also contain a romantic sub-plot of some sort but don't consist solely of 'will they/won't they' titillation, and I assume you're not eschewing all those. So when you say that you keep finding yourself coming up with ideas involving romance, I would conclude that it's probably other elements of a romantic subplot that appeal to your subconscious, e.g. conflicts of loyalty which may happen to be associated with emotional commitments to ideas versus people...
(I still recommend "The Yellow Poppy" as a good example of a story that contains a very powerful romantic strand but is not *about* romance, let alone about sexy young couples having it off with one another: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59937/pg59937-images.html )
I honestly do suspect that the appeal of romances where an 'ordinary girl' gets wooed by a criminal is the same as the "Bride of the Sheikh" (from Valentino onwards!) or "Seduced by the Duke" style: the strong, ruthless, dangerous man whose one vulnerable point is his inexplicable attraction towards the reader-insert heroine :-p