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Don't confuse the symptom with the cause. While I do feel for your loss, I do not think what happened to her is the romance novels fault or that it was some demonic entity that sucked her downt he wrong path. She probably used that stuff as an escape, and just like any escape if you find the proble she is escaping from, the elephant in the room that is causing her so much emotion damage and making her unstable then you would probably fix the problem with the books. Normal sane people do not do what you are saying your wife did, they do not toss everything aside for a book or a feeling. Only people with severe emotional problems do this sort of thing. And as is the case with all sever emotionally traumatized people, if you take away the symptom i.e. the books she will only look for her fix some where else because her pain is still there and it needs to be numbed.

It was more than symptoms it was input, training, self induced brainwashing. Many read for entertainment or watch movies -- but for some people these things become their teachers or crowd out reality intentionally or unintentionally.

She was raised in a broken home I had wondered long if there was a reason for her behavior. Having been abused, having been molested, certainly I wondered if there had been something anything. No reason was ever given. She has recently told my kids that: "She just wasn't happy here."

But the romance novels, like porn, or drugs, have a cumulative effect. They impoverish the real life and the development of real coping skills to the point that the addiction really is the only thing going on in the person's life.