In celebration of “real” men.

As I flit through the social media and romance channels, I hear so much about celebrating “real” women in romance literature. Heck, I have spouted off on this topic myself. However, it occurred to me that I’ve never read anything about celebrating real men.

Does it seem strange to do so? After all, romance is all about those buff, impossibly-delicious dudes who curl our toes. You know, the kinds who don’t exist so we authors have to create them.

Notwithstanding the perfect abs, full heads of hair and penchant for saving their women, I’d be willing to bet my last dollar that most of these unreal book boyfriends had their origins in some very real men. And why not? When I consider the real men who’ve been in my life, I’m struck by a few things.

Yes, they sometimes aggravate us. Sometimes they sit on the couch too much and hog the remote (unlike my hubby who thrusts it at me every chance he gets. The remote, that is.) Our real men often have hairy backs and don’t comment when we lose a few pounds. Oh, and there was that time they forgot our anniversary. Yes, real men sometimes drive us up the wall.

But they have their advantages too, don’t they?

They sometimes come home with flowers, for no reason. Conversely, they sometimes bring us chocolates because they remember we’re allergic to flowers. My hubby always fills my mug with coffee, before filling his own. And even though his body clock often wakes him up at the crack of dawn, he always lets me sleep in on the weekends. Yes, some of our men are losing their hair, but they make up for it by gazing at us with those eyes that first snared us. They may not growl “Mine” like a shifter, or make us immortal like a vampire, but they snuggle with us on the couch and don’t complain when we eat the last serving of ice cream. They shovel the snow off our walks and fill our cars with gas and in many cases, they provide for us. They are fathers to our children and help with homework, or corralling the kids at a birthday party. Our real men do all the sweet, little gestures our book boyfriends never seem to do. Granted, the book boyfriends are too busy saving the world as we know it.

And that’s okay, because I’m quite happy residing in that world with my real man.