We are all raised to believe that a romance is when a guy posing as a prince comes to rescue a girl posing as a damsel in distress. She weeps in helplessness, he comes in and finds a way to rescue her from whatever malaise she suffers, and they ride off into the sunset, happily ever after.
What horsepuckey!!
Yes, I said it. HORSEPUCKEY!!!
Don’t get me wrong. I read trashy bodice-ripper novels all the time. They make excellent bathtub reading material, and help to keep me sane by giving me some much needed brain candy. But I know Real Life™ doesn’t work that way. A true romance has pitfalls, and anger, and sadness, and joy, and laughter, and misunderstandings, and things that make you go “Hmm….”. Real romance may have flowers and candy sometimes, but more often than not, it has oil changes and beer. Sometimes it has jewelry, but more than likely it will have an installed dishwasher.
True romance is about knowing each other, and still wanting to be with each other, warts and all 🙂
Sithy Things 
October 13th, 2011 at 10:28 AM
Real love is getting up in the middle of the night to get medicine and a throw-up bucket for your wife and cleaning up the mess after she wakes up suddenly in the wee hours and is so violently sick she can’t make it to the bathroom before she hurls, and then staying up for a while to make sure she’s okay and to see if she needs anything else before going back to bed yourself.
Sorry about the run-on sentence.
October 13th, 2011 at 10:37 AM
agreed. love is making a bed for her in the bathtub and going back to sleep!
October 13th, 2011 at 10:41 AM
Flash Gordon is perhaps one of the best examples of the fantasy romance you described above.
Flash and Dale talk for what, an hour on a plane, then get zapped off to Ming’s planet, Dale watches Flash get into one fight, and then that’s it until later in the movie. When they meet up that time, Flash tells Dale to “save it for our kids” and she loudly exclaims “Oh, I accept.” Oh, and at the time she accepts his proposal, he hasn’t even saved her. The only thing she’s seen of him in action is getting his ass kicked and then seemingly executed. Wow. Never really thought about it in those terms. Dale must have been really easy. You don’t even need to rescue her and she’ll marry you. Wonder what it was that she saw in Flash? “Oh sweetheart, remember the time all those stoolies of Ming kicked your ass? And the time you made out with the princess while speaking to me telepathically?” “Yeah, Dale, those were the days, huh?”
Still a great movie, though.
October 13th, 2011 at 10:50 AM
It requires being each others best friend. Happy to say that after 45 years my best friend still is my best friend!
October 13th, 2011 at 11:15 AM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
And many, many more!!! 😀
October 13th, 2011 at 10:51 AM
I think real love would be taking her out into the backyard and hosing her down before the puke dries.
But that just may be me.
October 13th, 2011 at 11:03 AM
Well, yeah, that’s part of “cleaning up the mess”.
October 13th, 2011 at 11:06 AM
On the flip side, real love is a woman putting up with her husband after he’s come home from a ballgame and having drunk a few beers and eaten two or three chilidogs and he’s gassy and slightly tipsy.
October 13th, 2011 at 12:15 PM
I thought TRUE ROMANCE was a movie with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette (with a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino).
OK, maybe I watch too many movies. 🙂
October 13th, 2011 at 6:33 PM
Excellent movie, John D.
Romance is often not very ‘romantic’. It IS putting up with whatever. Good moods, Bad moods, Sunshine, Rain…and yes, Barf. I think barf qualifies as warts. But only if you don’t hose it off quickly enough! 😛
And still wanting to do special things for your favorite barfy person!
October 14th, 2011 at 5:14 AM
Totally off topic, but hilarious, and shamelessly stolen from DPUD…
October 14th, 2011 at 5:22 AM
Seriously, best friends is the key. Although I romance the Juju Woman, I couldn’t do it if she wasn’t my best friend. She always makes me smile.
October 14th, 2011 at 2:58 PM
So in other words…you take the good, you take the bad. You take them both and there you have – The Facts of Life. The Facts of Liiiiiiiife!
October 14th, 2011 at 3:01 PM
Are you still on your 80’s kick???
October 14th, 2011 at 7:44 PM
And here I thought “true romance” was remembering my sweetieheart’s smile the first time I saw it, and melting inside right then and there.
October 14th, 2011 at 8:13 PM
Heh, it is 😉