Sexy Architects and a Real Life HEA

Welcome to this month's edition of Spanking Romance Reviews' Round Table Discussion. This time we are talking Fantasy vs. Reality

I was debating how to go about this post. I do this fun thing with my friend Natasha Knight (well, I think it's fun, she may just think I'm nuts) where I email her and say “Yay, got kinky this weekend!” and then she says “Details??” and I say “Real? Or romance novel version?” And then I give her both anyway.

It's sort of like this.

Romanticized:

We were watching a movie and he just reached across the couch and grabbed me. Pulled me over his lap and gave me a hot spanking. He didn't stop until I was writhing and begging him and promising sexual favors. Then he whisked me up to the bedroom where he promptly took care of all of my sexual needs.

Real Life:

We were falling asleep on the couch. He asked me if he should turn on that cable porn movie he recorded. Should we fool around tonight or just go to sleep? Oh, it's only 9:30. Okay, we have time. We start watching cable porno, lots of boobs, I am criticizing all the acting. He looks like he is falling asleep. I start removing clothes to speed this process along. He asks if I want some spanking action- why is he asking? Answer is yes, always, always yes.

We start, the cat jumps on me. It's weird. We head upstairs, lock out cats. The spanking was short, could have been longer, but was still hot!! Fun was had by all.

Really you can romanticize anything. I am just cutting out the real life unromantic stuff that everyone deals with and doesn't want to hear about. (I do blog about it though, because sometimes real life is too funny not to share.)

I think it's okay to have a good dose of fantasy, as long as you are not resenting your real life because it doesn't live up to your fantasies.

As a kid brought up on ½ hour sitcoms and Disney-ized fairy tales it would have been easy to have unrealistic expectations for real life. As an adult who frequents romantic comedies and reads (and writes) novels that all have Happily Ever Afters, it's easy to get deluded.

Upon returning home from her Honeymoon a friend of mine told me she had read the Nicholas Sparks book Dear, John while her and her husband of two days were sunning themselves in the Caribbean. Upon finishing, she picked a fight with her new husband because he 'never does romantic things'. I brought up the point that she was reading a work of fiction and it really wasn't fair to expect someone to act like a character from a romance novel. She said she realized that in the back of her mind, but the fantasy seemed so real to her she was just feeling shortchanged at the time.

If I think back to my girlhood fantasies about what my life would be like when I was older, I can end up being very disappointed. I didn't marry an architect (aren't all the guys in rom coms sexy architects?), I don't have a cool and trendy job, I don't live in a cute house in an adorable neighborhood somewhere.

But here is the reality- I am married to a guy I am head over heels for. He thinks I'm funny and beautiful (I know because he tells me these things). I hate my day job, but I started self-publishing spanking romance novels (that is pretty cool). The cute house in an adorable neighborhood is something we can work on, for now our outdated townhouse works just fine.

It's nice when the lines of reality and fantasy become a little blurred. And if my life is not living up to my fantasy expectations? I can just write a book where everything does.

Make sure to visit the rest of the Round Table peeps! Thanks for stopping by!