I’ve been thinking about this topic lately.  I first began thinking about it when one of my husband’s friends asked me if I was still writing those “love” books.  Then he stopped and said, “No, I mean romance, which has nothing to do with love.”

Needless to say, I was perturbed by this comment, but this seemed to be the consensus of my husband and the rest of his guy friends.  “Romance” is the ooey-gooey saccharine-sweet puppy love of flowers and chocolates, while real “love” is enduring, a rock in the storms of life.  As my husband likes to call it, “Love is not a feeling, it’s an act of your will.”  (He gets that from a song lyric, btw. lol)  Basically, what that means is, the lengths you are willing to go for another person.

However, you go online and hundreds (if not thousands) of readers and authors of the romance genre will yell at you until they’re red in the face that the books they read and write are about LOVE, the true, enduring kind.  Some of them even go so far to say it’s splitting hairs, that love and romance are the same thing.

For me, I can see both sides of the coin.  However for me, I believe love and romance go hand-in-hand.  Love is the bond you have with another person that allows you to share life experiences, while romance strengthens that bond.

And I’m not talking about candlelight dinners and skimpy lingerie.

Here’s the definition of romance:

1. A love affair.

2. Ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people; love: They kept the romance alive in their marriage for 35 years.
3. A strong, sometimes short-lived attachment, fascination, or enthusiasm for something: a childhood romance with the sea.
4. A long medieval narrative in prose or verse that tells of the adventures and heroic exploits of chivalric heroes: an Arthurian romance.
5. A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place.
6. The class of literature constituted by such tales.
7. An artistic work, such as a novel, story, or film, that deals with sexual love, especially in an idealized form.
8. The class or style of such works.

Romance, to me, is snuggling.  Holding hands.  Telling your partner they look nice.  Reassuring them you still find them attractive.  Defending them to others, and being their cheerleader when something they’re facing seems too insurmountable.

For those of us who write romance, being told we don’t write about “love” smacks of ignorance.  YES, I see and acknowledge the difference between romance and love.  HOWEVER, by book’s end, both characters are in it for life, they have moved beyond the “omigawdheslookingatmewhatdoido” stage into the “Now let’s build a life together” stage.

And here is the definition of love:

8. (initial capital letter) a personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid.