Source: loveromancepassion.com

Where can I find a dude like the heroes I read about in fantasy romance novels? Do they really exist?

Yes, I do read fantasy romance novels as a form of escape. Yet I can’t help but compare Jamal to the guys in these novels. Are they just examples just too difficult for a real person to live up to? Even a Coal?

One of my favorite things to do is read urban fantasy books with a love story intertwined. I get to escape into an imaginary setting and witness the characters overcome all sorts of obstacles to find or win the love of their life. The male is always this amazing specimen, who conquers mountains and tumultuous terrain to save the one he loves from a premature demise.

If the writers behind these fantasy romance novels are “writing what they know,” then there had to be real people in their lives who inspired these characters—which means that, at some point in time, there really was some amazing man who came to their rescue or proved to be worth risking everything for.

Even in post apocalyptic books, when there seems like there’s no hope whatsoever, some modern day knight-in-shining-armor comes through, changing the plot forever. Even when the character starts out being a jerk, he undergoes a metamorphosis like no other, and becomes the hero women used to dream of in the Old World.

Where does that leave those of us stuck in reality, where mating is a requirement for survival? Can anyone truly be themselves with the kind of pressure we experience on a daily basis? With the tick-tick-tock of the clock counting down the days to our deadline to mate, how can anyone just relax and let a relationship take its natural course? While it seems easy to be swept off your feet in all the urban fantasy books I read, it just isn’t in the New World.

So while I love to feel a glimmer of hope when the heroine in one of my post apocalyptic books finds the love of her life and escapes her demise, it’s hard to apply it to my own life. It’s like the cherry on a hot fudge sundae, a little extra bit of pure ecstasy awarded after a treacherous struggle for survival. But the sundae will melt, and where does that leave the cherry?

As much as I love to dream, I feel like these heroes are fictional ghosts from the Old World, with little to no place in the one we live in now—except for in fantasy romance novels.