Dear Ms. Draven,

My girlfriend is smart, bubbly and adventurous. I can really see a future with this girl. The problem is that she only really gets in the mood when we’re showering together. I’d like to do it in, you know, a normal bedroom, but the shower is the only place we ever do the deed. At first it was exciting but now it makes me wonder if she has some kind of sexual hangup.

– Showering Way Too Much

Dear Showering Way Too Much:

In Romancelandia a normal bedroom is the very last place our heroes and heroines ever consider making love.

Harlequin Presents CEOs will deflower their virgin acquisitions in yachts and on boardroom tables. The obligatory romance money-shot for NASCAR heroes has to happen on the hood of the race car. Cowboy heroes are prone to pushing heroines down onto a hay bale. Vampire heroes do it within the walls of dank old castles and modern-day minotaurs might give a heroine the ride of her life on a moving subway car.

The point is, in a romance novel, the more exotic the location, the better.

This is because romance heroes never get muscle cramps while hoisting the heroine into whatever twisty-pretzel position might be required for the sexual gymnastics at hand. And a romance heroine is always so turned on that she wouldn’t even care if he dropped her. (Of course, it goes without saying, in Romancelandia, the hero never drops the girl. At least not in the shower. But I digress.)

The throbbing purple passion of a loving couple in Romancelandia is so urgent that it simply cannot wait! Even if there is a nice warm bedroom with a perfectly serviceable bed close at hand, Romancelandia heroes often fail to take the three extra steps to get there. And heroines love it. Why? Because their man is just so hot for them that he can’t wait or he will dry up and die!

You, my friend, have a different problem. It sounds as if your heroine is making you wait for the sound of running water. There is nothing particularly unhealthy about this. Water is sexy. Water is soothing. I’m told that water aimed in the right places can cause tingles. Plus, we women are conditioned to view the bathroom as somewhere it’s safe to get naked. That’s not even to mention the slippery qualities of soap!

In short, many heroes in Romancelandia–particularly those poor saps in the Harlequin Special Editions line whose love scenes often fade to black–would envy your problem.

This is because heroes in Romancelandia never age. Once you close the book, you won’t be reading about how Pierce McBigMuscles ruptured his spine after slipping on the shower tiles during a particularly strenuous game of Where Did You Hide the Loofah? You, however, are not immune to the ravishes of time. Your girlfriend’s powder room passions put you both at risk for broken bones. Even if you were to acquire one of those metal safety bars and a geriatric shower seat for your lavatorial lovemaking, the fact would remain that variety is the spice of life.

This is why even though your problem wouldn’t be a problem in Romancelandia, it is a problem in real life. And you should probably address it. Your girlfriend may have some deep fears about the inherent messiness of the carnal act. A shower washes all evidence away. Perhaps an agreement between the two of you to wash up quickly might set her mind at ease enough to sink down into the softness of a regular bed.

Now let’s find out what other romance authors have to say!

~Stephanie Draven and the collective wisdom of Romancelandia

This is part 2 of the Romancelandia Advice series. If you or someone you know has a problem, click the ‘Contact Me’ button at the upper right hand of this website and hit me with your best shot.

Dear Ms. Draven,

I recently moved in with my boyfriend. The apartment is kind of small so there isn’t much in the way of privacy. One night, while my boyfriend was cooking dinner, I glanced at his computer screen and discovered that he was having sex with some other woman. I thought we had something special but how can I trust him now?

– Having Second Thoughts

Dear Having Second Thoughts:

In Romancelandia, heroes are never caught having cybersex. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, most romance heroes who aren’t Dukes from Regency England are cowboys, firemen, or vampire hunters–none of whom know how to work computers, much less use them as sex toys. Even those billionaire bad boys from Harlequin Presents always have pretty secretaries to type for them. And if you get the rare Silhouette Desire tycoon who has made his vast fortune in technology, he’s too driven by his desire to get even with his abusive father workaholic nature to even surf the web much less whisper sweet cybernothings in another woman’s ear.

The only heroes in Romancelandia who can competently use a computer are super-spies or those loving beta heroes in one of the hearth and home romance lines that are so sweet they’ll rot your teeth. And a beta hero boyfriend would never get caught having cybersex with someone else because he’d feel horribly guilty about keeping something from you. That is, if he was smart enough to know he was cheating.

I note that your boyfriend was cooking you dinner, which means that he might be more of a beta hero. (The fact that he’s not whisking you off to his mansion in South America is another clue.) Also, the fact that he didn’t even bother to hide the evidence on his computer screen suggests he might be a little bit clueless.

Now, in Romancelandia, you would not confront your boyfriend with this evidence. You would stew about it, and maybe pack your bags and leave, thinking this just confirms all your fears about ever trusting a man again. And in Romancelandia, your beta hero would chase you. Wooing you with flowers and music and a thousand other romantic gestures that real men never even think of.

Then, just when he’s starting to win you back, you would finally tell him that it can’t ever work between you because you discovered that he was having cybersex with another woman. Instead of dumping you for your passive-aggressive behavior, he would explain that it was all just a big misunderstanding. You’d find out that his gay best friend was using his computer and that the girl on the other end of the screen was actually a dude. Much laughter would ensue, you’d realize that you needed to work on your communication skills and live happily ever after.

That’s how it works in Romancelandia. In real life, however, you probably confronted him about it right away and he probably told you it wasn’t a big deal. That he didn’t know the girl, never planned to meet her, and was just engaging in a type of fantasy–not unlike the kind of fantasy women engage in when reading romance novels.

The problem with this argument is that cybersex is an interactive activity. Your boyfriend reads, then responds, then reads some more, then responds, until an intimacy is achieved with another person. And maybe you could be cool with that–maybe you could watch and it would give you ideas. Certainly, it’s about the least risky threesome you could ever manufacture. Maybe if he’d asked you, it could have spiced things up. But he obviously didn’t talk to you about it in advance, which means that it’s a kind of cheating.

If he never thought of it that way before, but he’s sorry now, you might consider giving him a second chance. Let’s find out what the other romance authors have to say.

~Stephanie Draven and the collective wisdom of Romancelandia

This is part 1 of the Romancelandia Advice series. If you or someone you know has a problem, click the ‘Contact Me’ button at the upper right hand of this website and hit me with your best shot.

Everybody has a problem, but not everybody knows they need a little advice. Here’s where I come in. Henceforth, I will be taking anonymous letters from anyone who has trouble with their love life, their family life, or any other part of their life. And then I’m going to give you advice based on the collective knowledge of Romancelandia. What is that, you ask? It’s the occasionally reality-defying world inhabited by Romance Heroes and Heroines. That’s right. I will tell you how your story should go if it were a romance novel. And then, and only then, will I provide the advice that a happily married woman of a certain age is always eager to dispense. Moreover, I will invite all the romance authors I know to chime in with advice of their own.

So what do you get out of it:

1. Complete anonymity
2. Possibly helpful advice
3. A laugh

I’ll be starting this blog series in the coming weeks by using the problems of my friends and family who shall remain nameless as perfect examples of how romance novels would have us solve all our problems. Meanwhile, hit the Contact Me button in the upper right hand corner of this website, and hit me with your best shot! The weirder the better, I say.

Need a few examples?

Help! I Caught My Boyfriend Having Cybersex With Another Woman