Once I was invited to the home of an author who is well known for her dark, dark alpha heroes. I was curious as to what her husband would be like. But he turned out to be this big, sweet teddy-bear of a guy, a kind of nerdy engineer who was clearly besotted by his wife of 20+ years and would do anything in the world for her.
This got me to thinking–why do so many of us read and write about these dark, edgy, tortured heroes who drive racecars and slay dragons, then turn around and marry the guy with the boring job and the mismatched socks? There is a major disconnect here between our fantasy men and the men we choose as our life mates–the “good husbands.”
For example:
Fantasy Men are dark, dangerous and mysterious.
Good Husbands don’t have secrets. They tell you anything you want to know, sometimes more than you want to know. They’re SAFE.
Fantasy Men are arrogant and controlling. They have a sense of entitlement (per one publisher’s guidelines)
Good Husbands are nice. They’re flexible, accommodating and quietly confident. They don’t expect to be given anything they haven’t earned.
Fantasy Men are powerful and command respect. They never ask for help and never make the wrong decision.
Good Husbands share power and authority, and they earn respect. They make mistakes all the time but they aren’t afraid to admit them and learn from them, or ask for help if needed. (However, they won’t ask for directions!)
Fantasy Men are tortured souls with bad, bad things in their pasts.
Good Husbands might have sad or tragic pasts, but they’ve gotten past the bad stuff and haven’t let it taint their entire lives.
Fantasy Men consider falling in love with the heroine a weakness, because it’s the one thing in their lives they can’t control.
Good Husbands think falling in love with their wives is the best thing that ever happened to them. They don’t consider emotion a personality flaw.
Fantasy Men are reduced to total incompetence by a crying baby.
Good Husbands can change a stinky diaper in their sleep.
Fantasy Men ride Harleys.
Good Husbands drive a safe car with a baby car seat in back.
Fantasy Men are so dang good-looking that beautiful supermodels fall all over them, but of course they’re never tempted by anyone but the heroine.
Good Husbands might be handsome, but most of us aren’t going to see our husbands in a Calvin Klein ad. And they don’t have that supermodel problem.
Fantasy Men never, but never belch or fart.
Good Husbands … okay, maybe this isn’t the most endearing feature of a real man. But let’s face it. They can’t help themselves.
Granted, I’ve made some huge generalizations here. But by and large, we write about one kind of man, but we marry an entirely different kind. (And if you, a friend or loved one has ever hooked up with Mr. Dark, Dangerous and Tortured, you know why Mr. Kind, Safe and Reliable is the better choice.)
So why the disconnect? Why is our fantasy so radically different from the reality most of us choose, a reality that is good for us and pro-survival? Are we hanging on to outdated hard-wiring from our caveman days?
No related posts.
It’s the same old thing; good reality doesn’t make good fiction. Nobody wants to read a book about the village of happy people, unless it’s about to get invaded. But who wants to live through the invasion? What’s fun to read about and what’s fun to live with have entirely different criteria. Fiction thrives on drama. In real life, that kind of drama is too damn exhausting. A nice husband who cooks dinner for you isn’t dramatic. A scowling alpha hero who can’t say “I love you” is. So, we read about one kind of man because that’s what works for fiction, and we are smart enough to hook up with the other in reality.
The whole point of fantasy is that it’s NOT reality.
Also, real-life Good Husbands aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. They’re vastly outnumbered by Scumbags. I think Fantasy Men exist to balance the scales, so to speak, with Good Husband material as the anchor of the tipping point.
You know, thinking about it this way, the heroes I write tend to be regular sort of guys. Still strong and sexy, but no dark tortured souls among them. My husband on the other hand….
I love reading romances, but wouldn’t trade my guy for any hero found in any book. He evens buys some of them for me so you have to love a guy who will do that. When I hear or read criticism about romance novels one thing I hear is the fear that it will make women dissatisfied with their own lives and I think this shows that we can separate fantasy from reality.
For my part, I really dislike alpha heroes in general and for this reason, a lot of paranormal romances and I don’t get along. In my own writing, my pseudo-romantic hero is charming, selfish, a little oblivious and self-absorbed, but utterly devoted to his best friend, the pseudo-romantic heroine. I say “pseudo” because I write YA and while romance is certainly there and exists to create texture for character relationships, it’s not really explicit. (And in my mind, after the events of this book they end up together. Even if it’s not shown on page.)
In my own reading I prefer much the same type. I love the slightly awkward male best friend, the beta buddy, etc. I find angst a bit of a snore, mostly because I want to reach through the pages and slap them about the face and tell them to suck it up; everyone’s had emotional pain at some point in their life. Favourite romantic couple ever for me: Anne and Gilbert from the Anne of Green Gables books. Gilbert is by no means a dark alpha hero, but he’s totally my fantasy man.
LOL
Yep, fantasy is fantasy. I wouldn’t want to fall in love with a pirate either but I love to read about them (haven’t read a great pirate romance in a while).
Also for the record, REAL alphas and ROMANCE alphas are two completely different types of people. Real alphas = natural leaders = have to be quite chatty = works well with others = respected = … I could go on.
Now, this is just my personal experience, so grain, salt, blah blah blah:
My husband isn’t dark and tortured, arrogant and controlling, unable to say “I love you” without great squirming–
–because *I* am. I’m the one who writes the books, who needs the fake!drahmah (because the real stuff is just not efficient and it’s exhausting), who digs down deep for the angst. My husband balances me out, keeps me steady, asserts his alphaness whenever he thinks I’m about to go over the edge.
Maybe I’m the oddball, but I’d far rather read a book with “good husband” as the hero than the fantasy man. I have a bad habit of falling for the hero’s (or sometimes the heroine’s) best friend/brother in most romances, and then I’m disappointed when that friend becomes the hero of his own book and suddenly morphs into yet another fantasy hero I can’t stand.
Here’s another vote for Gilbert in the Anne of Green Gables books. Swooooon. Sigh.
I’m definitely NOT an alpha male lover, either as a reader or a writer. But there’s no denying women are hard-wired differently from men. (I did a whole blog series about “his brain/her brain” not long ago.
Good Husbands can change a stinky diaper in their sleep.
And mine sure did after the twins were born. Never complained. Probably because he really never woke up.
My day job is in mental health and child protective services (from whence spring my rants against the whole “alpha male” myth) and this dichotomy has been documented and confirmed in several clinical studies. There are variations, but in the basic test women (individually, not as a group) are presented with a collection of photographs of men. The collection is fairly large and includes several examples of all types of men. Each woman is then asked to go through and select pictures of men she finds sexually attractive. The dark, edgy, dangerous looking men get picked the most. Some time later the women are presented with the same set of photos and asked to select pictures of men they believe would make good husbands and fathers. Solid, compassionate teddy bears predominate. In fact, the two groups are almost always mutually exclusive.
I should note that my wife maintains Nicolas Cage would fall into both camps. (I was kinda hoping she’d say I do, too, but my fishing attempt netted me a pat on the cheek.)
Gave it some more thought…
I’m not a huge fan of subtlety in any form of entertainment, not just books. I like broad, bold strokes—big laughs, tears jerked, scares that make me jump, huge explosions, loud music, frantic action sequences (though a little short of the seizure-inducing cut of the Bourne movies). Joe Average doesn’t deliver that for me the way an over-the-top, dysfunctional caricature of a person does.
I love House (sadistic drug addict) and Monk (neurotic social cripple) and can’t sustain my attention for five minutes of any other doctor or detective show with more “well-adjusted” characters. You couldn’t pay me to date either of them in real life, but I’m using them for entertainment purposes, not trying to make a love connection.
Same thing with a romance novel hero. I’m not the one who has to fall in love with him. I just have to believe the heroine could, and since she’s usually an over-the-top, dysfunctional caricature herself, that’s generally not such a chore for me.
I don’t think alpha males and teddy bears/geeks are mutually exclusive. I married someone who’s definitely a major geek, but is also a very alpha male. He needed to be to keep me from walking all over him.
*g*
I love me my engineer. He is so dang hot! Especially when he’s wearing nothing but his glasses and jeans. I’m a lucky lucky girl.
As far as the fantasy men go, why are we limited to one letter of the alphabet? I don’t mind the big strong heroes, but I like to have them express some sorts of traits that make me feel like they’re not a stereotype.
Jess
I have the great joy of having a Good husband, who I’ll take anyday over a dark sensuous hero. He understands my fascination with my writing and supports my ambitions, he’s not afraid that I’ll be more successful than him and helps me keep going when I think I can’t possibly do it.
Sure Gerard Butler is great eye candy, but I’ll take my wonderful hubby over him any day (oh except when the football is on, then I might be tempted to swap him).
One can also distinguish between who is hot, who one would like to date/spend time with, and who one would like to marry.
There are tons of women (sorry, straight male here) whom I find hot either in a picture or walking by, but not only would I not want to marry many of them, I don’t think I’d really even want to go out with them to dinner. As an example, since I’m in my 30s, I definitely knew who Tyra Banks was in her swimsuit SI covers when I was in college, and she was smoking as a picture. But, no offense meant to Ms. Banks, when I see her on TV displaying her actual personality, it’s completely unattractive to me. It’s not just that actual dates lead to relationships, etc. That’s a version of the “who would you marry” issue. Instead, she’s just not my type.
I guess my point is: for people who love the romance genre’s version of an alpha male but don’t have a similar hubbie/bf, is it just that you wouldn’t want to marry such a person, or would you not even want to have dinner and a movie with them? There are plenty of people who I’d label “hot” in a picture experiment who’d I’d then say ‘no thanks’ to going out with.
I’m thinking that it might as Henry Kissinger said, that “power is an aphrodisiac.” And the alpha hero is all about power and control. I’ve always been attracted to men that I see as my superior in some way–men that I can look up to and respect. I didn’t want a guy I could boss around, or one that I could out-perform intellectually, career-wise, or in judgment. Eventually, I ended up with a man who’s smarter than I am (at least in science and math)and exercises a great deal of authority in his professional life. At home, well–another story, lol! He can find miniscule variations in someone’s CAT scans, but the whereabouts of his own clothing are a mystery to him! He can remove an organ, yet somehow miss the diseased cat box. He can make split-second life-or-death decisions in the OR, but when I ask him to figure out what he wants to do with the ripped-up basement floor, he just stalls. He is a wonderful father (playing Rock Band with preschoolers right now), and very calm when I’m just not. He reads about string theory for fun, but will sit through a “House Hunters” marathon with me, or argue with me over whether or not Jay and Grant caught a ghost with that EVP. He is so hot in his white coat. He can be watching some stupid superhero cartoon on Boomerange, but when his pager goes off, it’s like he transforms completely. It gets me every time. So maybe he’s a “gamma” guy?
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I agree with so much of what everyone is saying. I don’t like my heroes too alpha. I rather they the alpha male to the other guys but the teddy bear to the ladies. And the entire changing the diaper in the middle of the night, who wants a guy not brave enough or considerate enough to do that?
Aside from the many aforementioned points, Fantasy Men (as you describe them at least) also present the thing we women long for in a world full of (as Kerry Allen put it) Scumbags where Good Husbands are a dime a dozen. . . The Fantasy Men are the men who do think love is a weakness, but eventually give into it and somehow get past their tortured pasts to be with the heroine. I think plenty of real-life-women have the fantasy that their Scumbag is secretly a Fantasy Man in disguise if they can only get him to change.
Honestly, I like the sort of drama that Fantasy Men can offer, but I don’t think they’re required for good fiction. I do believe that writing a regular guy in fiction is actually much harder to pull off, because it requires intense character development to make them interesting whereas it’s easy to write Fantasy Men into the formula.
All that said, I also think there is something to what Kerry Allen was saying in her second comment, because I love the uber-complicated and screwed up characters in fiction too. I think fiction also offers us the opportunity to live lives so different from our own that we find them compelling, because different is always interesting whether we would want it for ourselves or not.
I’m not really one for the Fantasy/Alpha type man. Never really have been – in either my reading/viewing or real life. My husband is definitely among the Good Guys and I feel blessed to have found him.
I think by breaking it down into a dry stereotype, it destroys that little bit of magic that makes fiction seem real. The Fantasy Men described in that post sound like lost causes. The “Good Husbands” on the other hand, sound more boring than dry toast. I can think of a few characters that match each of those descriptions, but those characters aren’t ones who left an impression. They’re just sort of there, floating around in the back of my mind without names or faces, like extras in the background of an in-flight movie I slept through.
But then I thought about it, and I thought about the characters in books that were memorable. About how Lizzy thought Mr. Wickham was a Good Husband type, and wrote Mr. Darcy off as a Fantasy type, and how neither were quite what they seemed at first, because they each a little of both.
And then I thought about the men I’ve dated and the people I’ve met, what attracted me to them, and how more often than not, my first impressions are wrong.
It seems to me as though you’ve left out a very large piece of the puzzle here. And that piece is the gray area that binds the two aspects of character together. You can carve a duck out of wood, and it can be the most beautiful duck you’ve ever seen, but it will never be a real duck, because it’s still just a piece of wood.
Real characters are ambiguous, much like real people. But lately it seems there are too many authors striving to create the most perfect wooden duck, that they’ve forgotten about the real ones.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t read because I want to believe a lie. I read because I want to be shown an alternative truth. And I don’t see that in the personality traits you’ve listed. They may remind me of things I’ve read, but they don’t remind me of anything I’ve enjoyed reading. So, publisher’s guidelines, stereotypes, demographics… it all means nothing when you think about it. Doesn’t take a genius to spot a real duck from a fake one, you know?
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t read because I want to believe a lie. I read because I want to be shown an alternative truth.”
Oooo, good response!
I enjoy reading about all kinds of different characters, including some that would send me screaming into the night in real life. There is so much room in our genre, so many possibilities and I love that.
Wow, what great responses! I am so sorry I didn’t respond individually to each, but I was out of town and unable to get my hands on an internet connection for any length of time.
Thanks to you all for your beautifully expressed thoughts.
And now, the truth comes out: I don’t write Alpha heroes. My December book features a nerd CPA. And my book from last January was titled “Good Husband Material.” (He was a little bit bossy but he got better.)
[...] on my list, a post that made me chuckle. At Romancing the Blog, author Kara Lennox compares our Fantasy Men with our real life Good Husbands. I chuckled more [...]
Okay, i’m blog surfing before dinner…and scrolled until this caught my eye. Which makes me late. LOL. Unusual for me.
I think there are lots of authors out there toning down the Alpha. [maybe not in catagory, but I don't read that as much] Nora Robert’s newest Tribute has a wonderfully subtle alpha… a nerdy-type, strong personality. I find that appealing because my hubby is the same way. An accountant who doesn’t fight anyone, but who doesn’t sway from his opinions for anyone either.
There’s one easy way to undo the paradox: marry the good husband and cheat with the alpha male. All they’re good for is genes, and some fun. Check out the research on infidelity in bluebirds: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/179988.stm
Bethanne–I hope you’re right! I like a strong, confident male but when they cross over into arrogant … I close the book.
Asmah, interesting research. Really, especially since I am a birdwatcher and have volunteered in the past to help monitor and protect bluebird nests. Somehow, if I were the spouse cheated upon, I don’t think I would get much comfort from the article!
Definitely food for thought! I wouldn’t call my husband a safe, good husband (he’s more of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality). In fact, in all honesty, I would probably use some of his character traits for writing the villain. Maybe that’s why I write and read romance — I want the escape and the happy ending.