Yet my husband supports me in more ways than one.

He has long been supportive of my bad attempts at humor. He doesn’t exactly laugh at my joke misfires, but he won’t fling a plastic chicken at me, either.

He supports me and our sons financially. It would be much harder to write full-fledged novels, multiple projects at a time, if I still had my demanding corporate career. Sure, I wrote when I was single. I wrote on the commuter train back and forth to my advertising job. I wrote during my lunch breaks. I wrote in restaurants, cafes. I wrote between aerobics routines. Sometimes I even wrote in my sleep. Let’s face it, a writer is sort of obsessed. More like possessed. Writing isn’t for the “sane.” Like any creative profession (music – movies – acting, etc.) – the odds are Lottery-sized.

So it’s good to know I’ve got a wing man and that maybe I’m his. The Big Tall Guy (a.k.a. husband) is a cantankerous lot, far from the Disney Prince Perfection. Occasionally we argue and bicker. (The dog hides under the bed whenever this happens). But we do little considerate things for each other. It’s part of that ordinary love thing, the kind of love that sustains you through the days. The quietly powerful stuff. Like . . . I’ll save him the last of the chicken rice soup. He’ll reorganize the top shelf of a cabinet without being told, because he knows I can’t reach it.

We tolerate each other’s imperfections. When he comes home from work and the laundry has spread across our lower level into the neighbor’s yard, he knows I’m actively writing.

When I ask him to read an erotically charged passage in my latest romance novel, he doesn’t turn queasy or ask for a refund on our marriage license.I ask for his opinion on the male point-of-view, because I want my male characters to be as legitimate. To sound like a real guy, not an idealized man who doesn’t exist.

To me, maybe that’s real romance. The quiet, steady days of a relationship that compromises. The staying kind.