Book Boyfriends v. Real-Life Men
This is not my Image.
As readers, we all know there is a difference between the fictional men we love to read about and the men we must deal with in real life. I am an avid reader and doomscroller of BookTok, where I have seen the trends of readers comparing real men to those in their favorite books or wanting to be transported into their favorite pieces of fiction to escape this reality. Watching these trends gave me the idea for this article.
The readers of romance fall into a few categories when it comes to the fictional men they pine for. Some belong to the lighthearted and tamed romance where the main characters kiss and fade to black when they start to get hot and heavy. Some have a taste for the spicier books that have every act in full detail, while also being cozy. Then we elevate to the readers who prefer men and monsters. This category has the most “hear me out” energy.
The first category is the Cozy book boyfriend. The boyfriends in this category are your nice guys, childhood friends-to-lovers, and others that are more feel-good reads, in my humble opinion. These books give off the warm and fuzzy feelings that make us kick our feet with giddiness. For those of us who grew up reading everything under the sun on Wattpad and AO3, we know this as fluff. We romanticize these leading fictional men as perfect gentlemen who show their sweet, emotionally vulnerable selves to the woman they love. They could be classified as doing a little bit above the bare minimum we would expect from real-life men.
Compared to their fictional counterparts, the barre is on the floor for some of them. Yes, I can hear the “not all men” argument from here. I will address that some real men are like the book boyfriends in this category, but they are most likely taken. (I am looking at you, Jensen Ackles.) For many real men, performing gentlemanly acts, expecting to be rewarded for doing the bare minimum. Let me explain further. The book boyfriends want nothing in return except the smile on their love interest's face or the joy in her voice when she thanks him for doing XYZ without being asked. Some real men have terms and conditions when asked to do the simple things. Some take it a step further and say they cannot do XYZ because their partner does it better. We now unlovingly call this weaponized incompetence. This can be used to describe any partner in any kind of relationship dynamic that is not healthy or beneficial.
The next category is Spicy book boyfriends. These are the fictional men who know the secrets to a woman’s body and know how to use them. The tropes from the previous category can also appear in this one, since the hot-and-heavy scenes do not fade to black here. They are detailed. What sets this category apart from the previous one is how the fictional men do the deed. To them, satisfying their love interest first before themselves is what readers find attractive. There are a few real-life men who are the same way, but again, there are some who put their sexual needs above their partners in those intimate moments. It all goes back to the bare minimum with these two categories of book boyfriends.
Now, the final category has a slightly different pace and taste compared to the previous two. The Hear Me Out category is where you find the dark and monster romances. Again, the previous boyfriend tropes can fall into this category, but they have an edge. This is where readers can safely explore those deeply hidden desires that frighten and excite them. The most popular tropes are, of course, monster romances, mafia, serial killers, stalkers, and others that are unsafe outside the book. The core traits are still there, but turned up to ten. An example is that in the first two categories, the book boyfriends are attentive and know everything about their love interests because they listen to them. In this category, those traits turn into an obsession after one meeting, leading the book boyfriend to stalk the love interest. Readers love a mafia man who would kill anyone who would disrespect their partner or a serial killer who kills for her. If men in the real world were to do any of that, they would be in jail.
Readers choose the fictional men over the real men because they feel safer with them. Book boyfriends can not hurt you like some real men do, whether it is emotional or physical. If something is too tense for the reader, all they must do is close the book.
