Husband sulks off to bed mumbling about lost romance while I lay face down on the couch, farting myself stupid because there were onions on my burger and now my life is ruined.
But what is romance?
‘Tis but an idea of a feeling when near someone else. A glance, a touch, a whisper. I googled it and the top few results were “feelings of”. And then there’s the kissing and the hand-holding and the progressing from there.
What has romance been for me, besides not using the bathroom with the door open? Recently, being a mid-30s woman has not required much romance but before that, well I can’t remember what constituted romance so I looked on my phone for pics but there was only 39,002 pictures of me and the boys with a sprinkling of photos of Husband in there occasionally.

But getting an awesome haircut was sexy, which led to romance. Watching Vikings together with the bared chests and long hair and whatnot led to some romance.

Going along with my crackpot schemes is a large, blinking neon sign of a wonderful partner, but it isn’t necessarily romantic per se.

“Flowers, chocolate, promises you don’t intend to keep” are all pretty standard, but can be more exciting when they are initiated by one’s very own beast.

In the beginning, our romance was via text because Husband had an operation and was out of commission for a bit. The texts were not romantic but I’m pretty sure they had us both thinking along romantic lines. I bought him flowers in hospital, he told his sister to beat it, there must have been some romance on top of the hospital linens until the nurse told me to beat it.
He wrote me a poem once, that was romantic. He bought me flowers a number of times, definitely romantic

(and I get even better tokens of love now that I’ve produced heirs). He’d call me all the freaking time (still does) just to chat. I call that romantic because it didn’t end with one of us in jail.
So what has constituted romance for me are actions which create feelings. These feelings reinforce pair ponding so parents will take better care of offspring so that they in turn will become romantic individuals who create future pair bonds and further their species.
So it’s true, romance is a feeling.