I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me…” —Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Somewhere around 2016 I came across this quote, and I realized I have at least one thing in common with Ruth Bader. Ginsburg often mentioned how her marriage was a key part of her success, perhaps an odd sentiment from someone who was such a part of the women’s liberation movement, but it made perfect sense to me — especially the part where she added that her husband, Marty, was “an unusual man.”
I married an unusual man, too. Much as Marty was Ruth’s biggest booster, Ryan is my hype man. We may only have twenty-eight years of marriage to the Ginsburgs’ fifty-six, but we are also poster children for another quote from Justice Ginsburg: “In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.” This is the story of how I came to be a writer through such alternating accommodation.
I’ve been writing stories since elementary school, but I originally planned to be a college professor with an emphasis on the American Romantics. My husband wanted to be a sports broadcaster, specifically to call baseball games. I’m not sure I’d even walked down the aisle before we were faced with a crossroads: would he follow me to grad school or would I stay in Knoxville so he could pursue his job at the radio station?
I chose to stay.
This first choice isn’t that unusual; often wives defer their plans for their husbands. I knew that I could go to graduate school at a later date, though. My mother had already proven that. So I got a retail job, worked my way into a corporate job thanks to my college roommate, and we were soon faced with another conundrum: the radio station, his best shot at achieving his dreams, seemed disinclined to give him the opportunities he needed to advance. Also, he’d observed enough sports broadcasting by that point to know that he didn’t want to pursue that particular job because it was not family friendly. Did we stay or did we move to Atlanta in search of better opportunities?
Once again, I left my job to pursue the one thing I swore I would never do: teach high school. I wasn’t even teaching English. I taught Spanish, my college minor, aka the classes I took because they were fun and easy. But I’d written my first romance novel, and I knew I could write in the summers even if I didn’t have time to write during the school year, so off we went.
I put my writing dreams to the side for a bit. We had a baby, and it was years before I found out that not every husband gets up with his wife each time the baby cries. Mine did. He changed our son’s diaper and then handed the kid off to me to nurse. We attacked parenting, much like every other aspect of our lives, like a professional wrestling tag team. Who cooks supper? The person who gets home first. Who changes the diaper? The person with free hands. Who does the dishes? The person who didn’t cook supper. To this day, we have been known to literally tag in or out of a situation.
As I continued teaching, my pay increasing in tiny increments, my husband got a foothold in the corporate world and managed to swing himself up the ladder from one job to another through both his talent and sheer force of will. Money was dire when I took a year off after the birth of our second child, so I went back into teaching. That Christmas, after getting a new job that paid significantly more, Ryan got me something most women would not want: an application for the Master of Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University. I, however, melted.
He remembered my dreams of grad school even if I hadn’t. He saw that my writing was slipping away, and he wanted to give that joy back to me, to encourage me. I finished out that last year of teaching high school and became a writer/stay-at-home mom.
As it turns out, having a dedicated time to write made almost as much difference as any class I took. While teaching, I’d only been able to write in fits and starts. I had no time to dedicate to craft and little energy leftover for creativity. Thanks to a grad school class project, I rejoined Georgia Romance Writers (GRW). Adding a master’s degree to everything I learned in GRW along with the time to implement it — three hours at least four days a week while my youngest kid was in preschool — made all the difference. My last year of teaching was 2007-2008. My first novel to catch the eye of an agent and eventually an editor was finished in 2010.
Steadily, I wrote. At this point I took on more household responsibilities because Ryan’s commute was easily over an hour each way. Even so, he took over all parenting duties at any time I needed to attend a conference, workshop or appearance.
When the company where my husband worked gave in to mergers and layoffs, it just so happened that I had my most successful year as a writer not long after. Serendipitous? Yes. With an assist from a Higher Power? Absolutely. We tease each other about these things, that teamwork really does make the dream work.
Are we the perfect couple? Probably not, but I’d say we’re pretty perfect for each other. The perfect couple doesn’t exist. RBG hated to cook, something women are supposed to do. Fortunately, Marty loved to cook. He didn’t make Harvard Law Review, but Ruth did. Many a fragile man wouldn’t have been able to withstand his wife outshining him professionally, but Marty was secure enough in his manhood to know that he didn’t like to work like his wife did. Similarly, I have my faults. I’m sure Ryan has some, too, although neither one of us cares to dwell on the peccadillos of the other. We’d much prefer to laugh about them, and I will maintain until my dying day that humor is a hallmark of a happy relationship.
Maybe that’s part of why I tend to write stories with humor. My latest, Little Miss Petty, is practically a romcom. Despite not writing a
pure romance — my stories tend to also focus on friendships and a heroine’s journey — I’ve always been drawn to romantic elements because I believe firmly in the possibility of happily ever after, or at the very least a partnership that proves happier than not.
I know that my husband informs my heroes even if he’s not the kind of hero some readers expect. He’s secure enough in his masculinity that he doesn’t need to conform to the worst aspects of stereotypical heroes. He introduced me to Gilmore Girls. He loves his ladies of pop. He won’t hesitate to use silly voices to make me laugh. Most importantly, he sees me for who I am and respects me as a person. He sees our marriage as a partnership, and honestly not one of those things should be that revolutionary.
Even so, my heroes are too frequently called “not manly enough.” Past critique partners have told me, “Your male characters don’t talk like men.” Inevitably, the dialogue in question is something my husband had actually said. I’ve had others say, “No man would ever do [insert something stereotypically “unmanly” like buy a box of tampons],” and I could only chuckle. My husband had done something similar the week before.
One reason many men hate romance is because, traditionally, it has centered on the woman’s experience. They think we’re looking for the super tall, impossibly handsome man with both a high-paying job and washboard abs. Nah. We’re looking for a partner. We’re looking for someone who gets up with the baby in the middle of the night, someone who remembers your dreams when you defer them, someone who doesn’t turn his nose up at housework, someone who sees our work is as important as theirs, someone who sees us as a person complete with our own hopes and dreams that are just as important as his own.
So I’ll keep writing heroes like Malone, the hero in Little Miss Petty. I’ll keep writing guys who are secure enough in their masculinity that they will wear a friendship bracelet for a tween and cuddle a kitten. Malone is just as likely to roll up his sleeves to wash the dishes as he is to volunteer his time for Habitat for Humanity. He takes his partner’s feelings into account and cares about her pleasure, sexual and otherwise. Those are the men we are looking for. Those are the men I write. That is the man I married.
