Hello everyone, and thank you Delilah for lending me your blog. I’m so happy to be back!

Last time, we talked women. Today, I thought we’d talk men. OK, women all over again, as well. You see, I got into a heated debate I mean civilized discussion, with a guy, about the type of men romance authors write. You know, the type all women secretly or rather not-so-secretly covet. We have, after all, devoted an entire genre to the man of every woman’s dreams. A Man, with a capital M.

A Man who is strong yet vulnerable, emotional even. A Man who is confident but sensitive and understanding when need be. Dependable, loyal and intelligent with a great sense of humor. A Man who is kind and courageous, who is endlessly creative and attentive in bed, successful in all his endeavors but never afraid to admit, even if sometimes begrudgingly, that they were wrong, and who, after acknowledging the error of their ways, will bend over backwards to make their loved ones happy for as long as they both shall live.

Not only is that hopelessly unrealistic, he said, the guy I was debating I mean having a civilized discussion with, it puts real men under pressure and it generates performance anxiety and it’s just not fair, pitting men against something that doesn’t even exist. He went on to say the species most likely to become extinct next was the Average Joe and complained how no one wants Joe and no one wants to be Joe, everyone wants to be and bed The Man.

I let him talk while a light bulb slowly lit up in my head. If The Man is not true to life, it’s not true to fiction, either, not anymore. The description of The Man fits every heroine as well, and The Man lives inside every real woman. Women are proactive in the family, their communities and the workplace. And they are agents of change, movers and shakers, independent in their choices in books, as well.

I submit to you that The Man is the type of person not only would we love to have as a lover and/or a friend, it’s the type of person each and every one of us aspires to be. The heroic journey we love to write and read about, the dream of the hero saving the day against all odds and finding their happy ending is the search for the champion in all of us. Not just the story we’d love to experience for ourselves and the kind of man we’d want by our side but the type of woman, human being, we’d like to be.

I admire The Man, or The Woman, because I aspire to be just like him/her. I write about them because I suspect you admire them too, and it’s a sweet dream, one worth cherishing, isn’t it? And I don’t believe in the battle of the sexes, that women are from Venus and men from Mars. I think we’re just earthlings with the same hopes and dreams, fears and desires. We face the same challenges and we want the same things. To be happy. To make someone happy. To love and be loved. To do the right thing.

Different costume. Same core. Truce?

Dita Parker is the author of a death-defying love and lust triangle set in the Big Easy titled Alex Rising, and Perpetual Pleasure, a hot and heavy novel starring a commitment phobic immortal and a stunt performer bent on showing her everything she’s missing out on (Ellora’s Cave Publishing). Dita lives in Scandinavia with her striking Viking and their children. She believes that sex is a positive life force, that love can last a lifetime, and that in 2014 Brazil will once again win the World Cup. To see how it all plays out, visit Dita’s Den.