A closer look at contemporary romance: One Day Home

One Day Home is an ode to Grace and Frankie. You don’t need to have seen the show to read the book as there is no direct or indirect affiliation.

However, this story picks up on the theme and runs with it. No other show outside of the terror that was Vampire Diaries (in the later seasons) has gotten me so fired up. Grace and Frankie was a frequent favorite of mine because it delivered hope. No other show since the Golden Girls had ever bothered to see women as people and not elderly shapeless forms to push into Assisted Living Facilities to die a slow death. Sorry, too much. But this too was short-lived. Later seasons would have our esteemed pair pushed to the background for a storyline on whether their feeble or not. While the men, their former husbands who are around the same age, were given a storyline about an accidental (misunderstanding) threesome. Who’s living the better life? It disgusted me and unfortunately, I was never truly able to get back into it.

But this article isn’t meant to pick apart the themes of the tv show. Instead, it’s meant to give you a peek into my mindset as I created the initial idea for One Day Home. My senior, Mary, needed to ask herself, what is the formula to winning in life? And am I executing it the way I’m meant to? In this story, it’s not ridiculous to give the older woman the better/funnier storyline. Now, I was not partial to the idea of threesomes, but what is just as controversial and outside the expected norm. Yup, you may have guessed it. Dating someone younger. It’s almost expected for some men. And thanks to some celebrities *cough, cough* it’s quickly looked upon as relationship goals by some men and women.

This cultural shift plays out in self-publishing without much pushback. It’s dominated by books with older male heroes, while books with older women are few and far between. When surveying readers about this disparity, the reasons are varied:

• Some say it just doesn’t make sense? But why is that? Women who love someone younger are often betrayed as immature themselves. Sounds like an unreasonable position to take. Especially juxtaposed to men, who are betrayed as sophisticated, worldly, and intriguing with a hot pair of legs beside them.
• Young men are fun. They don’t want a boring older woman. Young men are not a monolith. Not everyone drinks. Not everyone parties until 4 am to fall out of nightclubs with vomit on their chest. I was always a very mature person (even in college) and I managed to meet like-minded souls (men and women) that could hang with the 20 yr-old crowds but would feel just as at home with the 40 and up crowd discussing the ramifications of the Vietnam War and if rock music is dead. Now, I get totally how in the real world meeting the right person at the right time might be a feat. Yet, in my novels, the stars aline where the right guy always ends up with the right older woman. Isn’t that all a romance is anyway?
• What about the young men wanting a baby? Wanting children is no longer a foregone conclusion in this day and age. However, I try to address the issue at least once in every novel. But if you say, well he’s going to change his mind later? Again, why is that? Cause children are the answer to every lasting happiness? What about the couples that never had them? I was under the impression that it was just love. Thus, the love for a significant other can be enough. An older woman can be enough.
• Stereotypes exist for a reason as do double standards. You’re right, but not in the Cabin Sweet world. Or any of the age gap romances to come. So feel free to step outside the stereotypes to experience something new by picking up my book.

Enter One Day Home. My attempt at breaking down this clear barrier. However, it’s not my intention to just switch the male to a female and say voila. That would only be furthering the toxicity depicted in some of these relationships. Hopefully, I have successfully betrayed the circumstances by which a younger man might fall for an older woman.

Maybe there isn’t any mutual pining. Maybe they aren’t checking for each other at the local grocery store. But when they get to know each other true feelings surface. After all, how can you truly deny finding your better half no matter the package wrapping? This cover was meant to be a scenic landscape, but I changed it to keep it real with the essence of the story.

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Now, better journalists than I have touched on the toxicity of such actions and the unintentional but harmful ramifications they can have on young women in age-gap relationships. Again, you can’t paint every relationship with the same broad brush. But, it’s certainly worthwhile to look into and a quick search on your search engine of choice will produce many results. But for the sake of this book, and any future books to come, we’re going to assume that both people in my stories are mature and the young men do not have any undiagnosed mommy issues and therapy sessions waiting for them.