Editor's Note: D. Barbara McWhite grew up in York County, S.C., and lives in Orange Park, Fla., with her husband and cat. Her columns is published on this website each Tuesday. Opinions expressed are solely her own.

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If you listen to Hollywood or read too many romance novels, you begin to believe that loving is easy.

Movies and magazines portray love as a red-hot, burning desire and a passionate embrace. Sighs and kisses and eternity spent gazing into each other’s eyes.

Those of us who are brave enough to permanently commit would often write a different story.

A story of bills and kids. Of pee on the toilet seat and asking him go to the store for the Monostat. Of disagreements and old hurts. Our love stories would bear faint resemblance to the stuff of movies and romance novels.

For most of us, our unions are somewhere between a Tyler Perry movie and the U.S. Senate under the Obama administration. Somewhere between the hot grits and the stalemate.

He already knows my foot doesn't fit the glass slipper. And I know he can't slay all my dragons.

So each day we live the life that is our love story. We settle into the familiar. He knows you turn into a shrew when you are hungry, sleepy or tired. You know he turns into a nut when the money ain't right. You both privately fear the connection is lost. And though it’s not always "happily," we have determined it is "ever after."

Then one day a page turns.

Sometimes it’s a health crisis. The birth of a child or grandchild. A vacation or change of location. Something that calls on us to really connect. To be together again. To recognize and celebrate the history that is uniquely ours.

Sometimes it’s a look or a joke that only the two of us understand.

And sometimes, late at night... when the moon is right... and the wind is blowing from the west... and the kids are gone... and the sheets are clean... and dishes are done... and the bills are paid... there is PASSION.

More often it’s something simple…

Prince Charming needed mosquito repellent.
Jet Black called to remind him.
Prince Charming said he would get it.
Jet Black knew he would forget,
So she bought it.
The end

Any romance in that?

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