After a long shift working in school maintenance, 28-year-old Paul likes to relax with a romance novel, especially one that mixes love with fantasy or horror. He gets through five or six books each month. One recent favourite was Love Bytes, about an eight-foot werewolf woman who leads a wildly successful AI company and falls for an attractive ballroom dance teacher.

Paul first discovered romance through what he describes as its more conventional branch, including the Regency world of Bridgerton. Because he is partially sighted, he usually reads on a Kindle, where he can enlarge the text. In the first Bridgerton book, he was particularly moved by Simon, a main character with a speech difficulty. “I connected with that one more,” Paul says. “You don’t often see disabled protagonists.”

He rarely tells people in his life that he enjoys romance fiction. Instead, he discusses it with users in an online community called Romance for Men. “I was looking through a book recommendation discussion when someone asked whether there were romance books aimed at men,” he says. “A lot of the replies were basically, ‘Do you mean porn?’”

Straight men such as Paul who read or write romance tend to remain hidden from public view. Women are still the genre’s largest audience, while queer romance has become an increasingly visible and celebrated part of publishing. Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, following the friendship and romance between two teenage boys, has become a major graphic novel success and a popular television series. Authors including Alexis Hall have also reached broad audiences and won critical praise. Straight male romance readers, by contrast, are rarely discussed and can face assumptions about their interests.

At Mills & Boon, one of the best-known romance publishers, men make up only around 4% of sales, according to an editorial director. Fewer than 2% of members of the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association are men. There is little reliable information about how many men read romance, or what attracts them to it.

Yet for the men interviewed, romance is not merely escapism. It can feel freeing: a space to experience strong emotions, imagine being wanted, and explore sides of themselves that traditional ideas of masculinity often discourage. Several preferred to remain anonymous because they feared being ridiculed or misunderstood.

Paul’s interest in romantic stories began before he picked up romance novels. As a teenager, he played role-playing games in which players could form relationships with companion characters. “You have these non-playable characters travelling with you, and over time you can develop romantic connections with them,” he says. He often chose forceful male characters who rallied armies and factions into conflict, though he later realised that diplomacy was generally more effective. Those characters appealed to him because they were unlike him. “I’m terrified of confrontation,” he says. “If people are arguing, I just want to disappear.”

In 2015, Paul discovered that Stephenie Meyer had written a gender-swapped version of Twilight. “As a teenager, it was fashionable to hate Twilight, but I read it anyway,” he says. A scene in which the female vampire tells the male lead that she can no longer resist him stayed with him. “That was the moment it clicked. There’s a fantasy in being wanted that intensely.” Today, he searches for books often grouped under romance for men, including Charlotte’s Reject by KR Treadway, which features a formidable, intimidating heroine. “In a lot of women’s romance, the man is the pursuer,” he says. “In romance for men, it can be reversed. It helped me understand that I’m okay as I am. I can accept myself more when I see that these relationship dynamics can exist.”

Andrew came to romance through a conscious decision to broaden his reading. The 31-year-old tech worker loves science fiction and fantasy and considers himself politically feminist. But he became increasingly aware that many of his favourite books were dominated by male voices and conversations between male characters. “Eventually, I got bored of it,” he says.

Three years ago, while browsing in a bookshop, he decided to buy something by a woman writer. He picked up Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing, about Violet Sorrengail, a dragon rider with the power to wield lightning. “I went in with almost no idea what it was,” he says. “I didn’t even know what romantasy meant. It was refreshing to be inside the perspective of a female protagonist, and I’d never read fantasy that gave so much attention to romance and sex.”

Since then, Andrew has read more romantasy, including work by Penn Cole, Carissa Broadbent and Sarah J Maas. He has also encouraged his wife to try the genre. “She has a book club with other women, and they were doubtful at first,” he says. “Then they all became obsessed.”

Andrew does not see romantasy as being as bleak or transactional as pornography, though he admits he would feel self-conscious buying a visibly sexual book in public. “I like being able to read it on my phone or Kindle rather than holding a physical copy on the train,” he says. At the same time, he questions whether the genre’s idealised portrayal of sex can create unrealistic expectations. “Every experience is described as the greatest thing that has ever happened to them,” he says. “There might be a subtle unhealthy side to that, because real-life sex can be less dramatic.”

Ali, 54, a former investment banker, encountered romance stories more than four decades ago. His younger sister subscribed to the now-defunct teen magazine Jackie, and he would read its romantic photo stories as a teenager. “They were always boy-meets-girl plots,” he recalls. He was also influenced by Judy Blume’s Forever, a frank novel about teenage sex that has faced censorship attempts since its 1975 publication. Later, while studying journalism at Oxford, Ali interviewed Barbara Cartland, one of the most famous romance writers of her era. “It wasn’t a life-changing encounter,” he says, “but it is amusing to think about now.”

An enthusiastic reader of everyone from Tessa Dare and Evie Dunmore to Jane Austen and Daphne du Maurier, Ali is not troubled by claims that romance is too predictable. Shakespeare, he notes, often signals from the beginning whether audiences are watching a tragedy or a comedy, and comedies generally end in marriage. “Formulas can be both a gift and a problem,” he says. “When they are handled badly, they become boring. But when they work, the emotional rewards are enormous: the difficult moments and the satisfying endings.”

Ali is happy to discuss romance at length, but he believes many readers, regardless of gender, may hide their preferences to seem more sophisticated. He compares it with survey responses in which people claim to enjoy highbrow radio stations while actually listening to more mainstream ones. “That insecurity is real,” he says.

After studying creative writing at Kingston University in his 40s, Ali joined two writing groups, where he is the only member focused on romance. He has since completed three historical romance novels set in late-Victorian Mayfair. The first is due to be published under the name Ali Murphy, a combination of his own name and his wife’s birth name. “I wanted something gender-neutral,” he says. “I’m not trying to fool anyone. I just don’t want people to see the cover and think, ‘Oh no, it’s a man writing romance.’”

While Ali and Andrew gravitate toward more established romance publishing, Paul and many other men follow a less visible branch of the genre. Romance for men is largely self-published and distributed digitally. It has a substantial audience, with more than 10,000 regular visitors to a dedicated online forum and a busy chat community where readers exchange recommendations.

Readers resist reducing the category to one simple definition, but recurring features are clear. These books are often told through the eyes of an ordinary man whose love interest is an exceptionally capable or powerful woman. This reverses the usual pattern in mainstream romance, where heroines are commonly designed to feel relatable and heroes are elevated into fantasy figures. In many romance-for-men stories, the main conflict comes from outside the relationship: a war, hostile force or shared enemy, rather than jealousy and communication failures between the couple. There is also ongoing debate about “harem” fiction, in which one male character has relationships with several women. Some readers see it as a major part of the field, while others argue that it is not romance at all.

Jonny Rogers, 33, works in finance and reads relentlessly. He has finished 90 books this year, ranging from Dostoevsky to the popular romance-for-men series Would You Love a Monster Girl?, which he read in less than a week. About two-thirds of his reading is romance, largely within the RFM category.

“I watched Titanic when I was around 11, and it really affected me,” he says. “It may sound cheesy, but I loved the idea of meeting somebody and falling in love the way Jack and Rose did.” Looking for similar feelings in books, he came across The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion’s novel about an awkward man, possibly autistic, trying to find love. “I think I recognised something in him,” he says. Jonny suspects he may be autistic himself, although he has not been diagnosed. Years later, a friend recommended Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses. He finished it within a week and then discovered the RFM reading community.

For Jonny, the appeal lies less in spaceships, magic and warrior heroines than in the emotional core. “I love watching two people fall in love,” he says. “It’s the most human thing there is, and it feels magical.” He looks for stories with compelling female characters and believes a strong romance can appeal to any kind of reader.

His girlfriend persuaded him to develop a short writing idea into a longer work. The result was Daniel’s Dilemma, a novel about a young man who falls for his best friend’s mother. It was warmly received by the RFM community. Jonny says he adopted a pen name not because he was embarrassed, but because the book includes explicit scenes. “I don’t want my parents or my grandmother buying it and realising I wrote that,” he says. When he read his girlfriend one date scene, she responded: “That’s so romantic. Why aren’t you ever that romantic with me?”

Jonny’s closest male friends know that he writes romance. “None of them have bought the book,” he says, laughing. “I think they assumed it was erotica.” He has not been bullied or directly criticised for reading romance, but it is not an interest he shares casually outside his close circle.

One commonly recommended RFM writer is DH Willison, 58, author of the Tales of Arvia series. His fantasy setting treats dragons and other creatures as important characters rather than monsters for humans to defeat. Unusual couples, including a harpy and a hopeless adventurer, are a normal part of the world.

Willison says other writers have sometimes been more dismissive than readers. In one group, he recalls, someone brought up an old pulp romance novel and enthusiastically mocked it line by line as evidence that romance was badly written. In another, he was told that a “real” romance required male and female leads to follow strict gender roles, including conventions around age-gap relationships, where an older male partner is often assumed. If the woman is older, it is labelled a “reverse age gap”. Willison considers that distinction unnecessary. Gendered assumptions also affect how books are promoted, he argues. “Romance is for everyone, but if you write and market only for women, then naturally you will mostly reach women.”

At the more literary end of romantic fiction, sex scenes and obvious genre conventions are often kept off the page. Mike Gayle and Bobby Palmer work in this area and publish under their own names.

Gayle, 55, has written about love and relationships since his 1998 debut, My Legendary Girlfriend, about a young man recovering from a painful breakup. In 2021, he received the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s outstanding achievement award, becoming the first male writer to do so. “Some female readers tell me it feels refreshing to read about love from a man’s point of view,” he says. “The more perspectives we encounter, the easier it is to understand that more than one experience can be valid.”

Over time, Gayle has become more interested in the years after a couple gets together, rather than the courtship itself, which remains the focus of most romances. “Getting together is more glamorous to write,” he says. “But real romance is about staying together and learning how to make it work.” His themes have changed alongside his own life. “In my 20s, I was focused on finding ‘the one’. As I’ve seen relationships break down or be taken for granted, I’ve wanted to write about something richer and more enduring.”

Gayle’s next novel, Not Quite Myself, is scheduled for publication in 2027. Co-written with his wife, Claire, it follows a couple who swap bodies after their youngest child leaves for university. “It explores that point when the children are no longer the main thing holding a household together,” he says. “How do you start looking at your partner as an individual again, with fresh eyes?”

While Gayle now focuses on life after the happy ending, Palmer, 33, experiments with the way love stories are narrated. His third novel, Main Characters, is told entirely by people around the central couple rather than by the lovers themselves. As a result, their relationship remains, in his words, “a beautiful private thing”, and readers never directly learn what either person truly thinks about the other.

Unlike his earlier books, it is being presented in the UK as a romance, complete with a bright pink cover. Palmer has already noticed that fewer men have contacted him about it than they did about his previous work.

That may be their loss, although not every male romance reader believes the genre has transformed him. Jonny does not think romantic fiction has changed who he is. “My life has already been full of love,” he says. “It isn’t that romance novels shaped my life. It’s that having a life with love in it is what makes me want to read them.”

Some names have been changed.