- Reviews & Essays
- Some More about Loving Wives
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I've just read The Soulful Bard's intelligent and well-reasoned essay concerning Literotica's Loving Wives category. The essay, as I said, is well done, carefully crafted and informative. But I feel a need to add a bit to his essay, not to argue with anything Soulful Bard said, but to add a bit from my own perspective.
Soulful's essay concerns itself with the types of stories that the Loving Wives category attracts. He categorizes five types, from revenge to reconciliation stories and his essay seems to be complete. I would like to talk about one more way to look at a loving wives story: the reader's reaction to the story.
A few weeks ago, I authored a very short piece that in my mind was a comment about the Loving Wives category. The piece was in the "Author's Hangout" thread part of the Literotica "Community Board section. It was in response to a challenge by Lit author AMoveableBeast which asked for stories on a variety of subjects but that the stories be very short, ideally less than 500 words long. Mine came in at fewer than 200 words. My little story starts now:
Brad Hampton doodled a stick figure onto the pad in front of him as he spoke into his phone. Brad frowned at what he was hearing. "I don't give a shit," he said. "No-fault State or whatever. Do whatever you have to do. Hide it in the Cayman Islands. Wherever. She ain't going to get any of my money. You can let her have the house. No way she'll be able to keep up the mortgage payments. You got the judge on board. Okay." Brad hung up the phone. "Fuckin' divorce lawyers," he thought, "They don't know nothing."
He was lucky to have found out. A couple of thousand under the table to her therapist had led to the information. It was supposed to be client privileged, but what was all his Wall Street money for, if not to get information, legal or otherwise.
It was really simple. Maggie had cheated. Drunk or not, .it didn't matter. She cheated on him. She'd get it., get it good. No excuse for cheating. Brad completed his doodle, a rope was drawn around the stick figure's neck.
The End
For a moment, please, if you are reading this essay, stop and think about YOUR (dear reader) reaction to the short story. Are you pleased that, "good, the bitch cheater wife is going to get beat?" Or did you react in another way entirely? Have you thought about it? Okay, let me continue.
I was trying for something in the story. That something was irony, a situation where the reader will see past what the protagonist in the story, Wall Street Macher, Brad Hampton, thinks is happening.
The story is about a Cheating Wife, well, really, about a wife who has cheated. The protagonist in the story is a Wall Street type who is working at punishing his wife who has cheated on him. The Wall Street man, Brad Hampton by name, is angry and is planning. to cause his wife financial harm while divorcing her.
I attempted in the small space allotted to the story to paint a picture of Brad. He steals from the government and his wife by hiding money in the Cayman Islands. He has bribed a judge. He has suborned a Marriage Counselor by bribing the counselor to reveal privileged information. He uses his position to break the law by garnering through bribes information that smacks of insider trading. I did my very best to paint him as a reprehensible figure. His drawing of a stick figure is meant to subconsciously bring to a reader's mind the child's game of Hangman.
I was trying to have the reader contrast this Wall Street trader with his wife who apparently slept with another man while she was drunk. He thinks of her as a cheater, no excuse, someone who is getting what she deserves.
I hoped that the reader of the story would see the irony of the situation, that the real cheater, bribing, tax dodging, lying Brad Hampton is the cheater, by far the more guilty party in this situation.
Sadly (to my mind) that is not how many of the readers, not all readers but many readers of this story saw it. Their reaction (by email and by comment) was to consider Brad a hero, someone not a cheater but someone who is justified in what he is doing, no matter how underhanded and illegal it might be.
I write this essay not to argue with AMoveableFeast—his essay makes a lot of sense to me-but to point out that so many readers of Loving Wives stories approach these tales with personal agendas that conform to Brad Hampton's, with no sympathy, no attempt to look at another's point of view and with the idea that anything is fair when revenge is the point.
Two of the most prolific author contributors to Loving Wives are Matt Moreau and Just Plain Bob. I think it interesting to note that these authors in their hundreds of stories seem to have half end as revenge tales and half as reconciliation stories. I wonder how their readers react to them.
- COMMENTS
AA82ndAAover 1 year agoNice well written piece. I have read many L/W stories and men's and women's infidelity have been treated equally. I also think in real life the decision to inflict revenge (or end a marriage,) on the protagonist shouldn't be in the preview of the reader. Voicing your opinion of the cheated parties reaction is like, well political reactions. I would much rather read comments about the writers ability to convey a story...Besides, infidelity being the number one cause of divorce needs no additional condemnation.
virtualatheistover 9 years agoIn Loving Wives and had a large amount of abuse because my protagonist was a loving wife who had sex with her husband.
Apparently if a wife is not a cheater then she isn't loving... Never understood that.
fanfareover 9 years agoAs an experiment, I would take samples of the LW stories and gender-switch the dialogues.
In my opinion a number of the male writers contributing stories to the LW category suffer with deep-rooted gender confusion.
The commenting misogynist trolls of the BTB lynchmob are cowering so deep into their closets, they are what I call spelunkers.
Lacking the psychological fortitude or intellectual capacity to confront and take control of their abyssal fears.
maxflyalmost 10 years agoMy experiences with readers is similar to yours. Tons of hits at first, then they tail off. The rating seems to always go up. I do seem to see new readers in waves, however. I assume it is because a story gets highlighted now and then.
As for my readers opinions, they are all over the map. As one noted, "You have really hit a nerve". I don't tolerate vicious or vulgar comments and routinely delete those, but I don't delete negative comments as long as they aren't offensive. It is startling to me how wide a range of comments I get, and how seriously people take these stories.
I write in the first person, so my stories appear to be a personal narrative on real events, but I assure you they are just stories. I have used some personal experiences and aquaintances as the basis of some characters so I could have a vision for looks, personalities, etc., but in no case did any of the events ever occur. Yet, many readers respond as though they are counselling me about my marraige, which is interesting to say the least. Many comments are personal attacks. I assume these are people who have been hurt, or have low self esteem. They view differences with fear and anger and represent the worst of people. If anything I take joy in provoking these people. It is too easy, really!
If I have learned anything it is that there are a lot of controlling men with no respect for women who posses an unusally distorted view of the world likely grounded in low self esteem. The can't see past their own machismo. The reality of the world is lost on them. There is no doubt a cheating spouse is a dire thing and that it can hurt you to your core, but neither is a woman a thing to be possessed. A marraige is beautiful thing but it is consensual. It needs to be worked at everyday because The real world is full of temptations, and reasons to question one's relationships. That is the key theme behind Loving Wives. What are the implications and outcomes of cheating, swinging, etc? Why does it occur? How does it end? How does it feel to be in these situations?
Undoubtedly the Loving Wives stories fall into a number of subcategories. I am not sure I agree with all that you and others have named and I think some were missed. Those previously named categories seem to focus more on outcome rather than theme. For example, revenge and reconcilliation (or not) are outcomes of a cheating spouse scenario. Watching your wife with another partner could be either cuckhold or voyeurism based. There are also basic swinging and serendipitous encounters that fall into this category. For me the most erotic are the serendipitous encounters couples have.
When I write for Literotica I wish only to invoke thought, not to be judged because someone doesn't like the topic. But, that doesn't seem the be the way it is for some. Instead, like in so many other public Internet forums, people use anonymity to flame that with which they disagree or don't understand. If only they knew how much we learn about them in spite of their anonymity, and how weak, shallow, ignorant, and most of all fearful, they have portrayed themselves.
Regardless, Loving Wives will continue to be the most divisive category on Literotica because of the emotions it evokes in people. Unlike other categories like Erotic Encounters or First Time, Loving Wives hits us where we live. It evokes emotions other categories do not. It goes beyond erotica and enters the realm of relationships social issues, and personal conflicts. Loving Wives enrages those that have been cheated on before. It makes those who have been made to feel less a man because of a cheating wife lash out vehemently against another experiencing the same thing. When a comment viciously attacks " a wimp" often we see a man who has been made to feel this way in his own past. The comments are aimed at himself, not the author or character in a story whether he realizes it or not. The more vicious the comment, the worse the hurt.
frontlinecasteralmost 10 years agoThe typical loving wives anonymous asshole learned to read essays! Wonderful, now this section can end up as toxic and worthless as Loving Wives is.
