Loving Loving Wives

When I say "there's no other place to go," I don't just mean on Literotica: I mean period. There are a few sites that have similar content, but they each have their own flaws.

A certain social media site with an alien mascot carries some stories that resemble the various forms of male-focused relationship drama one finds in Loving Wives, but they're woefully lacking overall. The similar stories available there tend to be short, badly told, and made even worse by the pretense that they're "real."

YouTube has a fair few channels peddling AI text-to-speech stories, mostly BTB ones, but here's the irony: the text used to produce the videos is almost entirely stolen from Loving Wives. These channels steal older stories from no longer active authors, and that's for one very specific reason: YouTube's copyright policy. The whole scam they're running on those channels is to steal stories that are unlikely to earn them copyright strikes, which would result in demonetization. The videos even include "helpful" notes in each of their videos asking the author to contact them instead of YouTube on the off chance that someone notices the theft.

As to Amazon, Smashwords, Patreon, etc.--beyond the fact that they're all pay sites--there doesn't seem to be much movement in this space there, either. Now, whether that's due to an untapped market waiting to be exploited, because it's too niche to be profitable, or some other factor, I can't say.

Here on Literotica, there's Non-Erotic, Novels and Novellas, and a few other places, but why would either the writers or the readers go there? To kowtow to the people that wish these stories didn't exist in the first place? The writers of these stories have no incentive when site management has already made it clear that they're okay with non-erotic stories in LW. They already have a built-in audience in Loving Wives, one that's both sizable and vocal.

But why is that?

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This is where we move into the realm of speculation, but reasonably well-grounded speculation. I've spoken with a large number of both writers and commenters in Loving Wives about the topic. While not everyone got there the same way, a common sequence of events goes something like this:

1. In real life, a man gets divorced or maybe just breaks up with a longtime girlfriend. It could be because of cheating, communication issues, drifting apart, or a host of other factors, but he feels aggrieved, rightly or wrongly.

2. He gets lonely and horny and goes to Literotica for relief.

3. For whatever reason, he makes his way to Loving Wives. There are lots of possible reasons this might happen, but the most obvious is that he's looking at the "new" page, since that's apparently the big funnel on the site.

4. He finds a divorce drama story, and it's everything his divorce wasn't: the wife is wholly at fault, or she's remorseful, or maybe the main character manages to avoid getting taken to the cleaners, or he gets to see his kids, or whatever. It's the hypothetical reader's fantasy; not an erotic one, but a fantasy nonetheless.

5. And then he can go down different paths from here. They might leave the category behind once the wounds heal a bit, heading over to Erotic Couplings or Romance or a kink-specific category. Some guys leave the site after a while because they make a new life and don't need the fantasy. Some stay, but due to age or a new relationship or whatever, they don't have much interest in erotica, but they still enjoy this particular type of drama. Some keep reading Literotica "normally" and hit LW as well as other stuff.

6. The readers who stick around start to look for similar stories, but they don't really find them anywhere else, so Literotica and Loving Wives it is! Hey... When did all these cuck stories start showing up here? Get the fuck out of our category!

I've had conversations with representative members of each of those groups, and the through line for them is pretty much as listed above. There are other types of readers, too, though. Some use the stories to help make sense of what happened to them years or decades before; one frequent commenter talks about his divorce that happened when he was in his late 30s, and he's in his 80s now. This stuff just really wasn't talked about as much fifty years ago, at least not with any real emotional honesty.

Then there are folks like me. I'm happily married and have been for twenty years. I'm reasonably well-adjusted, with diverse interests, friends, a loving family, etc. I was cheated on once that I know of, in college, decades ago, but it didn't particularly scar me. I went through one divorce that was about as amicable as such a thing can be. But I still love these stories, because they're interesting, and because they have a point of view you don't really see in modern fiction elsewhere.

Divorce and other types of relationship drama stories are all over the internet, but the vast majority of them are very female-focused. They're from the woman's POV, or the husband is a villain, or the stories' focus/plot driver is the husband's flaws, rather than the wife's issues. They tend to be, if not BTBs, then an analog of the "moving on" variety of Loving Wives story. And that's good! Diverse voices are important. But sometimes diversity looks different than we expect it to. LW is the only place I know on the internet where these issues are discussed from the husband's viewpoint (in fiction, at least) in this volume.

That said, a lot of it is talked about inartfully, or in contexts that are stereotypically male: revenge stories, barely interrogated emotion, performative displays of masculinity, toxic levels of stoicism as a virtue, etc. A big chunk of the stories are very surface-level, with little to say besides "here's a fun little romp." And that's okay, too; we're almost all amateur writers here, and none of the readers are required to be professors of literature, either.

But the stories being told are something that you don't see anywhere else, and I think they're valuable. They're a way for guys going through a rough time to say to each other, "hey, you aren't alone." They're a way for men to tell their tales, too, something the wider market doesn't really encourage. Men's fiction, even amateur fiction, for a whole variety of factors, tends towards action, adventure, spy thrillers, fantasy, and so on. Some of that shows up in LW, too, but writers there don't need to make the stories about those things just to sandwich in a bit of human drama, or to tell their stories.

I don't have any hard data to back it up, but I sincerely believe this is the section of the site with the highest percentage of authors who wrote one or two stories and then dipped or started lurking, because they finally got to tell the tale of how they wish things had gone for them, have people sympathize, and get it out of their system.

bruce1971--a wonderful Loving Wives author in his own right and also the author of two essays that should be required reading for any write wading into the category (LW Notes: The Redemption Arc and LW Notes: The Martian Slut Ray)--put it very well in an email exchange he and I shared:

From an analytical perspective, Literotica--particularly Loving Wives--is fantastic. There's so much content, dealing with so many different perspectives on what it is to be a man, what it is to be in a relationship, what it is to love, etc. There aren't a lot of people on the site who are interested in pulling out the subtext and making it...well, text...but the process of self-construction is there, even if the protagonist isn't commenting on it.

I got into a conversation with another writer about the way people play with gender roles in the story. He joked that Literotica isn't the New Yorker. I agree--you don't see nearly the breadth of perspectives in the New Yorker. You sure as hell don't see Trumpers and Socialists talking with each other about what it is to be a man!

It also explains why scores there continue to go lower and lower. The turf war doesn't allow for high scores on almost any story. The people that want sharing, swapping, and swinging--as well as cucking, femdom, and women getting away with cheating--don't like the stories where the husband rejects these things, and they ding those stories accordingly.

Meanwhile, the guys wanting to read the stories that show them a world where the husband's divorce is everything their real world one wasn't are angry that people are posting stories that seem almost designed to trigger them, and they drop one star ratings all over those stories. This is especially true in the case of forced cuckolding stories, which often include threats of children being taken away, financial ruination, and enforced chastity, and which read like a PTSD nightmare to these guys. This emotional reaction helps to explain, if not excuse, the number of commenters who wander into other sections of the site and 1-bomb stories with even a hint of infidelity and leave comments like "1* cuck shit."

So, that's the history of the category, warts and all, along with the reason for its current state. Hopefully you've found this explanation as to why the second largest category on an erotica site has so many stories that lack any real eroticism useful.

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But what does that mean for a writer? How does one succeed in the category? For that matter, how do you decide if you even want to dip your toe in? What are the upsides and downsides of even trying?

Obviously, I think it's worth trying to publish in Loving Wives; I didn't write this whole thing for my health. If you have even the slightest inclination to write a story about a wife cheating on a husband, or a husband cheating on a wife, or a fun swinging/swapping/sharing/cuckolding married couple, you should give it a try there. If you don't? You can skip most of the rest of this unless you want some insight.

However, if you, as a writer, want to dip your toes in, you need to be prepared for what that means, both in terms of your writing and the reactions you're likely to receive.

Let's start with this caveat: this is not a category you go to if you want high scores. Part of this is due to the turf war; that's the easy part to recognize. But there are other factors in play as well.

In most categories, if you can write coherently, plot a story decently, put together reasonable dialog and--most importantly--write sex scenes that tickle the fancy of the people looking for that particular type of kink, you can do well. That's not the case in Lowing Wives.

We joke about the "mom's hot, why not" style of Incest story on Authors' Hangout occasionally, the type with little in the way of characterization or story but reasonably well-written mother/son sex scenes that can score well above 4 stars and sometimes above 4.5 stars in that category. Similar types of stories can be written for Anal, BDSM, Erotic Couplings, Group Sex, and so on. You don't get that safety net in Loving Wives, though.

Many of the most successful LW stories, ratings-wise, have little or no explicit sex in them. The ones that do have explicit sex, especially between the wife and the affair partner, often fare poorly because the person writing them tried some variation of what "should" be an equivalent of "mom's hot, why not" in a category whose description indicates it to be about infidelity. But that kind of story doesn't fly there. A story where cheaters, swingers, etc. get together can succeed in Loving Wives, but it has to be a story, not just, "Here's how I shared my wife with my poker buddies and why it was awesome in 2,000 words or less."

Some wrongheaded folks will turn up their nose and say, "Well, you can just write a BTB story and the incels in the comments will eat it up," but that's not true, either. As I mentioned above, the category is engaged in a constant, wide-ranging conversation with itself, in the way you usually see in a city's art or music scene. Things come into and out of style, although there are usually holdouts from older styles that still make the things they want and find an audience for them. But that's the thing: they find an audience, but not necessarily a big one. The larger community will pooh pooh the unwelcome content, dragging down the rating, no matter how technically skilled it might be.

The hard BTB stories with husbands from military backgrounds and incredibly over-the-top revenge schemes were extremely popular for a while, but now you see very few of them. There's a sense of almost embarrassment among some authors and commenters there for that type of story now. For a year or so, new stories regularly had headers on them telling readers "this isn't going to have NAVY Seals, biker gangs, or secret agents."

New stories in that vein that come through sometimes, and they still do okay in the ratings if they're well-told. However, if they're just a retread of old tropes, they don't. Once a new subgenre appears in the category, it's rare that it ever entirely goes away. Instead, it merely waxes and wanes in popularity. BTBs, especially hard BTBs, are in the "hair metal in 1992" stage: you can still see some of them, and they still have their ardent fans, but new subgenres--or, more accurately, older ones that have been retooled--are pushing them further into the corner. But, hell, Poison was still charting in 1993, so anything's possible.

So, there's no formula, at least not one that stays at all stable. There's no safety net. The ratings are low. The commenters can be mean to the point of abusive. Why the hell would anyone want to write here?

Precisely for those reasons.

When I first started participating in the Authors' Hangout, someone asked why anyone would want to write there, given all the downsides I listed and more. The answer I gave--which is still the truest distillation I can give--is that it's a crucible.

There is no more demanding section on the site, and I mean that both in terms of your craft and the readers' expectations. You will get better if you write there, or you'll get eaten alive. Hell, you'll still get eaten alive, but if they see you not improving as a writer over time, or worse, declining? Oh, they'll definitely let you know.

That kind of feedback is both incredibly valuable and so rare on Literotica. My first story, "I Know My Wife," which is less than a year old, has generated 365 comments. I wrote it in the middle of what was supposed to be my "real" first story, "After the Future is Gone," partially as an exercise in taking a well-trod trope of the category and playing with the format of the story, but mostly as a way to just get something out there to make sure I wasn't wasting my time.

The comments weren't just attaboys or hatemail. Those were in there, too, but I got advice on how to make my stories stronger technically, things to avoid or lean into the future, suggestions for how to succeed in the category, and more. Some people didn't get what I was going for, but liked the BTB trope. Some got it but didn't like it. Some got it and did. And some just accused me of being a misogynist pig.

However, I got dozens of comments that actually engaged with the work, talked about what it really meant, critiqued my skill (or lack thereof), and gave me pointers to improve. Did I get conflicting advice? Sure. But I also got really good advice overall. As I kept writing in the category, I had other writers reach out to me through the feedback feature, discussing stories, Loving Wives as a category, publishing in the wider world, and more.

Loving Wives' readers are also the only ones that said, "You need to be pushing yourself harder." One of the best comments I've ever gotten is too long to include here in its entirety, but I received it from Wavedave45 on "Reassessing My Life," the 27th story I published here, and the 20th in Loving Wives. By that point, I was feeling pretty comfortable; I'd had good success both inside and outside LW, and the craft part seemed like it was becoming easier. Then I received this as part of a larger comment:

Hey, I'm not a writer at all and not trying to talk out my ass, that's just how I see it. Actual writers will probably find reason to disagree. And looking back at your bio and seeing how you only started not too long ago, it's clear that you're taking real writers' suggestions into consideration.

Looking back at your other stories. I saw a few titles that I distinctly remember and felt were quite good. I know I said I'm not a writer, but I feel that this advice applies to anything you're trying to get good at. If you want to grow, I highly recommend not only writing here. Or basically not just erotica. Find a venue where your stories aren't consistently at a higher quality than the others submitted. Find a place where your stories get ripped the fuck apart and you want to quit. Then write another story for here to feel better. Go back and read the constructive criticism on the other site. Apply it to the next story on that site that ripped you apart. Repeat. Also, try writing about things you know nothing about and need to research to find out. Stuff totally out of your element. Also try your hand at longer stories. Find more contests to submit stories to.

It's like the saying goes, if you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room. And dude, you did like 20 something stories in just 5 months and almost all of them are in the mid 4's. And you say you only started like 5 months ago. You need more of a challenge, otherwise you're going to stagnate or get bored. You'll get awesome at writing a pretty specific topic for a specific audience starting from a place where you're already quite good from my perspective as a reader. Like I said, I don't write and likely talking out my ass, but unless you're lying that you began less than half a year ago and constantly rolling 19's and 20's. Not saying quit here, I like your stories. Just need to be pushed some more.

That really gave me pause, because I realized he was right. I knew that, as fun as the story I'd written had been, I'd kind of phoned it in. And it drove two things home to me: one, that I did need to start making moves to publishing in the wider world; and two, I needed to challenge myself more even when I was still "just" writing on Literotica, then take the critiques as they came, for good or ill, and just not worry about how they scored unless it was clear that I was slipping in a technical sense.

I had a bunch of stories in my spreadsheet of ideas that I'd kind of pushed to the side because I wasn't sure how well they'd do, and I had a number of stories I was working on that I was pretty sure would be crowdpleasers. After that comment, most of the crowdpleasers went on the backburner.

Instead, I wrote "In Health," which looked at failing to uphold a different vow and how it affected the people involved. I wrote "Why She Cheated," a compassionate look at two people and why they each might cheat. I wrote "Fathers, Brothers, and Sons," about a husband struggling with a one-off decades-ago infidelity that resulted in his only son, and how he made his way back from that crisis of faith in his marriage. I wrote "Honesty Above All," about a guy who obsessed so much over virtue that he torpedoed a marriage that he could have saved, but which looked like a BTB story at first glance.

Loving Wives is the only category I've ever received the advice, "You can do better. You can be better. Why are you restricting yourself to this site, to this category, to this structure?" I've heard it from other authors, both friends and strangers, but LW is the only place where the readers have said this, instead of "give me more of what you're doing, because I love it."