Loving Loving Wives

Loving Wives is a crucible. Its commenters are mean, but helpful. Its ratings are harsh, but fair; you won't get a red H just for writing competently and to their kink, because there is no "their, kink." There is no formula that will make you successful there. You can write a story where the husband burns the wife, or they reconcile, or she's dead before the story starts. You can write a story where she cuckolds him and he hates it or he loves it, where she feels guilt or no mercy at all.

You can write damn near anything there, and they'll give you a fair shake. Not a high rating; the simple fact is that the people that are there for drama outnumber the people there for extramarital fun stories. That's okay, though; you can go over to Group Sex or Erotic Couplings to post those for ratings. Maybe you'll get a dozen comments if you're lucky. Or you can drop them in Loving Wives and get told everything wrong and right about what you've made, all the way from characterization and plot on down to grammar and spelling.

You can stop worrying about your ratings and start worrying about your writing. You can stop equating score with skill. You can stop worrying about your stars and start engaging with your readers.

That's my strongest argument for why you should write there, if you want to be a better writer. If you don't, if you just want to chase Hs and attaboys, stick to other categories. Let me be clear: I'm not throwing any shade when I say that. This is a hobby for most of us. You should be doing the things that make you happiest in your hobby, and if that's what makes you happy? Go for it! I'll be cheering you on.

I've advised almost every writer I talk with to try their hand at writing a Loving Wives story at least once. A few regretted it, especially at first. Their stories in other categories got 1-bombed. They got angry, maybe hateful comments for the first time. In some cases, it shook their confidence to the point where they almost gave up writing.

And then they--some of them, at least--wrote there again. And they got better, both as a writer and as a receiver of criticism. They got an understanding of what made the category tick and how wrong so much of the received wisdom from Authors' Hangout was. Where it was sometimes right, too, of course. But how lacking in nuance the critiques of the category were from people who had never posted there and only repeated what they heard. Or maybe they posted once or twice and got their asses handed to them and their egos bruised.

Hey, I'm not being a Pollyanna. Sometimes, people have gotten absolutely mauled there, because they posted hard cuckolding stories in the midst of BTB-mania, which sucks. Or they tried to "teach the readers a lesson," which... yeah. That doesn't work with anyone, especially with people already in a siege mentality because they're the only community telling the type of stories they want to read. Don't do that.

Use a throwaway account if you want to save your ratings on your other stories. Write to your perceived prejudices of the category, making the burniest BTB story you can, and see how it flounders. Of the eight stories I have in there with a red H attached to them, only one has a significant burn attached to it for the wife, and only decades after the end of the marriage. Maybe you can do better! But, honestly, that's not the way the category is trending.

Write against your perceived prejudices and make the cuckiest cuck story you can, and see how it... well, not soars. Not with the numbers stacked against you, in terms of how many people want those stories versus how many don't. But at least does tolerably well, for a cuckold story in Loving Wives. See how it gets a bunch of comments, some hating it and some loving it. How it maybe gets you a bunch of followers who want to pick up what you're putting down.

Mix it up! Do both! Yeah, my sole cuckolding story is my lowest scoring one, but who cares? I picked up probably a hundred followers who clearly came to Loving Wives for cuckold stories, got a hundred-odd comments on the story--including ones from hardcore BTB fans thanking me for helping them understand the mindset, even if they still thought it was icky--and stretched myself as a writer. I got even more feedback privately, from guys who thanked me for helping them understand their own kink and not judging them for it.

That's the other thing you get regularly from Loving Wives: gratitude. Real, actual gratitude, expressed by people willing to make themselves vulnerable in a comment section renowned site-wide for being mean. People who'll tell you that you made them feel seen, that you lifted their spirits in a hard time, that identify with the main character's struggle and tell others they can get through theirs. Angry comments, sometimes, declaring their hatred for the people that did something similar to them, but anger from the distance of years. Anger quelled somewhat, perhaps, by the understanding you've helped them achieve.

Don't believe me? Here's a handful of comments from "the meanest comments section on Literotica," with lightly cleaned up grammar and spelling.

On "Shouldering The Burden," about a woman in a memory care facility and her husband's enduring love for her:

I'm 4 yrs into dementia. I feel good but my wife will tell me if I ask, "Am I the same?" The answer is "no," but still her man after 47 yrs. She gets mad if I look towards the future too far. She says we will adapt and love each other to the gates of Heaven together. I hold to that promise from her and God.

On "After the Future is Gone," a pretty standard "post-divorce dude romance" story:

All I know is as much as betrayal hurts, it gets better. It's hard to learn from a betrayal though because we rarely get an honest dialogue from the cheater and the cheated. It's a lot of raw emotions. Great story that highlights how important trust and dialogue are. Even after a relationship ending betrayal, both people got something invaluable outta [sitting down and talking about what happened].

On "You Could Have Stayed," about a divorced husband and wife making their way back to each other:

Who is ever ready for marriage, and then who is ever ready for divorce? Feelings, love, hate, anger. Questions no one can answer and no one to ask. You're 80 years old and still trying to figure out where you went wrong 40 years ago. At first, you blame the other person and say, "I did no wrong," and then you say to yourself, "maybe I was too selfish" or "what did I do to fail in that relationship?" "No! It's all the ex's fault, she's the one that cheated, she's the one that destroyed the family so she could go out and find someone else. She's the one that destroyed your relationship with the kids." Yeah, that makes sense but sure doesn't solve anything.

This was not a good story, and I can't say I loved it, but it got 5 stars because it's true to life. Except for the reconciliation, in my case.

On "Spoken in Anger," about a man relating an attempt at revenge gone horribly wrong to the support group he belongs to, and the repercussions of his confession:

I gave it an Outstanding Read ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, because of the storyline which I have never seen explained in a manner this moving. I have seen death up close and personal of both family and friends. I have watched grown men and women in battle save others and just break down once we got back because of our losses. I have seen grieving take years for people to move on. Sometimes they can't get past it, and it has manifested its results in different ways from suicide to mental breakdowns and asylum internments.

Yet with all of this life experience, I could never have expressed the thoughtfulness and depth provocation brought on by your story. It was the most moving tale I have read even by medical professionals working to deal with issues of PTSD.

I am actually smiling as I think about my friends and our times together. Those who are still with us and those who have gone before. Both give me reasons to keep moving forward. Your tale gave me reason to smile for both groups of us.

Yeah. Sounds like a real bunch of hateful jerks, right?

I'm not saying there aren't angry comments there too--God knows there are--nor that there aren't ones that make me want to edge out of the room away from the guys (mostly anonymous) saying them. But those can be part of the healing process, too. And just like I sincerely believe that a lot of the folks that wrote one or two stories and left did it as therapy, I think a lot of people in the comments are wrestling with things that happened in their life that they never quite got over.

I'm glad Literotica gives them a place to work through their issues and help others do the same. I'm glad, too, that there's a site where stories about infidelity can be approached in a variety of ways, from "Woo, my wife and the pizza boy!" all the way over to "I will never forgive you for this betrayal!" and everything in between.

It's the only place on the internet that accommodates such a wide range, and part of what makes it so special is that it does, and the comments sections and score rankings are nuts as a result. But if the egos of writers that can't stand not getting red Hs are the only price we pay for having something so special and unique as what's developed over the last twenty-five years? I can live with that. I think most of the denizens of the category would agree.

It's my favorite category on the site, like I said at the beginning. Maybe it can be yours, too. But you have to give it a chance to surprise you first. So put on your asbestos undies, pull up a chair, and tell your story. We'd love to hear it.

—

You're still here? Oh! You have questions. Right, one sec.

What happened to all the stats you promised?

Well, they're boring as hell, and this is an essay, not a statistics lecture, so I left them to the end. But, since you asked, here we go.

On the topic of the audience percentages for different types of stories, let's look at three of mine from around the same time, Shouldering the Burden, Kayfabe, and Spoken in Anger, each released in that order over a roughly two week period from January 16 to February 1, 2023. Of those three, Kayfabe's description, "A cuck and bull bromance," marked it clearly as a cuckold story, while the other two were more nebulous. By the time I published all three, however, I had about 1,000 followers, so I was a pretty known quantity in the category, and I think people rightly expected some kind of relationship drama from the other two. There's not a great table structure available on Lit, so I apologize for the messiness of the presentation.

Spoken in Anger - 75K views, 4.41 rating, 2.6K votes (Valentine's Day entry)

Kayfabe - 23K views, 3.86 rating, 620 votes

Shouldering the Burden - 63K views, 4.4 rating, 3K votes

Kayfabe received a third the views of the other two stories and about a quarter to a fifth the votes. Other stories with the "cuck" tag in LW around the same time received a similar number of views--with the exception of one outlier--and mostly the same or lower scores. Unfortunately, I can't see the number of ratings any story except mine has received, but a similar number of ratings seems likely.

That seems to be a pretty strong indicator that the number of people that show up for relationship drama stories heavily outweigh the ones that want to read cuckolding stories, at the least. Looking at some other stories I have in Loving Wives with ambiguous titles that indicate cheating, that also seems to be the case. The Voice of Experience ("A veteran adulteress takes a first-timer under her wing.") has roughly half the number of views of Also-Ran ("Her x-boyfriend's death threw my life into chaos."), even though the former predates the latter by about a month.

One thing I noticed, though, going through the various tags, are the number of stories involving hotwifing, sharing, cuckolding, swapping, and the like that actually are doing well score-wise. When I went into this, I expected them to all be sitting in the 3 star or lower range, but a surprising number are in the 4 star range, with some even having an H on them. And what do those stories have in common? They're well-written.

More importantly, they're loving. They're not hard cuckold stories or unwilling sharing, but husbands and wives that are agreeing to have fun and treating the experience and each other with respect. That's the thing that really sticks out, and the thing I keep reiterating to people in Authors' Hangout. The people reading the category don't hate sharing or swapping, for the most part. They hate cheating, and they hate cruelty towards faithful spouses. Which, I guess, is a good place to take the next question.

Why do people keep saying the whole category is full of incels?

Because there are some hardcore misogynists in the comments, especially the anonymous parts. But they're not the majority at all. Almost of the commenters and certainly none of the regular writers there hate women. They hate cheating, they hate disloyalty, and they hate cruelty aimed at a faithful partner.

While the category is labeled Loving Wives, there are stories there about cheating husbands, long-term girlfriends and boyfriends, fiances, and so on. In just about every case, the commenters cheer the downfall of the cheater, regardless of the offending character's gender. A number of stories featuring a cheating husband and vengeful wife (most recently Constories' Range Cold) have scored a 4.5 star rating or higher.

Isn't it violent?

Eh. Violence against the male affair partners in the category isn't uncommon, but it tends to be of the "catch them in an alleyways and beat them up" variety. Violence greater than that is relatively rare, and violence against the wife, especially nowadays, is almost certainly going to see the story get a low rating right before it gets reported right off the site. Most of us don't truck with that; if you know of a story that has violence, especially sexualized violence, against a woman in there, message me or leave it in the comments, and I'll be happy to report it.

What about the other terms I've seen, MSR and RAAC?

MSR is an acronym for Martian Slut Ray. In a story where a previously loving, faithful wife decides all of a sudden to jump in bed with another person, critics will say she was struck with a Martian Slut Ray. For a very through look at the term, check out bruce1971's essay, LW Notes: The Martian Slut Ray.

RAAC stands for "Reconciliation at All (or Any) Cost." It's a derogatory term for a story where the husband is not given sufficient reason to reconcile other than outside pressures. It's hard to say whether a story is or isn't an RAAC; very few writers intentionally write one, but some commenters will call any reconciliation at all an RAAC, since there can be, in their opinions, no reason to take a cheater back.

Would you change anything about the category?

Honestly, I'd probably create a dedicated Cuckolding category. It's gotten to the point where a huge number of cuckolding stories show up in Fetish, Interracial, and Loving Wives, to the point where the volume would eclipse most others on the site. It would probably mean fewer fistfights in the comments sections across Literotica and fewer 1-bombs in the ratings. I don't care so much about the latter, but some people do, and I want to see everyone get a fair shake.

It would also still leave a space for all the other infidelity kink and/or relationship drama stories in the original Loving Wives. The comments sections might be a touch quieter, but I can't honestly believe they'd be any less engaged.

What are some must-read stories if one wants to understand the current state of Loving Wives?

The one absolute must-read is February Sucks by GeorgeAnderson. It's the story that launched a hundred sequels, rewrites, opinion pieces, prequels, and more. A man and his wife are out dancing with friends, when a football player sweeps her right off her feet, and... Just go read it. It has a certain nightmare quality that's very disquieting.I got into writing Loving Wives to begin with because I couldn't get it out of my head, even if my sequel to it was the ninth story I published here. I know I'm not alone in that. There's an argument to be made that this story has propelled most of the conversation in the category, both implicitly and explicitly, for the last three years.

But, since this is Literotica's 25th Anniversary, how about I give you 24 more great reads to go with it? If I didn't include a writer you like in here, please know it wasn't an intentional snub. There are just so many good stories by so many good writers, and I went with the first 24 I saw in my follow list. Add your favorites in the comments!

The Luckiest Man in the World by Tx Tall Tales

Scenes From a Marriage by Ohio

Dilemma by Josephus, a talented young writer who was taken from us much too soon.

Bless This Broken Road by DFWBeast

Boomerang by javmor79

Another Love by RichardGerald

Nobody Ever Dies by dtiverson

Fall and Rise by BigGuy33

Relentless by Todd172

A Promise Made, a Vow Broken by Hooked1957

In Our Bones by norafares

One Last Bet by hotprof1973

Holiday Hammer Blow by Cagivagurl

The BTB-Team by ThatNewGuy

Rebirth by Inkhorn - this was the inspiration for my own story, At the End of the Tour

Human by EightyThousandEightyFive

Sullivan and the Lies He Heard by Popcorn_and_Stories

The Silver Medalist by rhettthebrat

Prologue to a Problem by KitDeLuca164

I'm 51 by qhml1

The Madonna and the Manatee by bruce1971

Play it Again, Sam by kublicon

In Her Eyes by Jidoka

Poly at the Poly by Spector_Dugan

Okay, I cheated a little bit with that last one. It's not in Loving Wives, but it absolutely should be. In addition to being a great story, it's probably the best "classic" Loving Wives story on the site, mixed with the sensibilities of the modern relationship drama style. Seriously, it's the type of thing I'd like to see more of in the category. And, hey: maybe you're the one for the job. We'll never know unless you try. So come on in! The water is absolutely scalding, just the way we like it.