Loving Wives in Popular Culture

Just About 30 Examples

This is a far from complete list and is listed pretty much in the order I personally read or watched or became aware of.

1. Le Morte d'Arthur - King Arthur and Guinevere. King Arthur ultimately dies because of Guinevere and Lancelot's betrayal. (See my essay: "What I Learned from Anony" for a detailed analysis.)

2. The Detective (1968) - I read this book first when I was in college somewhere around 1968. It was published in 1966 and became a best seller. Was made into a movie in 1968 with Frank Sinatra as the lead. One murder and one suicide DID occur due to cheating, but not part of the main characters "loving wives" subplot whose wife first cheated on him while he was flying fighters in Europe during WW2. A long and complicated book with an excellent gut-wrenching scene when the initial infidelity became known by the protagonist Joe Leland. The author Roderick Thorpe wrote a sequel in 1979 that became the basis for an even more popular movie with it's own "loving wives" subplot "Die Hard". This seems confusing at first because the main character's name and situation was all changed by the movie scriptwriters for "Die Hard".

3. Unfaithful (2002) - The Richard Gere and Diane Lane blockbuster movie. One of the highest grossing movies of 2002. A murder DOES occur as the Richard Gere husband character kills his wife's lover and gets away with it. Maybe. The end scene is inconclusive but leaves the impression the husband is going to turn himself in and the wife's comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle is about to end. Based on the original French movie "La Femme Infidele".

4. La Femme Infidele (1969) - basically "Unfaithful" but with some slight differences. In this movie the wife is apparently a serial cheater, not just the one time fling as in the American treatment. And the husband doesn't get away with the murder as he is led away by police at the very end. And the French are supposed to be so casual about just "fun sex"?

5. The Big Picture (2010) - This is another French picture with an adulteress wife and a husband who accidentally kills the sneering lover in a fit of rage. He strikes the lover in the head with a wine bottle, much like the husband in La Femme Infidele strikes THAT lover in the head with a large (HUGE!) metal lighter. (Ah, the French and their cigarette smoking - smoking kills! ;-) Interestingly, this movie is based on an American author and book (set in New York and not Paris) Douglas Kennedy. The main plot here is that the husband fakes his own death in a boat accident/suicide and assumes the identity of the professional photographer lover. I've read the book as well as watched the movie and the differences are interesting. The photographer becomes very successful and well-known far beyond the original (now dead) past and that becomes the major complication for his new life. I didn't like the final resolution in either the book or the movie.

6. Le Secret (2000) - Another French mainstream movie that is definitely softcore porn with it's graphic sex scenes. A married wife and mother with a young son (3-4 years old) becomes bored as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesgirl and becomes obsessed with a large African-American dance choreographer living temporarily in Paris. Her husband is very jealous and they split up, separate - but no one is killed and the ending is not quite resolved.

7. A Walk on the Moon (1999) - Diane Lane again as a wandering unfaithful Jewish wife, who has an intense affair with a slightly younger Goy man Viggo Mortensen. Set in a 1969 Catskills resort close to and during Woodstock. That August was the very same month man first set foot on the moon and that's why the title. Very good, first rate movie with good acting and dramatization of the realities by all. And no one got killed or murdered. Reconciliation is apparently the ending. I'm working on a continuation short story myself, though. ;-)

8. Winning (1969) - Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward as his wife who casually cheats on him during the Indianapolis 500 race week. Paul is a driver and the "lover" is one of his teammate drivers but also obviously a main competitor. Pretty powerful but kind of weird in many respects with the dialogue and situations. Not to mention cheating on Paul Newman with Robert Wagner? Was she insane? Well, kind of...Unresolved at the end. Divorce papers were signed but Paul wants her back and she is very hesitant.

9. Swing Shift (1984) - Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell as her lover during WW2. Husband is away in the Navy in the Pacific and Goldie becomes a riveter in an airplane plant. She gets seduced by her co-worker and trumpet player Kurt Russell. Pretty good movie and unfortunately represents a reality that happened quite a bit during WW2. The factual book to read and reference is "Love, Sex, and War - Changing Values 1939-1945" by John Costello. Oh, this movie DOES end with the resolution that wifey "got away with it." She sticks with her husband, and he with her, after victory over Japan.

10. Une Femme Francaise (1995) - Much, much darker French treatment like "Swing Shift" of a French bride who has a lot of sexual partners (undoubtedly some German) in occupied France while her career Army husband is first a POW then a slave laborer for the Germans all during the war. Then she cheats and "falls in love" with yet ANOTHER German civilian when she and her husband are stationed in Germany during the Allies occupation of Germany after the war. Eventual separation for this unhappy couple, lover dies and then the wife wastes away herself. Just sad but undoubtedly based on lots of true French stories.

11. From the Terrace (1960) - Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward again. Joanne cheats on Paul again (re. "Winning"). This time Paul leaves her with no regrets and already has a new squeeze - true love - lined up. From the novel by John O'Hara which I haven't read.

12. In Harm's Way (1965) - Movie based on the book of the same name. I've read the book. A couple of loving wives subplots. The wife of a USN officer sleeps around and is killed with one of her lovers during the Pearl Harbor attack. The officer becomes a sexual predator himself and later rapes a young nurse, who happens to be engaged to John Wayne's son (in the movie), who becomes pregnant because of the rape. She commits suicide and the rapist officer (Kirk Douglas) kills himself basically in a suicidal but very necessary recon mission.

13. Gaby (1956) - A remake of "Waterloo Bridge" with the same theme first set in WWI. A young French ballerina falls in love with an American soldier in WW2 wartime London and they try to get married immediately but red tape prevents it.. She is a virgin ("innocent") and refuses sex with the young soldier right before D-day. Apparently he is killed during the invasion and the distraught girl (Leslie Caron) then "goes wild" and sleeps with several men. But her fiance was only wounded after parachuting into France and hidden by French partisans. He then safely returns to London but Gaby is so guilty about her own "infidelity" and loss of innocence that she just can't marry him. He insists and a reconciliation occurs in a 1950's Hollywood "happy ending" but kind of dark, anyway.

14. The Winds of War (1983 TV mini-series) - A very long and complicated WW2 book and also TV mini-series whose basic protagonist is a US Naval officer with a cheating wife. Several other cheating or merely not real bright women characters, as well.

15. A:Gilda (1946) - Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. A classic film noir except at the end Glenn Ford DOES get the girl - cheating slut sort of redeemed Rita. Ford isn't a returned veteran as this movie is set in Argentina with the requisite "bad Germans".

B: The Blue Dahlia (1946) - Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Another rather dark movie with Alan Ladd a returned WW2 vet - and hero - whose wife had become a slush and cheat. And had actually killed their young son in a drunken auto accident that she lied to Ladd about. She ends up murdered and Veronica Lake as the wife of the man Ladd's wife was having an affair with helps him solve all his troubles.

C: Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - Academy award winning classic mainly about 3 returning veterans. One has a wife that has become another unfaithful "party girl."

All the above WW2-era 1946 movies with at least some cheating wives subplots.

16. Man About Town (2006) - Ben Affleck as the lead partner in an LA Agency that signs and represents script writers. His former "supermodel" wife cheats on him with one of his "best" (i.e. highest paid - therefore highest commissions from) writer/directors. Rebecca Romjin as the wife does a pretty good crying confession scene. He doesn't take it well and kicks her out, but a reconciliation at the end.

17. The Americans (2013-) - A Fox series about Russian agents living in the USA during the Reagan era as man and wife. But screwing others - and often killing - to effect Russian KGB goals. The man loves his assigned "wife" more and sooner than she does in reverse - and the first season especially highlights this relationship angst dynamic. They have their own kids as well.

18. Satisfaction (2014-2015) - A USA network series about an upper middle class family, whose husband works hard and long for his family, while stay-at-home wifey gets bored and hires a gigolo for "fun". Gets into swinging/open marriages and literally parodies all kinds of porn genres in a network TV friendly manner. There IS a murder at the end of season one - with the perp/victim being a University Professor upset his wife hired a gigolo. I don't know if the writers were aware but a University of Georgia Economics professor killed his own lawyer wife and her rumored "amateur theater" paramour and then himself in a real life mirror of this fiction.

19. If Loving You is Wrong (2014- ) - A Tyler Perry series on OWN network that is all about cheating in a fictional Georgia town - with a White wife cheating with her African-American married neighbor psychologist. All kinds of murder and soap opera craziness ensues.

20. 24 (2001-2010) - The first season starts with Jack Bauer estranged and separated from his loving wife. Other seasons also have cheating/unfaithful WAGS as subplots.

21. Ozark (2017) - A Netflix series with a Mexican cartel "honest" financial adviser money-launderer whose wife is cheating on him. They have to leave Chicago and move to the Missouri Ozarks to launder millions of dollars and repair the deadly threat relationship with their cartel contact. Several murders including the wife's lawyer lover in the first episode (killed by the Cartel not the husband.)

22.Ryan's Daughter (2000) - In 1917 Ireland a young Irish "Princess" (she thinks of herself - just a barman's daughter) marries a simple and boring middle aged schoolteacher. She "falls in love" with a young and dashing English officer assigned to Ireland occupation to recover from his own physical and mental WWI wounds. Their passionate affair ends with the officer committing suicide amid conflict between his soldiers and the Irish villages and Sein Fenn - and the woman abused by a mob for consorting with the enemy. The married couple head off to Dublin to separate - though actual divorce is problematic in that very Catholic culture - and the possibility of reconciliation is left open. A major Hollywood production.

23. The Getaway (1972) - Steve McQueen version with Ali McGraw as his wife who does "all that's necessary" to get him out of prison early - including sleeping with a rich corrupt parole board member who wants McQueen to rob his own brother's bank they have already looted. Very good movie. Based on a book by the same name. The book is quite a bit different and gets really weird at the end with the "loving couple" successfully getting away with it to Mexico and kind of a "Twilight Zone" expatriate criminal village in lawless Mexican mountains. The book's ending is a real downer (hint: cannibalism!) while the movie ends with the couple just entering Mexico and presumably living happily ever after.

24. The Fan - Several movie versions based on the play "Lady Windemere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde written around 1891. Interesting to me that in "Victorian" England this play treats adultery as blithely as it does - though the adulteresses DO face fairly harsh social status lowering when discovered publicly. "A Good Woman" with Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson is one of the better versions - with it now set in 1930's England.

25. The Painted Veil (2006) - Another English Empire socio-cultural set "loving wives" tale. Book by W. Somerset Maughan. The wife is pretty but basically silly, intent on snaring a "proper" husband for herself, assuming he would be rich and of the aristocratic class. But she ends up a tad TOO choosy when in her prime and then "settles" for just a poor working scientist doctor (M.D. bacteriologist). They must leave London and go to 1920's Shanghai were the good husband Doctor is assigned by the English government he works for. There his wife is seduced by an "aristocratic" and handsome vice consul. Though trying to be discreet, hubby finds out and threatens divorce and a public scandal if his wife doesn't follow him to a small village inland China where a cholera epidemic has emerged. He DOES offer a quiet divorce if the married lover will also divorce his own wife and marry his wife. But the lover caddishly refuses and the cheating wife is crushed. So she has no choice but accompany her husband into danger. She thinks her husband is trying to kill her by exposure to this disease. In the end, he gets sick and dies and she returns as a very unhappy widow who has learned what a good man her husband really was compared to her shallow and vain lover. Yes, she learned but he is still the one dead. What lesson here?

26. Straw Dogs - Both movie versions pretty good but I prefer the original Dustin Hoffman version once again set in England. He is "intellectual" while his wife is beautiful but flighty and flirty. He was good enough to get her away from her "redneck" country village, but now they have returned while he writes and studies. She flirts with her old boyfriend heavily and ends up getting seduced by him again and raped by one of his friends as the boyfriend just watches. Eventually Dustin Hoffman ends up killing pretty much the whole gang in self-defense and also defending a mentally challenged man from the mob. The movie ends with it not clear if the marriage would continue - but I doubt it!

27. The Graduate - Dustin Hoffman again having an affair with a much older married mother and family friend, then falling in love with this mother's daughter - and eventually stealing the daughter away from the frat boy man SHE just married. Loving wives all the way 'round. A classic comedy but not really all that funny, after all. Did the runaway bride REALLY live happily with her "true love"? Maybe needs a "finish the damn story" treatment.

28. The Last Boy Scout - Bruce Willis as a PI and ex-Secret Service Agent who is in the dumps now, pretty much an alcoholic and doesn't touch his wife - who is screwing one of Bruce's friends and another PI. This PI gives Bruce a VERY dangerous job of short term protection for a stripper/dancer Halle Berry. But the wife's lover is killed by a car-bomb blast outside Bruce's house in a case of mistaken identity homicide. The memorable loving wives dialog in this movie was: wifey, "I was lonely!" Bruce, "Get a dog!" Reconciliation at the end. And Bruce repairs his relationship with the wonderfully feisty 13 year old daughter, as well.

So - is there anything to be learned from all these tales put together or the now undoubtedly 100's of other loving wives stories I've read in Literotica?

Probably not too much. It all seems to be kind of a crap shoot. People get married and have sexual relationships for all kinds of reasons other than "true love." And even "true love" as THE reason for marriage or committed exclusive relationships doesn't necessarily last. The human heart based on "feelings" as the primary motivator is incredibly fickle. And women sometimes stray for the smallest of reasons - not any real "big" ones.

One thing I have noticed is that some of the authors here write just as well, technically, as the "name" authors whose works often become so popular - and many also write better stories in all kinds of ways. Better feeling for dialog and plotting logic, especially when it comes to these "affairs of the heart" situations.

So - thanks again for all the authors and even the many readers who bother with often intelligent and inciteful comments on the infinite number of sad situations us fallen humans inflict on ourselves and each other.

Feel free to add any of your own favorite mainstream movies and comments. Lifetime channel alone could probably add another 50 or so - most of those stories are more soap operish and from the wife's perspective that has her getting stalked by her "fling" lover and often then having to save her own husband from the "crazy man". Thus becoming redeemed and a heroine - but I don't see most of those marriages lasting after the dust settles...