Loving Wives

[Ianus4]

What about a one-off scenario?

As I see it, under the right conditions, anyone can fall.

That’s exactly what all stories of this genre in LW are about. Trust. Was it really a one-off scenario? Will it really remain a one-off scenario? Did the unfaithful partner seek out the temptation? Was the unfaithful partner aware of what they were doing? Does the cheater truly regret their betrayal, or just the consequences of their actions? There are no absolutes in love. The question is whether the betrayed partner is capable of trusting again.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

That’s exactly what all stories of this genre in LW are about. Trust. Was it really a one-off scenario? Will it really remain a one-off scenario? Did the unfaithful partner seek out the temptation? Was the unfaithful partner aware of what they were doing? There are no absolutes in love. The question is whether the betrayed partner is capable of trusting again.

This isn't the question, not the one I asked, anyway. I'll simplify it for you: Can good, righteous, loving people betray under certain circumstances?

The answer is: absolutely yes!

 

[Lifestyle66]

If they did it with their husband’s knowledge and express consent, then there’s no problem with that; this is what’s known as ENM. The problem lies in the lack of consent, because in that case, the parties have different understandings of what “love” means.

For about 40% of the Loving Wives audience, there is no excuse for extra-marital sex.

Even with the consent of the husband, they call for retribution on the one who had the extra-marital sex. If the story has the husband agreeing to the wife's extra, they call the story "cuck shit" and "the husband's a wimp."

That 40% of the LW audience insist that marriage is a vow to remain monogamous for the rest of your lives.

They ignore the reality that people change over time, with some even losing all interest in sex and think their spouse should continue without sex for the rest of their life as well. For them, the vow "through sickness and in health" means that "if the husband is sick and can't perform, the wife must do without any more sex for the rest of her life!"

They ignore the reality that some people can separate sex from love. They ignore the real world sex workers as if they can NEVER be in love, since they use sex in a job. They insist that "humans are monogamous", ignoring the FACT that many people today are finding through genetic testing that they have half-siblings from one of their parents having had an affair long ago, and the parent never told the younger generations! They rely on half-baked "studies" with claims of excessive divorce rates for those who are not monogamous or those who watch porn.

The reality seems to be that humans want to fuck like rabbits whenever they get the chance and only pretend to abide by the "social norms" for their acceptance in the community. And the "community" usually knows the truth through their gossip, while also pretending it doesn't happen to really "good people."

The good folk will admonish you with: "Don't pry into those personal matters between a husband and wife!"

 

[Ianus4]

This isn't the question, not the one I asked, anyway. I'll simplify it for you: Can good, righteous, loving people betray under certain circumstances?

The answer is: absolutely yes!

Under certain circumstances, even the most peaceful people are capable of killing someone. Does that make killing someone right?

 

[lc69hunter]

What about a one-off scenario?

As I see it, under the right conditions, anyone can fall.

Never been a fan of affairs. Affairs cause feelings, and by the very nature of things, weaken the marital bond. And no one should want that. Second wife and I gave each other a standing hall pass while on the road (we both traveled for work), and that random one-off generated great sex, because we brought that renewed sexual energy back to the marital bed. That one-off was no threat to the marriage, as an affair very well could.

 

[lc69hunter]

For about 40% of the Loving Wives audience, there is no excuse for extra-marital sex.

Even with the consent of the husband, they call for retribution on the one who had the extra-marital sex. If the story has the husband agreeing to the wife's extra, they call the story "cuck shit" and "the husband's a wimp."

That 40% of the LW audience insist that marriage is a vow to remain monogamous for the rest of your lives.

They ignore the reality that people change over time, with some even losing all interest in sex and think their spouse should continue without sex for the rest of their life as well. For them, the vow "through sickness and in health" means that "if the husband is sick and can't perform, the wife must do without any more sex for the rest of her life!"

They ignore the reality that some people can separate sex from love. They ignore the real world sex workers as if they can NEVER be in love, since they use sex in a job. They insist that "humans are monogamous", ignoring the FACT that many people today are finding through genetic testing that they have half-siblings from one of their parents having had an affair long ago, and the parent never told the younger generations! They rely on half-baked "studies" with claims of excessive divorce rates for those who are not monogamous or those who watch porn.

The reality seems to be that humans want to fuck like rabbits whenever they get the chance and only pretend to abide by the "social norms" for their acceptance in the community. And the "community" usually knows the truth through their gossip, while also pretending it doesn't happen to really "good people."

The good folk will admonish you with: "Don't pry into those personal matters between a husband and wife!"

You nailed it.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

Under certain circumstances, even the most peaceful people are capable of killing someone. Does that make killing someone right?

Who said betrayal is right? I'm simply challenging your assertion that love is a condition for loyalty or insurance against harm.

 

[redgarters]

(To be honest, this one I mostly put in Loving Wives because a) @PennyThompson dared me to and b) to warn my normal readers than this wouldn't be a normal THBGato story - I was basically using the category to foreshadow things would soon be turning to shit.)

I haven't dared to read it yet, I'm scared of what you've put them through. I know the story will be so good (I mean, it's you!) but I fear I may have to borrow @onehitwanda 's knives...

 

[Ianus4]

For about 40% of the Loving Wives audience, there is no excuse for extra-marital sex.

Even with the consent of the husband, they call for retribution on the one who had the extra-marital sex. If the story has the husband agreeing to the wife's extra, they call the story "cuck shit" and "the husband's a wimp."

That 40% of the LW audience insist that marriage is a vow to remain monogamous for the rest of your lives.

They ignore the reality that people change over time, with some even losing all interest in sex and think their spouse should continue without sex for the rest of their life as well. For them, the vow "through sickness and in health" means that "if the husband is sick and can't perform, the wife must do without any more sex for the rest of her life!"

They ignore the reality that some people can separate sex from love. They ignore the real world sex workers as if they can NEVER be in love, since they use sex in a job. They insist that "humans are monogamous", ignoring the FACT that many people today are finding through genetic testing that they have half-siblings from one of their parents having had an affair long ago, and the parent never told the younger generations! They rely on half-baked "studies" with claims of excessive divorce rates for those who are not monogamous or those who watch porn.

The reality seems to be that humans want to fuck like rabbits whenever they get the chance and only pretend to abide by the "social norms" for their acceptance in the community. And the "community" usually knows the truth through their gossip, while also pretending it doesn't happen to really "good people."

The good folk will admonish you with: "Don't pry into those personal matters between a husband and wife!"

People do change over time, yes. But with proper communication, many things can be managed and prevented. There are countless ways to experience sex and eroticism, and countless ways to express tenderness between two people, even without a third party. The problem always lies in selfishness. The “I deserve this” approach. The problem is that these days, many people have forgotten that if something goes wrong, it might actually be fixable. It’s not certain that it can really be fixed. But if you don’t even try, it definitely won’t get better. It’s just easier these days to say that if something doesn’t work, replace it.
It seems so simple: if sex isn’t working with your partner, just outsource it from the relationship. But what seems so simple at first never takes into account the butterfly effect.

 

[NoTalentHack]

What about a one-off scenario?

As I see it, under the right conditions, anyone can fall.

If you look through the comments on most reconciliation stories (and some BTB ones), that seems to be the bright line for a lot of people. “One drunken mistake” is forgivable to a lot of these folks, albeit with actual contrition and work put in. Anything more than that is “a series of choices,” and therefore far less acceptable.

Honestly, I think that’s roughly where a lot of people fall on this particular question, so that makes sense.

 

[IWroteThis]

What about a one-off scenario?

As I see it, under the right conditions, anyone can fall.

It's not just about the fall. It's also about how they get back up.

If you look through the comments on most reconciliation stories (and some BTB ones), that seems to be the bright line for a lot of people. “One drunken mistake” is forgivable to a lot of these folks, albeit with actual contrition and work put in. Anything more than that is “a series of choices,” and therefore far less acceptable.

Honestly, I think that’s roughly where a lot of people fall on this particular question, so that makes sense.

Yes, reconciliation stories that actually include reconciliation are often well received. One reason that is not more widely recognized is that too many people call RAAC reconciliation, which it is not.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

If you look through the comments on most reconciliation stories (and some BTB ones), that seems to be the bright line for a lot of people. “One drunken mistake” is forgivable to a lot of these folks, albeit with actual contrition and work put in. Anything more than that is “a series of choices,” and therefore far less acceptable.

“One drunken mistake...” Why make things irritatingly flat? Take The Bridges of Madison County -- would you vouch for Meryl Streep’s character there?

 

[yowser]

If you look through the comments on most reconciliation stories (and some BTB ones), that seems to be the bright line for a lot of people. “One drunken mistake” is forgivable to a lot of these folks, albeit with actual contrition and work put in. Anything more than that is “a series of choices,” and therefore far less acceptable.

Honestly, I think that’s roughly where a lot of people fall on this particular question, so that makes sense.

An interesting distinction, and certainly a fulcrum point in many LW stories. (Which still upsets a sizable subset of readers.)

From one of my early tales, small town setting, husband speaking after the fact to his partner:

"You do something once, okay it happened, things happen. But if you do it again? Means you wanted to. And for us, in this town, with my friends, that is dangerous ground."

 

[NoTalentHack]

“One drunken mistake...” Why make things irritatingly flat? Take The Bridges of Madison County -- would you vouch for Meryl Streep’s character there?

I mean, I’ve written stories where it was a full on affair and they reconciled? Hell, I wrote one that went on for most of the time they were dating and six years of their marriage, and it’s still sitting at ~4.3 a few years later. I’m not opposed to earned reconciliation.

That said, the Meryl Streep character in that movie sucks. She stayed basically for her kids, pined for the other guy the rest of her life, never confessed to her husband or, IIRC, actually worked on her marriage at all.

As a fantasy for lonely middle-aged midwestern moms who feel like their lives have passed them by? I get it. But that doesn’t make her a likable character for everyone reading it, especially in a different context. Hell, take that story and have the husband discover the letters instead of the children. Do you think he’d be as accepting? Of course not. “She stayed with me out of a want for security and for our kids, not because I was first in her heart” is an absolute heartbreaker for that character.

 

[Ianus4]

If you look through the comments on most reconciliation stories (and some BTB ones), that seems to be the bright line for a lot of people. “One drunken mistake” is forgivable to a lot of these folks, albeit with actual contrition and work put in. Anything more than that is “a series of choices,” and therefore far less acceptable.

Agatha Christie wrote in her book Towards Zero:

"When you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. [...] The murder itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour."

I think this applies to the latter case of infidelity as well. The question is whether another story is about to begin.

 

[Britva415]

What about a one-off scenario?

As I see it, under the right conditions, anyone can fall.

Are you saying that isn't a problematic lack of consent?

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

I mean, I’ve written stories where it was a full on affair and they reconciled? Hell, I wrote one that went on for most of the time they were dating and six years of their marriage, and it’s still sitting at ~4.3 a few years later. I’m not opposed to earned reconciliation.

That said, the Meryl Streep character in that movie sucks. She stayed basically for her kids, pined for the other guy the rest of her life, never confessed to her husband or, IIRC, actually worked on her marriage at all.

As a fantasy for lonely middle-aged midwestern mons who feel like their lives have passed them by? I get it. But that doesn’t make her a likable character for everyone reading it, especially in a different context. Hell, take that story and have the husband discover the letters instead of the children. Do you think he’d be as accepting? Of course not. “She stayed with me out of a want for security and for our kids, not because I was first in her heart” is an absolute heartbreaker for that character.

That's a very LW way of seeing things. She did love her husband. Even through the flames of passion, she realized it was just a short fling with an aging, lonely stranger. She knew that if she followed him and things went south, she’d be left with nothing. Coming clean, causing pain, and ruining her family? That only happens in the LW top list...

A farmer comes home from the State Fair and finds out his wife brought a random photographer into their home for a weekend fuck-fest. He throws her out, clears their shared account - ensuring she leaves with nothing - and calls her mother in Sicily to let her know her daughter is a slut.

He enters a spiral of heavy drinking and self-blame, but after months of wallowing, he sets out on a quest for revenge in New York. He finds the photographer, nearly beheads him, and returns home victorious. On the drive back, he picks up a beautiful hitchhiker who turns out to be the love of his life, and arrives home just in time to walk his daughter down the aisle.

The End. Comments: Excellent! Ten stars! Best story ever!

 

[Doc_Sportello]

An LW reconciliation story is, at heart, a Romance. Two people belong together, but there is some obstacle in their way. In the Romance proper, it might be a misunderstanding, or difference in status, or stubbornness, whatever.

In the LW reconciliation story, the obstacle is infidelity on the wife's part. To make the story work, the writer makes the wife sympathetic and the infidelity understandable and ultimately -- after much angst -- forgivable.

 

[NoTalentHack]

That's a very LW way of seeing things. She did love her husband. Even through the flames of passion, she realized it was just a short fling with an aging, lonely stranger.

That’s… not how the story ends. Yes, she stays with her family, but she pines after the guy for the rest of her marriage. Like, she does shit that’s absolutely crazy like hauling furniture back into the house that her husband had replaced with newer, nicer stuff after he dies, specifically because it dates from those four days she spent with her paramour.

Her husband knows something is wrong after he returns from the fair, even asks her about it, but she doesn’t tell him, and he doesn’t press the issue. On his deathbed, he apologizes for her having led a smaller life than she could have.

And then, after she dies, she asks her kids to scatter her ashes at the bridge instead of burying her with her husband. Her heart was never with him after the affair, ever.

Worse, it’s implied in the book that her lack of honesty, in staying with the husband, is the indirect cause of her children’s own fucked up relationships, including the daughter staying with an actually shitty husband, unlike her father who was basically just boring and lacked the ability to engage emotionally as the mother wanted him to. Thus, she followed in her mother’s footsteps (minus the cheating) because she got locked into the same awful pattern. She chose duty and stability, and she basically fell down in both categories.

I have some sympathy for her and her situation, but… yeah, she was pretty fucking awful. However, because she’s the protagonist, and because a lot of women who lived through something that had echoes of the character’s story, that mostly gets glossed over.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I wrote two LW stories in the past year for the Pink Orchid event.

In "Going Down Together", the wife finds that her husband has been having an affiar for the past year, so she has her own one-night-stand and films it to send the videos of another guy fucking her. In the end of that story, she's reconciling with her husband, but has a passionate kiss with her best GF.

This year, I followed up on that with "That Look of Yours", in which she realizes she really loves her friend, but in a different way than she loves her husband. The story is about unrequited love, and different kinds of love.

In the second story, it's only rated a 3.01. And many in the audience seem to think she and her husband are settling for each other, rather than seeing them as a loving couple who also wanted the other options along with marriage.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

That’s… not how the story ends. Yes, she stays with her family, but she pines after the guy for the rest of her marriage. Like, she does shit that’s absolutely crazy like hauling furniture back into the house that her husband had replaced with newer, nicer stuff after he dies, specifically because it dates from those four days she spent with her paramour.

Her husband knows something is wrong after he returns from the fair, even asks her about it, but she doesn’t tell him, and he doesn’t press the issue. On his deathbed, he apologizes for her having led a smaller life than she could have.

And then, after she dies, she asks her kids to scatter her ashes at the bridge instead of burying her with her husband. Her heart was never with him after the affair, ever.

Worse, it’s implied in the book that her lack of honesty, in staying with the husband, is the indirect cause of her children’s own fucked up relationships, including the daughter staying with an actually shitty husband, unlike her father who was basically just boring and lacked the ability to engage emotionally as the mother wanted him to. Thus, she followed in her mother’s footsteps (minus the cheating) because she got locked into the same awful pattern. She chose duty and stability, and she basically fell down in both categories.

I have some sympathy for her and her situation, but… yeah, she was pretty fucking awful. However, because she’s the protagonist, and because a lot of women who lived through something that had echoes of the character, that mostly gets glossed over.

I still pine for my first love -- from kindergarten through high school. I still save her letters and small tokens; I still dream about her. I cherish those childhood memories from a time when everything was made of pure emotion. She represents the innocence of youth, that brief window when we actually believed love could fix everything.

Pining after an imaginary, perfect past is human; it’s a coping mechanism, a form of escapism, and ultimately, it means absolutely nothing. In the end, she did the right thing. She stayed with her family and took her secret to the grave, exactly as she should have. She should have won the Oscar instead of Susan Sarandon.

 

[metropolinational]

I have some sympathy for her and her situation, but… yeah, she was pretty fucking awful. However, because she’s the protagonist, and because a lot of women who lived through something that had echoes of the character’s story, that mostly gets glossed over.

I'm surprised this conversation is even happening. I have always understood her to be a horrible character and that the whole story is about how terrible life is and how brutally unfair love can be. I just asked my wife about this and she confirmed, yes, that many women consider it a romance and that is why "bitches can never be trusted." Her words.

If I was writing that story, I would consider it for a BTB, and I don't like BTBs....

 

[NoTalentHack]

I still pine for my first love -- from kindergarten through high school. I still save her letters and small tokens; I still dream about her. I cherish those childhood memories from a time when everything was made of pure emotion. She represents the innocence of youth, that brief window when we actually believed love could fix everything.

Pining after an imaginary, perfect past is human; it’s a coping mechanism, a form of escapism, and ultimately, it means absolutely nothing. In the end, she did the right thing. She stayed with her family and took her secret to the grave, exactly as she should have. She should have won the Oscar instead of Susan Sarandon.

I agree that it's a normal reaction to occasionally think fondly of former lovers or to keep mementos of them. However, it's a huge leap to go from there to "and therefore infidelity is okay, or at least forgivable" much less "it's perfectly reasonable to spend the rest of her life wishing she was with someone besides her husband, to the point where she'd rather have her ashes scattered at the place where she and her lover from several decades before hooked up than be buried next to her husband." You tack onto that the fact that she puts the burden of this knowledge on her kids... it's not good, is what I'm saying.

She made a choice that had a corrosive effect on her marriage. Maybe it was a bad marriage to begin with; it probably was, in fact. But she first made the choice to have an affair, then chose to hide it from her husband instead of talking with him about it and trying to find a way forward together, then placed that burden of knowledge on her children after she was gone. The book's defenders will say that she chose duty and loyalty to her family over love, but she didn't; she merely pushed the aftereffects of her weakness off onto everyone else. It's a story of a selfish person who sees herself as selfless... which arguably made it the perfect book for the times. But that's neither here nor there.

So, to bring it back around to the pieces that regularly appear in LW--although arguably less regularly these days--yes, of course the "I kicked her out and ruined her life" fantasy is kind of fucked up. But I'd argue it's no less fucked up than something like Bridges or The Notebook, stories that glorify cheating as being acceptable when it's ~~true love~~. In each case, the writers want us to focus on the story they were trying to tell (the wronged husband gets his revenge or the unhappy wife/girlfriend cheats but it's okay), but that's the thing about stories: the readers get to see in them what they want.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I'm surprised this conversation is even happening. I have always understood her to be a horrible character and that the whole story is about how terrible life is and how brutally unfair love can be. I just asked my wife about this and she confirmed, yes, that many women consider it a romance and that is why "bitches can never be trusted." Her words.

If I was writing that story, I would consider it for a BTB, and I don't like BTBs....

From what I remember at the time, this was pretty hotly debated, for a lot of the reasons I mentioned above. There were a lot of women out there in marriages that were not in any way happy, who'd made themselves smaller for men who didn't deserve it, and for whom the story really resonated.

I saw an anecdote on reddit while refreshing my memory about some of the details that really illustrated it for me. It was from a younger woman at the time who'd thought it was a nice story well told; then she went into the women's restroom and heard multiple women, older ones, ugly crying in the restrooms. Not "oh, that was so beautiful, I need to cry" crying, but "oh God, what have I done with my life" crying.

 

[IWroteThis]

I still pine for my first love -- from kindergarten through high school. I still save her letters and small tokens; I still dream about her. I cherish those childhood memories from a time when everything was made of pure emotion. She represents the innocence of youth, that brief window when we actually believed love could fix everything.

Pining after an imaginary, perfect past is human; it’s a coping mechanism, a form of escapism, and ultimately, it means absolutely nothing. In the end, she did the right thing. She stayed with her family and took her secret to the grave, exactly as she should have. She should have won the Oscar instead of Susan Sarandon.

I have moments where I want to go back in time and bitch-slap my first love, then beat some sense into younger me for falling for her…