The Anomaly called Loving Wives

[Comshaw]

I don't have an opinion on what you experienced, but I do have an opinion on the appropriateness of that category for the story you described.

Some people expect cheating, some people expect BTB, some people expect RAAC, and if a LW story isn't even going to have any of those, then I for one would expect it to at least have what's on the category description:



Yes, I get that the category's title is "Loving Wives," but a story about a loving wife with no extramarital content at all is not in the spirit of the category in any way, not even in the off-label way which has come to comprise most of the content there.

I'm not surprised that that crowd appreciated the story, I just think it should have been somewhere else.

I'll grant you it probably should have been in another category. But it wasn't and the readers seem to enjoy it even if some didn't think it fit.
KittyOfSteele expressed what it feels like to me, "It's like the audience of LW are not looking for cheating..." The ones who commented on the story seem to bear that out.

That said, it doesn't explain why the vote to views were what they were. Was it because it was a 750-story, a 2-minute read? Or something else? After checking the other two 750-word stories I wrote for that challenge, the one I put in Mature had 6748 views and 323 votes for a 20.89 vote to view ration. The second one I put in Erotic Couplings. It had 7912 views with 175 votes for a ratio of 45.11. That's a significant difference. That's what has me puzzled.


Comshaw

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I understand what you're saying, but I interpret the data differently.

Obviously, you can't do this with Anonymous, but if you look at the named accounts, I believe I've seen a pattern. On stories like this one with a true loving wife, they comment positively about the lack of cheating. However, if you look at their comments on stories with cheating wives, they don't attack those stories for having a cheating wife. They either praise the story for how they dealt with the cheater, or they lambast it for letting them get away with it.

So, yes, they don't like cheating wives. However, from my analysis, it's not the cheating that makes them dislike a story, but what happens after the cheating.

Still, you can't deny the weird and confusing vibe shift.

 

[Actingup]

The readers surprised the hell out of me on this one. I figured it was Loving Wives, so I put on my asbestos underwear thinking I'd need it. I didn't. From my perspective, it highlights how little I know about the motivation of the readers. Ya'll got an opinion on this?

What is consistently true about LW readers is that they will engage with reasonable writing. Many of my stories are in Romance or other categories, but if I sort by views or comments, the LW stories dominate. My top five above are reconciliation (co-write with Penny), burn-the-bastard (romance sub-plot), burn-the-bastard, romance, and wife-swapping. Many readers didn’t like the wife swapping one (partly because the setup is pretty screwy), but they still read it.

My only real fail in the category had a hotwife element in the first part of the story. No, they did not tend to read that one so much!

 

[Ianus4]

Well, LW is specifically for stories featuring non-monogamy so it sounds like your story is in the wrong category.

That hasn't been the case for a long time, in either direction. On the one hand, a significant portion of LW was dominated by stories related to infidelity and marital crises, on the other hand, ENM has been present in the Group Sex category from the very beginning, and today it has flooded categories such as Crossdressing, Fetish, Interracial Love, and NN, among others, and has also appeared in Romance.

 

[Rob_Royale]

That hasn't been the case for a long time, in either direction. On the one hand, a significant portion of LW was dominated by stories related to infidelity and marital crises, on the other hand, ENM has been present in the Group Sex category from the very beginning, and today it has flooded categories such as Crossdressing, Fetish, Interracial Love, and NN, among others, and has also appeared in Romance.

True. I'm just going by the offered category description.
Loving Wives
Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more.
By this, the OPs story that does not include any sort of extramarital anything. It just has a 'loving wife', a woman who loves her husband. We have a few default categories, where if a story includes a particular subject, it must go there. Incest and non-con, mostly. Happily, ENM isn't among them.

 

[Ianus4]

True. I'm just going by the offered category description.
Loving Wives
Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more.
By this, the OPs story that does not include any sort of extramarital anything. It just has a 'loving wife', a woman who loves her husband. We have a few default categories, where if a story includes a particular subject, it must go there. Incest and non-con, mostly. Happily, ENM isn't among them.

To be honest, I don't really understand why it matters in an ENM story whether the main characters are married or simply living as life partners. Why should these stories be placed in different categories?
Marriage is only significant if one of the parties breaks the vows made at the time of the ceremony. Without that, it’s just a kind of fetish, like a nun’s costume in a role-playing game.

 

[Rob_Royale]

To be honest, I don't really understand why it matters in an ENM story whether the main characters are married or simply living as life partners. Why should these stories be placed in different categories?
Marriage is only significant if one of the parties breaks the vows made at the time of the ceremony. Without that, it’s just a kind of fetish, like a nun’s costume in a role-playing game.

Totally agree. I was once lovers with a woman who was unmarried but had just such a life partner.

 

[LargoKitt]

And yet it did surprisingly well. That's what puzzled me. Why? If I could only figure that out...


Comshaw

Putting a story about a loving wife in Loving Wives sure seems to fit. Not Romance because that almost always requires separation and yearning. For most LW readers does the moniker mean "loving someone else's wife" and what about cheating husbands. Is there a 'burn the bastards' category?

 

[Lifestyle66]

There are stories in LW about cheating husbands.

My story "Going Down Together" is about a faithful wife who finds out her husband had a mistress for over a year. So, she got her revenge. It's rated 3.8 from 388 votes and over 25K views.

I wrote one called "Cheated Wives Club" about what suburban housewives do when they know their husbands are out having a fling with another woman. It did rather well (for me) in Loving Wives at 3.94 with 125 votes and over 10K views.

These are both first-person from the wife's POV.

 

[Baztrachian]

I don't know what it is but it seems some people completely lose their minds over LW stories.

It is a very odd phenomenon.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I don't know what it is but it seems some people completely lose their minds over LW stories.

It is a very odd phenomenon.

I agree. But people seem to be drawn to what triggers them the hardest. The political forum for instance? Everyone I've ever known who forced a religious or political debate on me were the least capable of holding a reasonable conversation.
For Loving Wives it's likely those poor souls who expected a loving wife and instead got a cheater.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I agree. But people seem to be drawn to what triggers them the hardest. The political forum for instance? Everyone I've ever known who forced a religious or political debate on me were the least capable of holding a reasonable conversation.
For Loving Wives it's likely those poor souls who expected a loving wife and instead got a cheater.

It's not "what they expect. I think it's more likely a feeling of insecurity.

A man who knows he's small or feels inadequate, can't tolerate the thought of his wife/girlfriend trying some other guy. he might realize what she's missing!

Men who KNOW they're more than enough have no such problems with sharing.

 

[Ianus4]

It's not "what they expect. I think it's more likely a feeling of insecurity.

A man who knows he's small or feels inadequate, can't tolerate the thought of his wife/girlfriend trying some other guy. he might realize what she's missing!

Men who KNOW they're more than enough have no such problems with sharing.

I disagree with that. The need for and expectation of marital fidelity is completely gender-neutral; countless women file for divorce because of their husbands’ infidelity. This isn’t about self-confidence, but about trust. No soldier wants to serve alongside a partner who has stabbed them in the back. But road traffic is also based on trust. You trust that the other driver won’t run a red light and won't crush into you from the side. Would that also be a lack of self-confidence? You trust your doctor not to leave a surgical instrument inside you after an operation.
Some people get turned on by bringing a third party into their marriage, but that’s more of a fetish. The vast majority, however, still expect—and rightly so—that their own fidelity will be met with fidelity in return. That’s what marriage vows are all about, and deviating from them is only possible by mutual agreement. Just like with any other contract in life.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I disagree with that. The need for and expectation of marital fidelity is completely gender-neutral; countless women file for divorce because of their husbands’ infidelity. This isn’t about self-confidence, but about trust. No soldier wants to serve alongside a partner who has stabbed them in the back. But road traffic is also based on trust. You trust that the other driver won’t run a red light and won't crush into you from the side. Would that also be a lack of self-confidence? You trust your doctor not to leave a surgical instrument inside you after an operation.
Some people get turned on by bringing a third party into their marriage, but that’s more of a fetish. The vast majority, however, still expect—and rightly so—that their own fidelity will be met with fidelity in return. That’s what marriage vows are all about, and deviating from them is only possible by mutual agreement. Just like with any other contract in life.

You're taking my response out of context.

Trust and fidelity are important to marriage. But my post was in response to "it seems some people completely lose their minds over LW stories."

Why are people on this site looking for and losing their minds over stories of infidelity?

Rob said: "people seem to be drawn to what triggers them the hardest. .... For Loving Wives it's likely those poor souls who expected a loving wife and instead got a cheater."

Many people cheat on their spouse. Some can take it in stride, while other "lose their minds" over it.

If a wife admits to her husband "I spent too much money last night," does he lose his mind and file for divorce? Probably not.

But if she admits "I spent three hours fucking another guy last night," ... well... that's where many husbands in the LW audience seem to lose their minds, and it automatically calls for divorce.

And the same thing goes when the roles are reversed. Husband admits to spending an evening out drinking and spending too much money doesn't result in the wife asking for a divorce. But if he admits to fucking another woman, that's when she considers divorce.

 

[Duleigh]

The readers surprised the hell out of me on this one. I figured it was Loving Wives, so I put on my asbestos underwear thinking I'd need it. I didn't. From my perspective, it highlights how little I know about the motivation of the readers. Ya'll got an opinion on this?

You never know what they're thinking in that pit. I've put a couple in there. Almost every one of my stories feature adults in a long-term committed relationship, so LW is not the place for me. I did put one story in there to troll the trolls and it did quite well The Preacher and the Chocolate Lady, but I got cocky and put what I thought was a damn good Halloween Story in there, Flying Monkey, and I got my ass flamed. STUPID crap like "That's a ghost story! Ewww" DUH! It says Halloween Story.

The big positive about LW is that it keeps the knuckle draggers out of the other categories.

 

[Ianus4]

You're taking my response out of context.

Trust and fidelity are important to marriage. But my post was in response to "it seems some people completely lose their minds over LW stories."

Why are people on this site looking for and losing their minds over stories of infidelity?

Rob said: "people seem to be drawn to what triggers them the hardest. .... For Loving Wives it's likely those poor souls who expected a loving wife and instead got a cheater."

Many people cheat on their spouse. Some can take it in stride, while other "lose their minds" over it.

If a wife admits to her husband "I spent too much money last night," does he lose his mind and file for divorce? Probably not.

But if she admits "I spent three hours fucking another guy last night," ... well... that's where many husbands in the LW audience seem to lose their minds, and it automatically calls for divorce.

And the same thing goes when the roles are reversed. Husband admits to spending an evening out drinking and spending too much money doesn't result in the wife asking for a divorce. But if he admits to fucking another woman, that's when she considers divorce.

In Agatha Christie’s book *Towards Zero*, there is a line that says, “A murder is not the beginning of the story, but the end.” The same is true of cheating. Something had gone very wrong before that. Something that one partner hid and/or the other partner couldn’t notice or didn’t want to notice. It’s often said that this is especially true when the woman is the unfaithful one. That would explain why there are more stories about cheating wives, but I wouldn’t excuse either gender.
Furthermore (unlike overspending), cheating is always humiliating. "You weren’t enough for me" physically and/or emotionally. Emma Thompson portrays this pain brilliantly in Love Actually.
In fact, I see this as the main reason why stories about cheating wives dominate. It lies in the differing expectations regarding traditional social roles. A man is supposed to be “manly,” proud, and strong. This expectation comes not only from other men but—like it or not—from most women as well. And the phrase “you weren’t good enough” deals a massive blow to this expected social role.
Cheating is the end of the story. The question is whether the same people can and want to start a new story together.

 

[Lifestyle66]

In Agatha Christie’s book *Towards Zero*, there is a line that says, “A murder is not the beginning of the story, but the end.” The same is true of cheating. Something had gone very wrong before that. Something that one partner hid and/or the other partner couldn’t notice or didn’t want to notice. It’s often said that this is especially true when the woman is the unfaithful one. That would explain why there are more stories about cheating wives, but I wouldn’t excuse either gender.
Furthermore (unlike overspending), cheating is always humiliating. "You weren’t enough for me" physically and/or emotionally. Emma Thompson portrays this pain brilliantly in Love Actually.
In fact, I see this as the main reason why stories about cheating wives dominate. It lies in the differing expectations regarding traditional social roles. A man is supposed to be “manly,” proud, and strong. This expectation comes not only from other men but—like it or not—from most women as well. And the phrase “you weren’t good enough” deals a massive blow to this expected social role.
Cheating is the end of the story. The question is whether the same people can and want to start a new story together.

But the over-spending example I gave can be a similar situation in the "You aren't a good provider." It depends on who is the main earner in the family and other aspects of their relationship. The husband could feel humiliated in that situation.

But I disagree with your statement "Furthermore (unlike overspending), cheating is always humiliating. "You weren’t enough for me" physically and/or emotionally."

"Cheating" is not ALWAYS humiliating. In the case of a cheating wife, it depends on the husband's self-image and his ego. I explored a portion of that aspect in a story "His Vixen," where the wife doesn't technically "cheat" but rather expresses her desire to feel wanted by other men. So, her husband not only gives his blessing to try it, he sets her up with a hotel room and the time to do it.

In another story "What Were You Thinking", a swinger couple have their same room/same house rules with they play with others. And the husband finds that his wife lied to him and set up her own weekend alone with another man!

In both of those stories, I present the husbands as strong, self-assured types. That second story even has a sequel in which the couple attend marriage counseling and the husband explains his attitudes: "She broke the rule, so it no longer applies to me either." And he goes out to spend a weekend alone with a woman he KNOWS his wife hates!

Both of these stories still get 1-bombed by the LW insecure types. They can't understand the attitude that some couples have of "It's just sex, and no big deal!" when there's no threat of pregnancies or STDs! So, minus such threats, WHY do people insist on monogamy is the only way in a strong marriage? You can't argue that "It's HUMILIATING to the husband," if I choose to not FEEL humiliated!

EDIT: I've made it my hobby to write such stories for the LW audience, exploring different relationships and explaining other reasons for WHY people don't think the way YOU (or others) insist they should think and act.