Loving Wives Category

I started reading stories in this Category years ago. The Sub-heading -- "Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more" attracted my attention and quickly discovered a wide variety of themes. Over the past year or two this Category seems to be getting a very high ratio of Cuckold postings. This might be some writers and readers interpretation of extra-marital fun, but it appears to be a major turn off for many Literotica readers, including me. I have read suggestions that Cuckoldry Stories should go into another Category, but I understand why you can't force the writers to do that.
But here is another suggestion -- create a new Category specifically for Cuckold Stories and/or a New Category where there's actually some true loving between the couple(s) in the marriage.
I would be happy to expound on my thoughts if anyone out there cares to discuss.

Takolot said:

I started reading stories in this Category years ago. The Sub-heading -- "Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more" attracted my attention and quickly discovered a wide variety of themes. Over the past year or two this Category seems to be getting a very high ratio of Cuckold postings. This might be some writers and readers interpretation of extra-marital fun, but it appears to be a major turn off for many Literotica readers, including me. I have read suggestions that Cuckoldry Stories should go into another Category, but I understand why you can't force the writers to do that.
But here is another suggestion -- create a new Category specifically for Cuckold Stories and/or a New Category where there's actually some true loving between the couple(s) in the marriage.
I would be happy to expound on my thoughts if anyone out there cares to discuss.

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You don't need to expound on your thoughts. If you want to change something then you need to take it up with Laurel and Manu.

Oh God, I know I shouldn't but I can't help but ask. Why are LW readers such intolerant idiots?

NotWise said:

You don't need to expound on your thoughts. If you want to change something then you need to take it up with Laurel and Manu.

Oh God, I know I shouldn't but I can't help but ask. Why are LW readers such intolerant idiots?

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I know I shouldn't ask either, but your story list makes me wonder how you would know and why you would care? You haven't posted a single story there.

rj

As this topic has strong potential for heated posting, do remember that if the thread devolves into personal attacks, they will go away.

AH_Mod said:

As this topic has strong potential for heated posting, do remember that if the thread devolves into personal attacks, they will go away.

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Strong potential acknowledged. Apologies to NotWise.

rj

My original comment had more to do with the preponderance (to my perception) of cuckold stories in Loving Wives. Nothing more implied aside from that observation. Not passing judgement, but I said maybe cuckold stories should have their own category OR maybe another category could be setup for those who don't want see 90% cuckold stories.
I see rjordan replied. I like his stories!
And I enjoy cheating stories; stories about reconciliation successful or not; swapping; retaliation; etc. I just wondered if other readers thought the LW category was becoming too much cuckodry.
I not posting my comments anonymously! I'm not casting aspersions!
And I have at least eight stories in various stages of completion.

Takolot said:

My original comment had more to do with the preponderance (to my perception) of cuckold stories in Loving Wives. Nothing more implied aside from that observation. Not passing judgement, but I said maybe cuckold stories should have their own category OR maybe another category could be setup for those who don't want see 90% cuckold stories.
I see rjordan replied. I like his stories!
And I enjoy cheating stories; stories about reconciliation successful or not; swapping; retaliation; etc. I just wondered if other readers thought the LW category was becoming too much cuckodry.
I not posting my comments anonymously! I'm not casting aspersions!
And I have at least eight stories in various stages of completion.

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I agree that there has been an increase in cuckold stories in LW. I don't see that they are all that misplaced. How can you have wives screwing other guys without the husband being cuckolded?

I like to explore marriages gone wrong. Some involve "involuntary" cuckoldry, I suppose. What is normally called an "affair".

Anyway, I disagree that the solution to whatever is perceived as a problem with LW should be solved with a balkanization of the category. Good tags are a better way to differentiate stories. As a reader, I appreciate anything that helps me find stories I like and skip those I don't. Tags are easier than hunting through more ambiguous categories.

Despite all that, I think the real way to solve LW "problems" is more well-written stories. When the overall storytelling is better, LW readers are more tolerant of viewpoint.

rj

Takolot said:

My original comment had more to do with the preponderance (to my perception) of cuckold stories in Loving Wives.

but I said maybe cuckold stories should have their own category OR maybe another category could be setup for those who don't want see 90% cuckold stories.

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rjordan said:

I agree that there has been an increase in cuckold stories in LW. I don't see that they are all that misplaced. How can you have wives screwing other guys without the husband being cuckolded?

I like to explore marriages gone wrong. Some involve "involuntary" cuckoldry, I suppose. What is normally called an "affair".

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I don't see that they're in the wrong place either. And one is free to skip over them if they wish.

rjordan said:

I agree that there has been an increase in cuckold stories in LW. I don't see that they are all that misplaced. How can you have wives screwing other guys without the husband being cuckolded?

I like to explore marriages gone wrong. Some involve "involuntary" cuckoldry, I suppose. What is normally called an "affair".

Anyway, I disagree that the solution to whatever is perceived as a problem with LW should be solved with a balkanization of the category. Good tags are a better way to differentiate stories. As a reader, I appreciate anything that helps me find stories I like and skip those I don't. Tags are easier than hunting through more ambiguous categories.

Despite all that, I think the real way to solve LW "problems" is more well-written stories. When the overall storytelling is better, LW readers are more tolerant of viewpoint.

rj

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Have to agree that tags are a superior way to search rather than creating endless new categories and an improved tag function would help if ever implemented. And for the most part having better written stories will help the rating of a story in any category.

But to believe that there isn't a unique dynamic that takes place with LW readers/voters boggles my mind. Many categories including romance have readers who feel a story in "their" category should conform to certain pre-conceived notions but LW is a world of its own. Before writing this I took a look at the LW new story page. Of those, only one story was rated over 4.00 and just barely. I understand this is an amateur site (though there are plenty of writers who have published in rl) and the quality varies and some stories are badly written but I don't think the overall lower ratings are due to those who write LW stories being the worst of the Lit writers or those that read LW stories are all literary critics who are judging amateur sex stories by professional literary standards.

It's because there are factions who think only their type of LW story is worthy. Put in a btb, or consequences, or cuckoldry, or good old fashioned cheating, or whatever their kink and they'll like. Have one they don't approve of and at best you may get ignored though the btb and consequence factions seem more militant and prepared to down vote a story. Not complaining over that, I'm just observing.

rjordan said:

I agree that there has been an increase in cuckold stories in LW. I don't see that they are all that misplaced. How can you have wives screwing other guys without the husband being cuckolded?

I like to explore marriages gone wrong. Some involve "involuntary" cuckoldry, I suppose. What is normally called an "affair".

rj

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I have always held this opinion in regard to cuckold stories. The current style of these seems to almost always involve a wife who is openly involved in an extramarital affair of some sort. Actually, it seems rare that the archaic word is used much in "cheating stories". I think the real rub causing much of the complaining has to do with the emasculation aspect of modern cuckold stories...add in so-called "forced" bisexuality and presto...an instant hot button issue is born.

But, the fact remains that these are very popular and have a fairly wide audience. I wonder if the Group Sex category isn't the best choice. I recall how my first ever story got bashed quite roughly in LW. It was a loving threesome...but I unwittingly committed the mortal sin of including male/male sexual contact On part two of the story I was asking on this forum this very question about where to post. The conversation was following along a similar path as always when someone unknown to me chimed in suggesting the Group Sex category...the screen name was Laurel and I couldn't understand why all of the commotion at the time

Me thinks that the real issue is homophobia. Some folks get quite threatened by it and/or just want desperately to maintain at least one little corner of the world where they don't have to see or hear about it.

For what it's worth; That second story I posted in Group Sex is still one my best received, but it wasn't a cuckold thing I think a new category for Bisexual/Cuckold might make people happy because it's a mix of hetero and homo.

yukonnights said:

I think the real rub causing much of the complaining has to do with the emasculation aspect of modern cuckold stories...add in so-called "forced" bisexuality and presto...an instant hot button issue is born.

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I hate that and I never do it. I don't read those accounts, but I don't rag on the writers for it either.

I find everyone's responses to my original post to be interesting and thought-provoking. I think I am impatient hoping for more of my type of story, and not intolerant of others. I skip over stories, and I'm just disappointed I don't find more that interest me. I understand we all have our own tastes; mine aren't morally superior to anyone else's.
Many of my favorite LW writers seem to have retired; there are probably a dozen or so including Rjordan that I'm always hoping to see a new story from. The term cuckold is obviously a hot button, sorry about that. There are obviously Categories such as BDSM and Group Sex for very special tastes, I wondered why cuckoldry couldn't have its own Category. BUT I'M OVER IT!
If LW captures the most eyeballs, then I can understand why people would choose to post in this category.

Takolot said:

I find everyone's responses to my original post to be interesting and thought-provoking. I think I am impatient hoping for more of my type of story, and not intolerant of others. I skip over stories, and I'm just disappointed I don't find more that interest me. I understand we all have our own tastes; mine aren't morally superior to anyone else's.
Many of my favorite LW writers seem to have retired; there are probably a dozen or so including Rjordan that I'm always hoping to see a new story from. The term cuckold is obviously a hot button, sorry about that. There are obviously Categories such as BDSM and Group Sex for very special tastes, I wondered why cuckoldry couldn't have its own Category. BUT I'M OVER IT!
If LW captures the most eyeballs, then I can understand why people would choose to post in this category.

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I think you hit the nail on the head in the last sentence. Splitting up categories means fewer people will see the story, and it means readers will have to figure out which category to visit. A good chunk of those readers will be looking for stories that could fit into either category.

Rutger5 and rjordan have the right idea: better use of tags. Tags should be visible in a bar over the heading of the story. Readers instantly could figure out what type of LW story it was, and presumably if you gave them fair warning the trolling would diminish at least somewhat.

I don't think writing better stories is the answer. I've followed the category enough to know that good stories get bombed as well as bad ones. LW stories get MUCH lower scores than stories in other categories. In Erotic Couplings, about 25% of stories get a 4.5 or above; in LW, it's only 6.7%.

SimonDoom said:

I don't think writing better stories is the answer. I've followed the category enough to know that good stories get bombed as well as bad ones. LW stories get MUCH lower scores than stories in other categories. In Erotic Couplings, about 25% of stories get a 4.5 or above; in LW, it's only 6.7%.

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Better stories are ALWAYS the answer. Better stories get more complimentary and useful comments in LW as elsewhere. But you can't judge good stories by the fucking voting. It's biased. It's not based on any metric. It's meaningless.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Can you think of any reason at all why stories in one category here would be markedly worse quality than stories in another category? Many writers here write in multiple categories. Do you honestly think they intentionally write worse stories for LW than they do for other categories? That doesn't make any sense. Do the worse writers gravitate to LW? That doesn't make any sense either.

Whatever the hell the voting system measures it sure isn't story quality. You aren't going to make any useful argument about anything using voting results.

rj

rjordan said:

Better stories are ALWAYS the answer. Better stories get more complimentary and useful comments in LW as elsewhere. But you can't judge good stories by the fucking voting. It's biased. It's not based on any metric. It's meaningless.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Can you think of any reason at all why stories in one category here would be markedly worse quality than stories in another category? Many writers here write in multiple categories. Do you honestly think they intentionally write worse stories for LW than they do for other categories? That doesn't make any sense. Do the worse writers gravitate to LW? That doesn't make any sense either.

Whatever the hell the voting system measures it sure isn't story quality. You aren't going to make any useful argument about anything using voting results.

rj

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I think that it could be that men who find the idea of a married woman having sex with someone other than their husband deeply offensive, seem to gravitate to LW stories to feed their outrage. I have had comments on LW stories I posted that specifically state that they have given a bottom rating to express their feelings about the story and about me personally. It used to bother me but life moves on.

SimonDoom said:

I think you hit the nail on the head in the last sentence. Splitting up categories means fewer people will see the story, and it means readers will have to figure out which category to visit. A good chunk of those readers will be looking for stories that could fit into either category.

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Most of the LW stuff already crosses categories. I've seen single stories go into EC, Ex/Voy, CD/TV, Non-Con, maybe even Celebrity in some cases.

rjordan said:

Better stories are ALWAYS the answer. Better stories get more complimentary and useful comments in LW as elsewhere. But you can't judge good stories by the fucking voting. It's biased. It's not based on any metric. It's meaningless.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Can you think of any reason at all why stories in one category here would be markedly worse quality than stories in another category? Many writers here write in multiple categories. Do you honestly think they intentionally write worse stories for LW than they do for other categories? That doesn't make any sense. Do the worse writers gravitate to LW? That doesn't make any sense either.

Whatever the hell the voting system measures it sure isn't story quality. You aren't going to make any useful argument about anything using voting results.

rj

Click to expand...

What I meant is that writing better stories will not eliminate the problem of getting bombed in the LW for writing about cuckoldry, IF you believe that to be a problem. The trolls will bomb even good stories if they are about wives who have sex outside of marriage without consequence. That's why LW stories are, on the whole, rated much lower than stories in other categories. It has nothing to do with the overall quality of the stories, which are, as you point out, probably no worse or no better than stories in any other category.

The answer, if you are an author in the LW category, is simply to steel yourself against the nasty comments and adjust your expectations downward about scores. A 4.5 is above the 90th percentile in this category while it's only in the 75 percentile in most other categories.

I don't entirely agree with you about the usefulness of scoring. Although scoring is very "noisy" and gives one only a very rough idea of the quality of the story, it's still fair to say that given a large sample of stories there is a difference, within a certain category, between the average quality of stories that get a 4.0 and of stories that get a 4.6. What you can't do is compare scores in LW with scores in other categories because the scale is so different.

SimonDoom said:

The answer, if you are an author in the LW category, is simply to ...

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... ignore comments and scores.

jaF0 said:

... ignore comments and scores.

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That's a viable option. I prefer not to ignore anything, though; I like to take in all the information I can and take it with a big heap of salt.

SimonDoom said:

What I meant is that writing better stories will not eliminate the problem of getting bombed in the LW for writing about cuckoldry, IF you believe that to be a problem. The trolls will bomb even good stories if they are about wives who have sex outside of marriage without consequence. That's why LW stories are, on the whole, rated much lower than stories in other categories. It has nothing to do with the overall quality of the stories, which are, as you point out, probably no worse or no better than stories in any other category.

The answer, if you are an author in the LW category, is simply to steel yourself against the nasty comments and adjust your expectations downward about scores. A 4.5 is above the 90th percentile in this category while it's only in the 75 percentile in most other categories.

I don't entirely agree with you about the usefulness of scoring. Although scoring is very "noisy" and gives one only a very rough idea of the quality of the story, it's still fair to say that given a large sample of stories there is a difference, within a certain category, between the average quality of stories that get a 4.0 and of stories that get a 4.6. What you can't do is compare scores in LW with scores in other categories because the scale is so different.

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Scoring is useful in determining if you can steer your story toward those who like a particular story line and away from those who don't.

The scoring system is useful in measuring the ability to exploit several biases in the system which are all well-known.

I have no real quarrel with the voting system. My quarrel, if I have one, is against using it as evidence to change other features of Lit. It's not unlike a Gold Star system in grade school. Encourage little kids in the system to do better and feel good about themselves, but don't change the educational standards based on the number of stars awarded.

rj

lexdepenny said:

I think that it could be that men who find the idea of a married woman having sex with someone other than their husband deeply offensive, seem to gravitate to LW stories to feed their outrage. I have had comments on LW stories I posted that specifically state that they have given a bottom rating to express their feelings about the story and about me personally. It used to bother me but life moves on.

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Based upon the many hateful anonymous comments posted in LW, I can see why you might think
mortally wounded, betrayed husbands gravitate to LW. Personally, I would like to read more women authors in LW.
The comments I consider most irritating are the ones where the commentator insists that the offending wife did things that weren't actually written in the story, and/or ascribes thoughts and motives different from what the author wrote! Unless the author is writing a mystery story, than I want to believe the author has told us all the "facts".

rjordan said:

I agree that there has been an increase in cuckold stories in LW. I don't see that they are all that misplaced. How can you have wives screwing other guys without the husband being cuckolded?

rj

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I've enjoyed reading the many responses in this thread, but I'm also embarrassed(?) that I used the term cuckold originally. I had something more narrow in mind than simply wives screwing other guys, something more along the lines of flagrant intentional humiliation of the spouse.
I like seeing how an author deals with the repercussions of a fling, a slip, a swap gone awry, etc., etc..

rjordan said:

I agree that there has been an increase in cuckold stories in LW. I don't see that they are all that misplaced. How can you have wives screwing other guys without the husband being cuckolded?

I like to explore marriages gone wrong. Some involve "involuntary" cuckoldry, I suppose. What is normally called an "affair".

Anyway, I disagree that the solution to whatever is perceived as a problem with LW should be solved with a balkanization of the category. Good tags are a better way to differentiate stories. As a reader, I appreciate anything that helps me find stories I like and skip those I don't. Tags are easier than hunting through more ambiguous categories.

Despite all that, I think the real way to solve LW "problems" is more well-written stories. When the overall storytelling is better, LW readers are more tolerant of viewpoint.

rj

Click to expand...

I believe that the general understanding is that while by the dictionary definition of cuckold nearly every LW story is cuckold, in the LW world it only applies if the husband accepts in in some way. Most people use the term "cuck" for those stories as a way to differentiate them from the stories where the husband rejects his cuckolding in some way.

But here is another suggestion -- create a new Category specifically for Cuckold Stories and/or a New Category where there's actually some true loving between the couple(s) in the marriage.

Click to expand...

OK.

Lets say that Manu (who is the coder behind the site) says "Ok, yes, this is a good idea".

There are 27k stories currently in Loving Wives. Who decides which ones go in what category? You? Manu? Who? Do we ask the authors? How many authors have died or moved on? What then?

What if Manu / Laural do decide to take on the pain of reading and comprehending 27k stories and they place the story in a category that the author doesn't like, then what?


While the concept of splitting Loving Wives across more categories has merit, and has been debated multiple times on this forum (seriously, just do a search. You aren't the first), the reality is that implementation is nigh on impossible.

I think it's interesting that a mod interrupted this thread almost immediately to issue a warning. Clearly, the mods and admins of this site know that the Loving Wives category is an ongoing hot-button topic -- and has been for years. The fact that they've done nothing to reduce that tension or solve the problems that exist in that category leaves us with only a few possible explanations:

1. They encourage the attention, clicks, divisiveness, and debate that the LW category generates. Perhaps it's an asset to have so many readers so involved and so passionate about their site.

2. They don't know how to solve the problems, so they just let them continue, hoping that eventually readers would tire of arguing with each other.

3. They just don't care.

I tend to believe #2 is the real answer, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that #1 or #3 is true. To me, the solution is very plain and simple. I assume the moderators read every story that is submitted. If so, then the admins should determine where a story is categorized -- not the authors.

If the central theme is submission, humiliation, and forced bisexuality, then BDSM or Fetish seems like the appropriate category.

If a story is not erotic in any way, it should be categorized as Non-Erotic.

If a story is about a husband and wife that have extramarital "fun", then it should be a Loving Wives story.

If this were to happen, all of the "BTB" fans would head to the Non-Erotic category to get their fill of tales of divorce, revenge, and murder. The "wimpy cuck" fans would head to Fetish/BDSM. And the fans of truly Loving Wives stories would stick with LW. Problem solved.