LW Has Turned Into a Misogynist Wasteland

[Thorlol]

The author just published Part 2 of Liberation ..., and the husband has moved out, still struggling with his wife's cheating behavior and her recognition that she'll succumb to her urges again in the future.

I gave it a 4 this time, because the author needs to do a better job of editing. This part was shorter at 3.1K words, and just seemed like a quickly written bunch of notes which should have been fleshed out into a better written story. I also didn't like in this part where the wife went to her bigcock guy to break it off. That's like throwing gas on the fire, making her a clueless bimbo, when she knew her husband was already angry.

I felt the same way with your story "I Know My Wife", when the wife just ran off for her weekend. I understand the story was short and that you were focusing on consequences for stupid decisions. But the wife character just seemed too much like a story prop.

I anticipate the author of Liberation is going to RAAC, because he said initially it would be a romance. And his MFC is also somewhat of a clueless bimbo prop.

I don't care for the cheating/BTB stories. But these showing breakups without the "scorched Earth" revenge and destruction are at least food for thought. IMO, they're more realistic of how marriages dissolve.

I find it interesting how you vote. Not that I am against it, everyone can do what they want. But for me the story already took a turn for the worse. If I go purely for theme, actions of the characters and grammar it took on another dimension.

You already pointed out what you disliked in that part and it goes hand in hand why I cant give a good rating and why I immensly dislike the FMC. Her actions in part 1 were already killing the MC but in part 2 she proved to not be even marginally trustworthy after coming clean.

I mean, what the fuck went through her head to lie about going to her parents but instead secretly meeting up with her affair partner Jack who is such a good guy. She is again striking against the MC but covers her actions in platitudes like 'I love only you'. Makes me wonder what 'love' for some people actually means.

How am I supposed to like that kind of story and even give it a good rating? There is also another series ongoing with a cuckold theme "A sailing honeymoon" (according to the author unwilling), where you again find a wife who wants to force her husband into it but tries to convince the reader that she loves him. Feels a bit shizophrenic to be honest. But another great example where the actions and characters makes it hard to enjoy the content. Or why you would find some choice words from readers with a misogynistic feel to it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I mean, what the fuck went through her head to lie about going to her parents but instead secretly meeting up with her affair partner Jack who is such a good guy. She is again striking against the MC but covers her actions in platitudes like 'I love only you'. Makes me wonder what 'love' for some people actually means.

How am I supposed to like that kind of story and even give it a good rating? There is also another series ongoing with a cuckold theme "A sailing honeymoon" (according to the author unwilling), where you again find a wife who wants to force her husband into it but tries to convince the reader that she loves him. Feels a bit shizophrenic to be honest. But another great example where the actions and characters makes it hard to enjoy the content. Or why you would find some choice words from readers with a misogynistic feel to it.

A good story can be about bad characters. You don't have to like the characters, or admire or even understand their motives, to enjoy a story. Silence of the Lambs is a great movie about a serial killer who gets away in the end. It would have been a far weaker and artistically less satisfying movie if in the end he had been caught and brought to justice. Life is not always like that. Seinfeld is a great TV show about terrible, selfish people who do selfish and foolish things, never learn from their experiences, and never grow. But that's the whole point of the show. It's enjoyable entertainment precisely for that reason.

Sometimes the bad wife gets away with it. She can be a terrible person, but sometimes it can be a fine story. There's no necessary connection between the two things.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I find it interesting how you vote. Not that I am against it, everyone can do what they want. But for me the story already took a turn for the worse. If I go purely for theme, actions of the characters and grammar it took on another dimension.

Which shows just how inherently flawed the whole voting system is. Everybody votes differently - often wildly differently. There is no rubric or criteria whatsoever, so everyone makes up their own. One person's 2 is another's 4. Some people vote based on writing criteria, plot, characters, flow and grammar, while other just give a 5 if it made them fap, and if it didn't, probably not even vote at all. One voter could say that it passed the steamy meter and plunks down a 5 with little thought, and the next will be impressed but noted some sentence structure flaws and so gives a highly regarded 4, and that 4 takes the red H away - even thought that particular well-thought 4 likely means more than the quick fap 5.

So if your story averages a 4.2 it's really meaningless since you have no idea what criteria the score was based on. A simple thumbs up/thumbs down would be much more accurate since the criteria for thumbs up simply means they liked it and thumbs down simply means that they didn't.

 

[NoTalentHack]

A good story can be about bad characters. You don't have to like the characters, or admire or even understand their motives, to enjoy a story. Silence of the Lambs is a great movie about a serial killer who gets away in the end. It would have been a far weaker and artistically less satisfying movie if in the end he had been caught and brought to justice. Life is not always like that. Seinfeld is a great TV show about terrible, selfish people who do selfish and foolish things, never learn from their experiences, and never grow. But that's the whole point of the show. It's enjoyable entertainment precisely for that reason.

Sometimes the bad wife gets away with it. She can be a terrible person, but sometimes it can be a fine story. There's no necessary connection between the two things.

I'd argue a good story can't, or at least usually isn't, about bad characters. I'm using "bad" as in how they're formed, where I think you're talking about in a moral context. Your examples are all about awful people, but not badly formed characters.

Of the two stories discussed, I can only speak to Liberation, For Her or For Him?, because the writer of the other story put up a warning about it being an unwilling cuckolding story, which meant I skipped it. But in Liberation, the FMC is so irritatingly close to being a good character, and then the execution is horribly flawed. I've gone over a bunch of stuff above, so see that, but it goes deeper than that: the character is being presented as sympathetic, or at least somewhat, when all of her actions are showing the exact opposite. She's either dumb, cruel, or so impulsive that she should be on medication, but the story is still trying to tell us, "no, really, she's a good person," even to the point where the wronged husband is making excuses for her. And it doesn't come off as two flawed characters banging into each other, but the authorial intent being completely hampered by the execution.

There IS the possibility of a good character, both in a moral and formation way, making the mistakes she made, both the affairs, plural, and the way she presented her infidelity to her husband in the hopes that she'd accept them and come to terms with what she views as her needs. But she's being presented as a sympathetic character too, not just a morally good and flawed one, and that falls completely flat to the point where there's significant reader backlash to the character.

This dialog honestly reminds me of the discussion around February Sucks, and for a lot of the same reasons. The author, through the first person POV of the husband, keeps telling us how Linda (the wife in the story) is a wonderful person who just made a mistake/bad choice. But literally almost nothing about the character as she's revealed to the reader backs that up, to the point where she's, in my estimation. the single most hated character amongst the readership of LW stories. And because it's a first person POV, that makes the reader dislike the husband, too, because we just want to shake him and yell, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you defending her? Why are you even putting up with her?"

 

[Lifestyle66]

I find it interesting how you vote. Not that I am against it, everyone can do what they want. But for me the story already took a turn for the worse. If I go purely for theme, actions of the characters and grammar it took on another dimension.

You already pointed out what you disliked in that part and it goes hand in hand why I cant give a good rating and why I immensly dislike the FMC. Her actions in part 1 were already killing the MC but in part 2 she proved to not be even marginally trustworthy after coming clean.

I mean, what the fuck went through her head to lie about going to her parents but instead secretly meeting up with her affair partner Jack who is such a good guy. She is again striking against the MC but covers her actions in platitudes like 'I love only you'. Makes me wonder what 'love' for some people actually means.

How am I supposed to like that kind of story and even give it a good rating? There is also another series ongoing with a cuckold theme "A sailing honeymoon" (according to the author unwilling), where you again find a wife who wants to force her husband into it but tries to convince the reader that she loves him. Feels a bit shizophrenic to be honest. But another great example where the actions and characters makes it hard to enjoy the content. Or why you would find some choice words from readers with a misogynistic feel to it.

I don't "like" the popular BTB stories in LW. I find the idea of scorched Earth revenge to be misplaced, because people are who they are for whatever reason, and they change over time.

The wife you love and adore has her own growth and choices to make. The husband and wife may have married with the best of honest intentions, but people change. If she goes off temporarily with someone else, decide if STDs or pregnancy are a high risk, then make a decision and move on. But you can't stop what she's thinking, whether she tells you or not. And as I've pointed out earlier, IMO people can emotionally abandon their spouse in many different ways, so I don't hold physically sexual cheating to any particular special standard.

So, I can "like" (as in rating a 4) this story because the MC is dealing with his own emotional issues of her cheating without going scorched Earth, and she chose to stop the secretive nature of her cheating by being honest. The story is going against the grain of those others in LW which I dislike. The MFC is as much a superficial prop in this story than the one in yours.

I think I have only ever given a 1 once, because the thing wasn't even a real story, but a poorly kludged together bunch of paragraphs of an incomplete idea. And even the scorched Earth BTB stories (if at least decently written) get no less than a 3, which I consider average.

This story's author still has the potential to save their marriage with some kind of mutual understanding and agreement to both enjoy a more open swinger relationship. If you've read my series, you'll see that the husband explains to the third-party guy in "Lifestyle Ch. 13: Single Swingers" that his wife likes to flirt. So they're essentially using the swinger world for her to get her fill. And the husband has only one hard rule: "no double standards", which means if she ever plays without him nearby and approving (same house), then he's a "free agent" to do the same (which she can't tolerate).

So, as we've discussed earlier, I'm not of the mind that swinging or open marriages are the best or only way to go, nor do I think monogamy is the only way. Couples can sometimes find a better balance, and I want to see where this author takes his couple.

 

[djrip]

I've gotta check out this February Sucks. It's interesting how certain stories become kind of like almost universally read landmarks leaving their imprint across whole categories, with everyone so familiar with the characters they almost become archetypes among the readers. What are other stories like that? Maybe A Blizzard and the Night of Firsts.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'd argue a good story can't, or at least usually isn't, about bad characters. I'm using "bad" as in how they're formed, where I think you're talking about in a moral context. Your examples are all about awful people, but not badly formed characters.

I agree with this in theory, but in practice there are many readers in this category who make no distinction between these two types of bad characters. They will NEVER accept certain types of characters who do things they don't like, no matter how well those characters are drawn. These kinds of readers indicate that they don't accept the possibility that such characters CAN be well drawn.

There are readers who pretty much admit they'll always downvote a cuck story or a story where the wife has extramarital sex and gets away with it. That's the sort of reader I have a quibble with--not with a reader who conscientiously reads the story and decides that the story is lacking on its own terms.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I've gotta check out this February Sucks. It's interesting how certain stories become kind of like almost universally read landmarks leaving their imprint across whole categories, with everyone so familiar with the characters they almost become archetypes among the readers. What are other stories like that? Maybe A Blizzard and the Night of Firsts.

Within LW, February Sucks is at the head of the pantheon, but Another Love by RichardGerald is almost as madness-inducing for a lot of folks (and I'd argue for better reason, possibly) , and Kalimaxos's Just Once... If You Don't Mind? is another one, specifically because it was designed for other writers to finish the story... but also because I've never seen a single reconciliation story that sprung from it be what I'd consider successful. These three stories together have probably spawned more sequels, continuations, alternate takes, and discussion than any other twenty stories in LW combined.

If you want to really understand a lot about LW, I'd also recommend both of bruce1971's essays; he's a good author in his own right, but his analysis of the tropes of that category are really excellent.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I agree with this in theory, but in practice there are many readers in this category who make no distinction between these two types of bad characters. They will NEVER accept certain types of characters who do things they don't like, no matter how well those characters are drawn. These kinds of readers indicate that they don't accept the possibility that such characters CAN be well drawn.

There are readers who pretty much admit they'll always downvote a cuck story or a story where the wife has extramarital sex and gets away with it. That's the sort of reader I have a quibble with--not with a reader who conscientiously reads the story and decides that the story is lacking on its own terms.

Oh sure, that's absolutely true. But I'm not one of them; I write stories about people that I know will be unpopular, even as I try to give their motivation and sometimes make them sympathetic. In most cases, I'd like to believe I do. I can even see ways to make this character more appealing int hat sense, but it didn't happen, which is way more frustrating to me than a paper-thin characterization of a paper-thin character.

And I'll go one farther: I wrote a cuck story that was specifically built to make readers think about why the characters do what they do, and while it's still my lowest-rated story, it's within spitting distance of 4 stars in LW, something I've rarely seen another cuck story do there. I also got comments from some of the most cuck-hating folks there that said, "Huh. This made me think. I still hate cuck stories, but I liked this one, and I at least kind of get it now." So there is space for a well-told story there, even if, as you said, some people will always downvote cuck stories no mater what.

 

[Lifestyle66]

This dialog honestly reminds me of the discussion around February Sucks, and for a lot of the same reasons. The author, through the first person POV of the husband, keeps telling us how Linda (the wife in the story) is a wonderful person who just made a mistake/bad choice. But literally almost nothing about the character as she's revealed to the reader backs that up, to the point where she's, in my estimation. the single most hated character amongst the readership of LW stories. And because it's a first person POV, that makes the reader dislike the husband, too, because we just want to shake him and yell, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you defending her? Why are you even putting up with her?"

I must agree the "February Sucks" scenario went overboard in how she treated her husband.

It's one thing for a wife to lust after some guy, whether it's an actor in a movie or even a real local personality. But to duck out of date night with her husband to run off with another guy is over-the-top cruel and oblivious. She left her husband in the nightclub!

Now, if the other guy had given her a card and number, saying "call me", then had a fling ... that would be a somewhat different story.

I felt the same way with the story "Just Once, If You Don't Mind", when the wife conspired to have a six-week fling and left her husband. The way she did it was a deliberate slap in the face, because she spent so much time planning it and treating him like a dog. I wrote my own version "Just Once ... Damaging Choices" with an ending (Choice of Epilogue #5) in which the two of them resorted to BDSM to "get even" with each other for their infidelities. I tried to come up with a method for the couple to get over their insecurities and anger, and find a way they could both restore their own dignity and remain together.

 

[Trionyx]

Whatever you do, don’t publish stories of open relationships or consensual polyamory in LW. The vile comments revolve around HER being a slut (not him, of course) and the relationship is doomed. I know monogamy is the basis for nearly all relationships and most people (myself included) can’t even imagine being in an open relationship. But some couples have long term success with polyamory and should you decide to write about them, as I have done, find another apt category.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Whatever you do, don’t publish stories of open relationships or consensual polyamory in LW. The vile comments revolve around HER being a slut (not him, of course) and the relationship is doomed. I know monogamy is the basis for nearly all relationships and most people (myself included) can’t even imagine being in an open relationship. But some couples have long term success with polyamory and should you decide to write about them, as I have done, find another apt category.

Heh. I nearly posted my my recent story in LW - it's about three different types of consensual non-monogamy. Well, OK, it's a filthy threesome.

I figured the amount of gay sex would freak out the LW audience too much. But otherwise, I might have given it a go just to reach a wider audience. Group Sex doesn't get that many readers.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Whatever you do, don’t publish stories of open relationships or consensual polyamory in LW. The vile comments revolve around HER being a slut (not him, of course) and the relationship is doomed. I know monogamy is the basis for nearly all relationships and most people (myself included) can’t even imagine being in an open relationship. But some couples have long term success with polyamory and should you decide to write about them, as I have done, find another apt category.

I agree that ratings in LW are generally 0.8 to 1.0 lower than similar stories in EC or GS. But I did surprisingly well with a 4.1 rating on my V-Day story "The Real Gift: Her Fantasy" in LW, and the rating was even in the upper 3's before the V-Day list came out.

I think I struck the right balance in that story, because the MMC discusses early in the story how much HE has been getting out of their swinging adventures, before he sets his wife up for her fantasy with two guys. Then at the end, they're discussing when the MMC will next get another FMF threesome.

I'll try to keep with this approach of describing (briefly) some past advantages the guy gets out of sharing to see if the score remains relatively better. The next chapter will have the wife encouraging her husband to go into another room (out of her sight) with a hot younger wife. But by the end of the story, I'll have the wife better accepting her "bi" leanings (she started in their lifestyle series adamant about being "straight").

 

[NoTalentHack]

I agree that ratings in LW are generally 0.8 to 1.0 lower than similar stories in EC or GS. But I did surprisingly well with a 4.1 rating on my V-Day story "The Real Gift: Her Fantasy" in LW, and the rating was even in the upper 3's before the V-Day list came out.

I think I struck the right balance in that story, because the MMC discusses early in the story how much HE has been getting out of their swinging adventures, before he sets his wife up for her fantasy with two guys. Then at the end, they're discussing when the MMC will next get another FMF threesome.

I'll try to keep with this approach of describing (briefly) some past advantages the guy gets out of sharing to see if the score remains relatively better. The next chapter will have the wife encouraging her husband to go into another room (out of her sight) with a hot younger wife. But by the end of the story, I'll have the wife better accepting her "bi" leanings (she started in their lifestyle series adamant about being "straight").

Yeah, this seems to be key. The guy has to get done thing tangible out of it (besides the wife’s happiness, i.e. it can’t seem cuck-y) for it to be acceptable in LW and, preferably, it has to be a mutual thing and not something he’s “forced” or “tricked” into.

There are other ways to swing it (sorry, not sorry), but that seems to be the easiest path forward.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Yeah, this seems to be key. The guy has to get done thing tangible out of it (besides the wife’s happiness, i.e. it can’t seem cuck-y) for it to be acceptable in LW and, preferably, it has to be a mutual thing and not something he’s “forced” or “tricked” into.

There are other ways to swing it (sorry, not sorry), but that seems to be the easiest path forward.

My "Lifestyle Ch. 15 - Keeping Score" which followed that V-Day story (which was out of sequence for that series) was about the guy recognizing his performance issues, and that his physical problems shouldn't stop her from having fun. (Note, he wasn't forced in this case.) And it's at 2.54.

So, that seems to be the evidence: If the wife is just having more fun than the husband, "she's a slut and he's the cuck" and it brings out the 1-bombers in force. But set him up as having at least as much fun as her, and it quiets some of the 1-bombers.

 

[other2other1]

Whatever you do, don’t publish stories of open relationships or consensual polyamory in LW. The vile comments revolve around HER being a slut (not him, of course) and the relationship is doomed. I know monogamy is the basis for nearly all relationships and most people (myself included) can’t even imagine being in an open relationship. But some couples have long term success with polyamory and should you decide to write about them, as I have done, find another apt category.

Or just make sure you have your expectations correct regarding ratings and comments. If authors are going to post something where the mob won’t like it, that shouldn’t stop the story being posted.

LW has the largest amount of comment, readers and negative feedback, even the really good stories get bed comments now and then because some people are jerks.

You take the time, effort and care to write something there will be people that like it and appreciate what you have done. If its not something readers and trolls should that stop you?

 

[other2other1]

*bad*

 

[Lifestyle66]

JimmyThePlunger just dropped "Liberation, For Him or Her, Part 3" in LW, and I'm disappointed.

It's a story outline that needs a lot of work (beside just the grammAr and punctuation.)

The author's using a swinger club as a means for the wife to build her husband's acceptance, by hooking him up with another woman for a good time (which he does get). But the author glossed over the timeline so quickly in this 2.7K word story that he's ignoring all emotional buildup and doubts. And the couple he hooks them up with in the swinger club is the shining example of what the husband probably hates and fears most in his own future with his wife (humiliation).

I'll find it interesting as a sample of this LW critique to watch the ratings on his series. Part 1, with his wife's infidelity and husband wanting her to stop is rated 2.87. Part 2, when he walks out on her is at 3.76. Now Part 3, with wife convincing the husband to try swinging is at 3.03, but I expect it to drop. However, the husband has the most fun at the end, so we'll see where the trolls go.

I'm not rating this one, because it's far too sparse and seems an incomplete story. It's almost a caricature of a swinger encounter.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's a story outline that needs a lot of work (beside just the grammAr and punctuation.)

You got that capital A key stuck on your typewriter again?

(Beside needs an "s", but no matter .)

 

[lc69hunter]

Many of the comments in this thread pretty well match the feelings and comments (though with a better vocabulary and thought process) of the comments in LW. (and, a higher level of comments about "cuck shit") which even exists in here.

 

[djrip]

Within LW, February Sucks is at the head of the pantheon, but Another Love by RichardGerald is almost as madness-inducing for a lot of folks (and I'd argue for better reason, possibly) , and Kalimaxos's Just Once... If You Don't Mind? is another one, specifically because it was designed for other writers to finish the story... but also because I've never seen a single reconciliation story that sprung from it be what I'd consider successful. These three stories together have probably spawned more sequels, continuations, alternate takes, and discussion than any other twenty stories in LW combined.

If you want to really understand a lot about LW, I'd also recommend both of bruce1971's essays; he's a good author in his own right, but his analysis of the tropes of that category are really excellent.

Maybe I'm crazy; I kinda liked it. Maybe I've just gotten used to more extreme stories, but I kept expecting her to meet up with asshole again and then decide she needed to fuck him regularly and be like well this is just how it's going to be and you need to accept it for the kids, or something like that. So when it didn't go that way and then he had his little taste of the same thing and she got a little taste of what he was feeling I kind of enjoyed it. I mean her action was so over the top publicly cruel that in real life she would be a psychopath if she did that and reconciliation would be unlikely. But for the story I just read it as 'cheating, but sensationalized a bit for a story.' and the growth at the end - 'oh, being set aside for another *does* hurt,' is also underwhelming in a real life context but for characters in a story it was kind of nice to see her finally incorporate that late realization.

The essays were interesting too! I'll have to check out Sessions next...

 

[NoTalentHack]

Maybe I'm crazy; I kinda liked it. Maybe I've just gotten used to more extreme stories, but I kept expecting her to meet up with asshole again and then decide she needed to fuck him regularly and be like well this is just how it's going to be and you need to accept it for the kids, or something like that. So when it didn't go that way and then he had his little taste of the same thing and she got a little taste of what he was feeling I kind of enjoyed it. I mean her action was so over the top publicly cruel that in real life she would be a psychopath if she did that and reconciliation would be unlikely. But for the story I just read it as 'cheating, but sensationalized a bit for a story.' and the growth at the end - 'oh, being set aside for another *does* hurt,' is also underwhelming in a real life context but for characters in a story it was kind of nice to see her finally incorporate that late realization.

The essays were interesting too! I'll have to check out Sessions next...

Not to toot my own horn, but I've been told it's the only ending that actually makes sense of everything that happened, instead of branching off and saying "okay, everything before this didn't happen." I did everything I could to not eliminate anything from the previous story; one note, however, that I failed to leave at the beginning of editing it, is that I treat the original February Sucks as Jim telling his therapist what happened for the first three sessions of his therapy, and then the main part of Sessions kicks in. I think it's apparent in the text, but just in case. I hope you enjoy it!

 

[djrip]

I must agree the "February Sucks" scenario went overboard in how she treated her husband.

It's one thing for a wife to lust after some guy, whether it's an actor in a movie or even a real local personality. But to duck out of date night with her husband to run off with another guy is over-the-top cruel and oblivious. She left her husband in the nightclub!

Now, if the other guy had given her a card and number, saying "call me", then had a fling ... that would be a somewhat different story.

I felt the same way with the story "Just Once, If You Don't Mind", when the wife conspired to have a six-week fling and left her husband. The way she did it was a deliberate slap in the face, because she spent so much time planning it and treating him like a dog. I wrote my own version "Just Once ... Damaging Choices" with an ending (Choice of Epilogue #5) in which the two of them resorted to BDSM to "get even" with each other for their infidelities. I tried to come up with a method for the couple to get over their insecurities and anger, and find a way they could both restore their own dignity and remain together.

Well that one (just once) was kind of fun. Both of these stories have been situations where, maybe, something could have been agreed to if the characters talked, or maybe something could have been salvaged if the cheating was handled differently, but the cheaters were both just so awful about the specifics it becomes much harder to imagine a reconciliation. The public humiliation and leaving on their special night, in the other one, and the gone with no goodbye, one sided preplanned infidelity, no communication, letter to be read in front of the neighbor business in this... It's all so much worse than an affair. That said I pick your 5th ending and, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was the only one you were serious about. The rest seemed like spoofs of various types of endings to me.

 

[djrip]

Not to toot my own horn, but I've been told it's the only ending that actually makes sense of everything that happened, instead of branching off and saying "okay, everything before this didn't happen." I did everything I could to not eliminate anything from the previous story; one note, however, that I failed to leave at the beginning of editing it, is that I treat the original February Sucks as Jim telling his therapist what happened for the first three sessions of his therapy, and then the main part of Sessions kicks in. I think it's apparent in the text, but just in case. I hope you enjoy it!

I really did! I said before that Linda's actions would make her a psychopath in RL but I accepted in the story that it was just kind of 'larger than life cheating,' and then I kind of liked her realizing she hurt her husband but I said the realization was underwhelming in a RL context. Well your ending was that real life context that made it all so clearly beyond the pale. Your ending was like, no, this isn't some cartoon, think about all of this like it's absolutely real, and tell me if it's alright then. And of course it's not.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Well that one (just once) was kind of fun. Both of these stories have been situations where, maybe, something could have been agreed to if the characters talked, or maybe something could have been salvaged if the cheating was handled differently, but the cheaters were both just so awful about the specifics it becomes much harder to imagine a reconciliation. The public humiliation and leaving on their special night, in the other one, and the gone with no goodbye, one sided preplanned infidelity, no communication, letter to be read in front of the neighbor business in this... It's all so much worse than an affair. That said I pick your 5th ending and, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was the only one you were serious about. The rest seemed like spoofs of various types of endings to me.

Yes, in my story "Just Once ... Damaging Choices", I preferred the fifth ending with the implied six weeks of BDSM.

It seemed like an appropriate response, when they both had anger issues with infidelity. So, I thought: "Why not let them beat it out of each other to get it out of their system?" I had the husband reflect on his own transgression by saying he took his turn wearing the collar, too. Thus, they could reconcile without compromise, and start all over in a new relationship. (But it's still a turn off for the monogamy-only crowd.)

With all this discussion of infidelity, LW, and those three stories (February Sucks, Just Once, and Liberation) handling it differently, I've decided to try writing such a scenario in my Lifestyle series. I think I'll use it to "discuss" some issues with trying to use swinging to fix a troubled marriage. And I won't be FOR trying that. IMO, it can't work.