Steamy romance novels — once purchased stealthily in supermarket checkout lanes — are having a renaissance of sorts. And women are reaping the benefits.
First, a bit of background: The genre has historically been regarded as a guilty pleasure, despite being one of the bestselling book categories, said Katie Shober, the woman behind the popular Beach Reads & Bubbly Instagram account.
Social media has helped remove some of the stigma around romance novels “by showing the world how many people are enthusiastically reading and loving these books,” Shober told HuffPost.
All of the buzz on TikTok’s BookTok and Instagram’s Bookstagram has broadened the popularity of romance and its many subgenres, like erotic-romance or smut and romantasy. These internet communities, big and small, have become places for female readers to unabashedly bond over their appreciation for the work of authors like Ana Huang, Tessa Bailey, Ali Hazelwood, Helen Hoang, Talia Hibbert, Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros and many others.
But what makes these books so appealing, particularly among female readers?
For one, they are largely written by women and/or queer authors, “thus they usually center female pleasure,” therapist and sexologist Nicoletta Heidegger, host of the “Sluts and Scholars” podcast, told HuffPost. Mainstream porn, on the other hand, is generally made “by and for the male gaze,” she said.
“It makes me feel giddy, like a lovestruck kid, which makes me feel more loving and lighthearted within my relationship too.”
– Jen, 27
Recently, more of these stories feature protagonists who are people of color, LGBTQ+ and folks with disabilities. While these groups are still underrepresented in the genre, it’s a positive step forward that has attracted a more diverse readership.
What’s more, spicy romance authors are skillful in the way they gradually build up attraction and excitement, helping readers “get into a mindset that is conducive to engaging in sex, either solo or with a partner, through their imaginations,” sex and dating coach Myisha Battle wrote for Time.
This is important for the many people (including women in long-term relationships) who tend to have responsive desire — meaning their desire for sex emerges in response to an erotic situation or context — as opposed to seemingly striking out of the blue (known as spontaneous desire).
Read on to learn some of the ways women say spicy romance novels have changed their relationships and sex lives for the better. (Note that last names have been omitted to protect their privacy.)
They offer a temporary escape from reality.
Katie, a woman in her late 30s living in the Midwest, dabbled in the romance genre while in college and graduate school but found her way back to it while going through a particularly dark time in her life several years ago, she told HuffPost.
“In 2019, I had a stillbirth and I read that ‘novel activities’ can help with grief. The article meant vacations, but I couldn’t afford a vacation so I started reading romance novels to put some cognitive distance between myself and the grief,” she said. Then the pandemic happened; reading romance gave her an escape from those stressors, too.
“By that time, romance and erotic fiction were a fairly solid coping skill that went a very long way to improving my mental health,” Katie said.
They can increase sex drive.
Simply put, these books are sexy. Katie found descriptions, activities and circumstances within these stories that turned her on, she said — even while navigating emotional challenges in her personal life.
“At a time when I was hormonally wrecked and struggling with my mental health, they dosed me with dopamine and oxytocin despite myself. I found myself giggling and blushing and reading passages out loud to my husband and he’d tease me back,” Katie said. “We’d flirt about it and eventually fall into sexual intimacy. Twenty years into a monogamous, committed relationship, it was very cool to find ourselves having a lot more sex than we did when we were 18.”
These steamy stories can “charge your arousal” and leave you “buzzing with erotic energy,” Heidegger said.
“This energy can be alchemized into so many things, including connection with a partner or creative pursuits,” she explained.
They can put you in a happier headspace.
Jen, a 27-year-old based in Madison, Wisconsin, told HuffPost that she was never one to have a lot of crushes or a “strong sense of sexuality.”
“Reading romance gave me the internal feeling of being attracted — physically and emotionally — to another being or character, which is something I really wanted to feel in real life when I was younger,” she told HuffPost.
When she reads romance, she’s brought back to the feeling of falling in love and the “passion and openness that comes with it” — like the early years of her relationship with her husband.
“It makes me feel giddy, like a lovestruck kid, which makes me feel more loving and lighthearted within my relationship too,” she added.
They can help reduce religious or cultural shame around sex.
Sarah, a 47-year-old woman in North Carolina, grew up in a purity culture where shame around sexuality and bodies is drilled into children’s minds at a young age, she said. Though she is “no longer a Christian,” these messages were “hard to shake,” she told HuffPost.
“While my husband and I had a good sex life, it wasn’t super adventurous, and I often still felt conflicted about things,” Sarah said.
“Reading not only revs my engine a bit — not always — but got me more comfortable with things like oral, role-play, sex toys and more. I think the biggest impact has been living these experiences through fiction and then an escape from the feeling of grossness and shame.”
They can help balance out a desire discrepancy.
Reading romance and erotica has helped “fill the desire gap” between Jen and her husband — as his libido is generally higher and her desire tends to be responsive in nature, she said.
“Using romance books gives me a sense of anticipation that I really need to build up desire so that I can show up intimately for my partner,” she told HuffPost. “I notice a huge difference in my openness to intimacy when I take a break from romance. I rarely think about sex ever without some sort of external stimulus or a very short hormone window.”
Reading romance gives her “more agency” in her sexual experiences, too, she said.
“In other words, romance novels make it so I’m not waiting for my partner to come onto me,” Jen said. “I’m actively stoking my own desire so that I can have more intimacy within my relationship.”
They can help improve body confidence.
Another unexpected upside of reading steamy romance: Finding body confidence as a “woman with a larger body,” Katie said. She’s had trouble shaking off the diet culture and body-shaming messages that were prevalent in her teen years during the early 2000s, she said.
“Even with a partner who spent decades assuring me he was attracted to me in all my forms, I hid myself in baggy clothes and turned the lights off during intimacy,” Katie said.
When she dove into the romance genre, Katie found books that featured men and women with larger bodies, she said.
“I don’t know what kind of research these authors did with partners of people with body diversity, but I read some passages about how softness and grab-able parts were a turn-on to my husband and he was like, ‘I’ve been telling you this for years,’” Katie said.
It was like a switch flipped, she added. She no longer felt a need to apologize for her appearance.
“I have my days, of course, but knowing that the most important person in my world finds all of my forms arousing lets me slough off some of the insecurity that caused me to limit my activities before,” Katie said.
They can broaden your sexual horizons.
Reading steamy stories can help you tap into sexual desires and fantasies you may not have explored. Katie discovered things she didn’t know she was interested in and also found “the comfort and security in my relationship to be able to ask for them.”
It’s not always kinky stuff either, she said.
“I read a book where the male main character would romantically kiss the female main character in surprising situations for no other reason than he felt love for her and wanted to kiss her,” Katie said. “I told my husband I missed surprise, toe-curling kisses. He immediately implemented a surprise kissing policy that continues to this day.”
Are there any drawbacks to reading romance novels?
Some women online have reported negative feelings after immersing themselves in these sexy, fictional worlds. One woman on Reddit said she occasionally feels “depressed about [her] boring married sex life” due to the “overwhelming amount of sex in these books.” Others say the men in these books have raised the bar so high, they worry a real partner could never satisfy them to the same degree.
“Book men are just more attentive and emotionally available [because] they are written by fellow women,” another wrote on Reddit.
Spicy romance novels could give some readers unrealistic expectations, Heidegger said, if they haven’t received “comprehensive sex and relationship education and think that these books are how relationships always look.”
Katie echoed a similar point: Some less mature readers — like younger teenagers, for example — “probably don’t have enough life experience to know what can realistically be expected from a relationship or a sexual encounter,” she said. “Frankly, I’m sure there are some adults who may not be mature enough to understand what of a romance novel is reasonable and healthy to expect in a real-life relationship and what isn’t.”
Reading these books might expose deficits in your current relationship. But that might also give you motivation to make some positive changes.
“If you are in a relationship with someone who is not willing to prioritize your pleasure, you may feel even more unfulfilled,” Heidegger said. “On the flip side, you may feel more deserving of a partner who actually is willing to work on things with you, so your standards and expectations of a partner may shift.”
“I don’t want to give the impression that reading romance cured my trauma or fixed my relationship. But it’s absolutely been a key contributor.”
– Katie, late 30s
Katie believes the potential downsides you sometimes hear about may be exaggerated.
“Overall I think the blanket negative and disparaging attitudes our society has toward romance as a genre — and smut or romantasy or whatever as subgenres — is largely because of sexism, religious bias and lack of actual research,” she said
Consuming these romantic, erotic plotlines could improve aspects of your marriage or sex life, but they’re not a panacea for all the problems you might face. For Katie, these novels been a “major cornerstone” of her self-care regimen, “not the entire foundation,” she said.
“I don’t want to give the impression that reading romance cured my trauma or fixed my relationship. But it’s absolutely been a key contributor, and I don’t think I’d be as happy and healthy today without it.”
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