Sometimes it’s the “little things” that make me the happiest in my relationship with my husband.  Just this past 24 hours he’s done two things that were so small, yet gave me such a thrill.First of all, after I got home from running errands this morning and walked into the bedroom, I realized that he’d made the bed—complete with the pillows all lined up.  I’m not a huge bed-making fanantic (and there’s something rather sexy about seeing the sheets all in disarray when you remember the roll in the sheets that produced that mess), but I do love the way our bed looks when it’s all put together.

The second thing was just a short little backscratch last night.  I _love_ it when DH scratches my back and even though we were both super-tired he was thoughtful enough to leave me with that before we went to sleep.

Sure I love the grandiose lovey-dovey gestures, too.  But sometimes those little things are what really tug at my heartstrings the most.

Does your spouse ever to those special “little things” for you?

All about the ’nacle and General Conference are stories and opinions and exhortations re pr0n, both pro and con and undecided. Recently, Letters From A Broad had a lively discussion concerning the feminist take on pr0n, which ranges as wide a gamut as the opinions amongst the various factions of LDSdom. However varied the opinions, all seem to agree that the overriding purpose of pr0n is to arouse.

Nowhere, however, have I seen a discussion of genre romance, erotic fiction, or erotica as agents provocateur of arousal. This is most likely because I’m the new kid on the ’nacle block and have just missed it, but even in the lengthy discussions of sex, masturbation, pr0n, and various and sundry other sub-topics of sex, I’ve not seen it mentioned. ’Tis a puzzlement.

Amongst other things, I write genre romance with an edge. The edge isn’t sex; the edge is previously unexplored themes in genre romance like, oh, the juxtaposition of spirituality and sexuality while still heavy on external conflict. This earns no brownie points with agents and acquisitions editors. (The cry, “But we don’t know where to shelve it!” is still ringing in my head, even after a year.)

I don’t write erotic fiction, which is different from romance in that its sole purpose is to arouse yet has emotional content, but very little plot and more often than not, I’ll choose a story that promises a weighty external conflict. It is also different from erotica in that the sex in erotic fiction serves a purpose within the story but isn’t the story. I do occasionally write straight erotica in small doses, but, quite frankly, disemboweled sex (i.e., without an emotional connection) doesn’t really do anything for me. Kinda like looking at pictures of nekkid peoples doesn’t really turn me on although I’m a visual learner.

While my husband teases me about my pr0n, I don’t really know how to draw any lines between genre romance where the sexual content is anything from kiss-and-fade-to-black to take-a-cold-shower-graphic, erotic fiction, and erotica—because it’s all meant to arouse. It may arouse me more easily simply because I’m 40 and therefore have the libido of a 17-year-old boy, but with regard to romance and some erotic fiction (occasionally dubbed Romantica™), the aim is to arouse through the conduit of emotional connection and love.

Regardless my comments on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight here and elsewhere, it’s an erotic tale. All the subtext is there, naturally, but without having to read in between any lines whatsoever, the scenes between Edward and Bella wherein he doesn’t kiss her, but sniffs at her neck, are hawt. It’s all in the execution. Eugene Woodbury’s upcoming novel, Angel Falling Softly had me catching my breath in a few places, too, though his sex scenes are simply elegant.

It did occur to me that perhaps the written word not otherwise slapped with the label “Penthouse Forum” is seen as literature, which is an art form. I mean, do you read a 350-plus-page novel for the sex? I think not. You read it for the story; it just takes too much work and a rather lot of brainpower to read one of these things and doing it for the sex is counterproductive. There is effort involved, the reader’s effort, the contract between author and reader—

—but it’s arousing and that’s one of its purposes.

So by that definition and within the context of the never-ending exhortations by Teh Brethren to avoid that which arouses the natural man, is it pr0n?

Discuss.

This is a guest post from a reader named Sartre

Mormons come from a conflicted subculture when it comes to sex. Young women, and to a lesser extent, young men, are counseled, with good reason, to abstain, but in a less than positive fashion, “no no no.” Yet pre-Manisfesto, Mormons enjoyed anything but a Victorian mindset toward sex. So we’re a paradox. We come from a culture of polygamists, yet now form the most modern day Victorians.

What does that mean? It might be we do a good job keeping marriage counselors busy with our messed up relationships, but that’s not the point. What’s the philosophy of sex according real life Mormons?

Do Mormon men get what it takes to romance our women? Are our women interested enough in that aspect of relationships to make it hot and wild? Or do our women prefer the Victorian attitude, “yes love making sucks, but do it for England, darling”?