I think romance novels have their place as marital aids, and good ones even tell us something the authors believe to be true about relationships and communication, but if a story aspires to be more than a marital aid I prefer that the detailed descriptions stop with kissing or maybe even hand-touching. If the characters have concerns or regrets they can think or talk about them in the next scene.
Of course I know there are people who use marital aids for extramarital purposes. I also know that in the Internet there are people who search for "erotic" words and bombard sites where they find those words with nasty stuff. Even the porn's not the worst of it. Write about, say, knees and watch your computer fill up with images of disease conditions. I try to use even words like "hand" in compounds like "handwritten," to avoid attracting arthritis-related spam! The Internet has made some people whose language used to be quite salty into super-prudes.
I think romance novels have their place as marital aids, and good ones even tell us something the authors believe to be true about relationships and communication, but if a story aspires to be more than a marital aid I prefer that the detailed descriptions stop with kissing or maybe even hand-touching. If the characters have concerns or regrets they can think or talk about them in the next scene.
Of course I know there are people who use marital aids for extramarital purposes. I also know that in the Internet there are people who search for "erotic" words and bombard sites where they find those words with nasty stuff. Even the porn's not the worst of it. Write about, say, knees and watch your computer fill up with images of disease conditions. I try to use even words like "hand" in compounds like "handwritten," to avoid attracting arthritis-related spam! The Internet has made some people whose language used to be quite salty into super-prudes.