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The wildly popular fiction genre allows readers to talk openly about yearning, sex and desire. And it’s spilling over into their bedrooms.
Brittani Morton was 21 when she met her husband. That’s pretty young to meet your life partner, she said, but they got pregnant soon after and committed to making it work.
In many ways, the couple was happy. Ms. Morton loved her husband deeply and reliably orgasmed whenever they had sex, she said, but she still felt like something was missing.
“In my 20s, I wanted to be a good wife and a good mother and a well-respected woman,” said Ms. Morton, now 38. “Internally, that didn’t really line up with my natural curiosities and fiery sense of self.”
By the time she and her husband were in their 30s, parenting three children, she said intimacy “felt like a chore.”
Then, about four years ago, Ms. Morton’s Audible algorithm recommended a romantasy book — an erotic retelling of the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone. She inhaled it, blushing much of the time.
“I immediately texted my husband and was like, ‘Um, I think I’m reading the first smut book I’ve ever read,’” said Ms. Morton, who runs a children’s boutique in Portland, Ore.