Since you're asking these questions you must not be familiar with this genre and its subgenres. This is excellent, since it affords me the opportunity to lecture! Not that I require an opportunity, but it's nice to have one!
Erotica, as a literary category, is not necessarily categorized as romance. The Story of O, for example, or the Beauty novels. My Secret Life and other Victorian confessionals. Erotica can be highly erotic yet not contain a bit of romance.
Erotic romance is what you get when you have erotica that is as dependent upon the romantic element as it is upon the sexual element. You couldn't take away either without completely changing the work.
And romance - erotic or YA or any point in between - is a bit like knitting. It is done almost exclusively *by* women for the appreciation and enjoyment of an audience that is considered almost exclusively to also be made up of women. That doesn't mean that no men knit, nor does it mean that no men benefit from the existence of sweaters. Just means one can assume the knitting fandom is women crafting for the delight and appreciation of other women, and that any male approval garnered is unnecessary, though certainly not unappreciated, which any man who has ever immersed himself in knitting or romance fandom can attest, since he'll be popular and appreciated for even his most basic thoughts, much the way a dad can find himself lauded as a superhero if he changes diapers and spends any time at all with his kids.
And it is written to cater to women's fantasies. Women's fantasies are certainly broad and varied, and that which is considered acceptable or even desirable has certainly changed a lot since I began reading romance in junior high school. When I was 16, I regularly read about girls my own age being pursued by men 35 and up (in historicals, of course, and heinous Linda Howard category romances). However, I certainly never encountered any threesomes of *any* variety, and nary a hero displayed even a hint of appreciation of other men's attraction to them, much less took it as their due onaccounta being so hot, and my *god* certainly never expressed an attraction to other men, and M/M would never enter anyone's mind. Rape? Could happen. Not *commonly*, but certainly. Reconciling a couple after such a thing consisted of the man realizing that she was not, in fact, a gigantic cheating whore, and feeling bad because he was wrong about that. Not about the rape, but because he did it for the *wrong reasons*.
Nowadays, 20 year age differences are uncommon and you certainly do not find underage (for our times) girls engaged in such. No one would publish that, because no one would buy it, and the romance reading world is highly active online, and *everyone* would know to avoid it. However something else you didn't find in the 80s - 200 year age differences, for example - are quite popular! But we didn't have paranormals back then. Rape? The hoops that are jumped through to ensure that even in the most extreme scenarios *all participants are consenting* is sometimes oddly disconcerting. One of the most popular romances of the 80s - "Whitney, My Love" - was rewritten for re-release to *take out the rape*, and people have never stopped talking about the original, because browsing through one's bookshelves sometime during the 90s and going "holy fuck, Clayton RAPED WHITNEY!" is something of a touchstone event in most of our lives.
MFM (means the guys are straight) and MMF (means the guys are bi) is the *most popular* subgenre of erotic romance. One would think it was BDSM, but BDSM in *some* form is basically a given these days (which I find tiresome), and hardly counts. And very popular authors in mainstream romance often write erotic romance under different names, and now I'm seeing hints of bisexuality and threesomes bleeding over from that work into the mainstream work.
Aside: NA - Jennifer Ashley's latest, Cameron's book...I swear from that one set of supporting characters that she's getting ready for some Highland Shareem. Also, LotU, Strider's book? We already knew about Paris, but I was truly surprised to see Strider go all Hello, Nurse! over that archangel, no matter how weird he felt about it, which leads me to think that the follow-on series is Going to Go To There. This is appropriate since LotU is the most bromantic Supernatural Skittles series I've ever read. I'm just surprised it took them thousands of years to get to this point.
But to answer your question about *infidelity*, SM:
How large in women's fantasies do you think being *cheated on*, having another woman *chosen* over you, actually looms? Check back in a thousand years and I think you'll get the same answer. When one *does* see that storyline, it's going to be part of a complex backstory, and the book is going to be about reconciliation. That hardly counts as "trashy books with all of the infidelity." It takes a mature author to write that, and a mature reader to read it, and many mature readers still read to escape such things, so you still don't see that very often.
That leaves the woman as the only possible cheater. Female leads have to do a number of things. They have to not be boring, but also not so specific that they irritate the reader and interrupt her self-insertion, should she desire to read that way. They have to not be of any "type" that *enrages* women. This includes stupid women, Mean Girls, and guess what? Women who cheat on their own relationships or in someone else's. So, you don't find it there, either. No amount of inner monologuing, no amount of current-husband villainy, excuses it. No one wants to read active scenes of husbandly villainy anyway. Backstory sure, but suffering in the moment? Gah, no.
The emotional argument must make sense to a *female audience*. A woman is not fooled by another woman's excuses. I normally don't speak in extremes, like "never" and "always," but when I write these things, I'm not relying upon my (admittedly vast and comprehensive) reading experience but upon what actual editors at the actual publishing houses reject.
An argument that romance has to win is "Why these people? Why him for her? Why her for him?" Especially that latter. Why *her*? Do you see how a heroine that the female reader *dislikes* is going to destroy that argument? Hell, I don't like it IRL when men of any value whatsoever end up with women I dislike. I'm certainly not going to pay to *read* that.
Remember romance is about a *relationship*. It has to be emotionally satisfying. This no longer means it must have a HEA for all involved (though usually, it still does). But it means it has to make sense to one's understanding of human emotion and of the patterns and forms of, quite frankly, limerence. So some (like the Black Tar Heroin I mentioned upthread) may clearly, if one considers it, be infidelity waiting to happen. But it's simply not going to be part of the storyline.
Some may consider multiple partners involved in a romantic relationship to be cheating, and I can't help that. I don't. I consider consensual relationships of any configuration between any number of indisputably un-coerced adults to be perfectly above-board. One thing that makes this possible in romance - well, in books period - is that neither in film nor in life does one have access to the interiors of all involved. In books, all points of view are available. I can know, with absolute certainty, that everyone participating is on board. Otherwise it is not emotionally satisfying. It's vexing, and I have to worry about people. I don't think I've ever read a menarriage where you didn't have access to the inner monologue of all parties involved. There was one time I thought that's what was going on, but it turned out there weren't really five guys, just split-off aspects of one guy waiting to be re-integrated, which became obvious about 1/2 through.
So, in conclusion: no, not even in "erotica," where that erotica is supposed to be romantic.
I'm not really sure why anyone would assume that in order to have romance, there must be loads of infidelity, anyway. Especially on an infidelity site. A romance - like a marriage - can be very exciting and satisfying and fulfilling without anyone cheating on anyone else.
BTW, NA, on the subject of 20 year age differences. That is basically my biggest turn-off, but...really, "What I Did For a Duke"? I should not have rejected it out of hand. It is brilliant, and it could not be what it is *without* that age difference. RECOMMEND.
[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 1:40 PM, October 4th (Tuesday)]
