Is Stephanie a Slut... or When is a One Night Stand Ok?

It's hard enough negotiating the world of dating, but writing about it some years after being in the arena so to speak isn't any easier!

When I conjured up Stephanie Beauman of Embedded, Expose and Exclusive I was vaguely modelling her on the heroines of the Black Lace novels that had kept me company in between partners. This publishing company isn’t producing erotica any more, but was based in the UK and had feisty out there heroines both historical and contemporary. Many of the “rules” were followed (no children, no incest) but some did have bodily functions (didn’t do it for me) and while there was always a hero she ended up with, the hero wasn’t necessarily all that good and noble and the heroines had a good dose of lust and took no prisoners- meaning sometimes sex with someone other than the hero.

This is not allowed in current US erotica publishing houses by and large, and Stephanie only just got away with her enthusiasm for sex and the opposite sex because she wasn’t in a relationship and once she was (the end of the book) she was ‘faithful’.

So in real life?

There seems to be some doubt for some time in many cases as to whether one is in a relationship. Stephanie wasn’t going to ring the bar tender back in New York to check when she got the offer from Matt in the first class lounge…but she takes up with the Handy man and it is starting to look like a relationship…

Certainly there have been some reviews that thought she was too promiscuous, and those that liked it also often found her well male attitude to sex a little much. Yet we accept this from men… average life time sex partners for women is 8-11 (some twitters or is that tweets suggested this discovery coincided with them discovering they were sluts…) but the estimate for men starts at 16. God knows how many Hugh Heffernan has had (okay I accept he isn’t your average guy). My gay (male) friend lost count after 1000 (he has been in two long term loving relationships and the attitude to ‘unfaithfulness’ seems to be a little different. In heterosexual relationships we women seem to be there to put a brake on).

My attitude was this is fiction and meant to be fantasy. A bit of healthy safe sex where no one gets hurt and there’s a mutual bolster of feeling attractive…what’s not to like?

Go for it Stephanie… okay by the end she’s living happily ever after (monogamously) but it was fun getting there…