You open your phone to see a text from an unknown number. In the message is a video of your beloved wife riding a mystery man, shot POV-style. Are you angry? Of course not — if you switch over to your messages with your wife, there’s a long exchange between the two of you where she talks about meeting a guy at a bar, with you encouraging her to go to his place. Soon after receiving the video, she texts you about how she can’t wait to get home for you to get your turn. While you wait, you giddily share this perfect example of your hotwife relationship to Reddit, where thousands of people will be soon served with an intimate snapshot of this part of your life.
On subreddits like r/hotwifetexts, people post and seek screenshots that document cuck relationships like these. But rather than simply sharing porn on the topic, members specifically want to see the text messages that shape these dynamics as they unfold in real life. The fetish here is twofold — it’s both the topic of conversation and the voyeuristic thrill of peering into someone else’s relationship.
r/HotWifeTexts, which has more than 161,000 members, is one of the main venues for this type of erotica (though cuck texts can also be found on other hotwife/cuckold subreddits, old Tumblr accounts like TextMessageMan, Imgur and Pornhub). Devoted exclusively to screenshots of text messages between a cuck and his hotwife — or between a hotwife and her bull — the subreddit mostly offers verbal content, but the texts often include nudes or Snapchat images, too. That said, actual porn is prohibited. It’s the context of a sex act that matters most here, not just the actual act itself.
There are six categories of posts in the sub: Cheating, hotwife, cuckold and “fantasy” versions of all three. Those tagged “fantasy” are intended to be understood as fictional, while untagged posts are meant to be interpreted as real. It’s unclear whether everyone involved in the “real” text messages consents to being shared on the subreddit, and there’s no rule asking posters to prove consent, either.
The tags are meant to separate fantasy from reality, but the posts are nearly indistinguishable — plenty of those labeled as real could be from porn, or otherwise fabricated for the sake of sharing them on the subreddit. Still, members of the group seem to have little preference either way, so long as it looks like an honest text message exchange. Popular posts include Snapchats of women performing blow jobs allegedly sent to boyfriends by the person receiving the blowjob, or screenshots between a woman and a guy she’s excited to sleep with, sent to her husband to make him jealous.
One of the most upvoted posts is a text exchange between a hotwife and her husband. Over eight screenshots, we see her showing off her gym outfit in a selfie to her husband, then explaining how she began flirting with a personal trainer who wants to take her home. She ends up sleeping with the man and sending several photos and videos to her husband, who’s clearly enjoying the entire process. Though we see the text messages from the perspective of the husband, the wife claims to be the one sharing the screenshots through a mutual Reddit account called u/youngcouple4fun, which has since been suspended from the site.
Although the post involves a combination of photos and dialogue we could piece together as a familiar pornographic story, the eroticism doesn’t hinge upon the inclusion of visuals like most porn does. In fact, the interaction between husband and wife could be read the same if no photos were included at all. Instead, what makes it appealing to readers is the back-and-forth between the couple — her excitement at the possibility of fucking this trainer, the anticipation of it happening and her husband being looped in throughout.
Whether fictional or not, we’re witnessing a “private” communication about a complex sexual dynamic, without much sex being involved. To that end, we’re basically the ones being cucked, too. Whenever sex is actually shared in the subreddit, like in a faux Snapchat of a woman bent over for someone who isn’t her partner, we’re always reminded that we’re not the one experiencing this — and never will be. And yet, through the text message format, we witness the trust and understanding among the people involved, as well as the sensitivity and mutual desire the relationship style requires. As such, we ultimately feel much closer to the action than we would with a simple photo or video of two people fucking.
Another essential part of the fantasy is the idea that we’re viewing an intimate exchange through our phones, communicating in the same way that most of us do every day. It’s so perfectly mundane that it’s believable, and therefore, relatable. But it also points to the extent to which we’ve become absorbed by our phones. It’s not enough that fetishists are presented with the narrative of a cuckold dynamic in the form of a written story, video or photos. Instead, the texting component is integral to the horniness of it all — it makes a fantasy scenario like cucking feel accessible.
Though, whether it’s accessible to you might be a whole different story.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
