That declaration outraged many other participants. Pornography focuses on sex without love and sometimes with violence or degradation. Romance focuses on love and character growth. Few are surprised, though, that some men still feel threatened by women's interest in romances. Others reacting to Wakabayashi's compromise with her husband pointed out that a man who is against his wife reading romances might very well be shooting himself in the foot.
Research backs up the anecdotal evidence about romances' effects on the marriage bed.
But Stacey Helms, another conservative Christian at AAR, recoiled from that idea. I save up and center all my sexuality on him. I do not wish to become aroused in some other way and then run to him for satisfaction. Helms acknowledged that she also experienced a crisis of conscience about the books, and she repeatedly questioned why sexual activity had to be shown in romances at all. But romance authors say that imagining that scene is not the reader's job.