We have consolidated our guidelines! This guidance applies to stories/posts and comments. We hope that we have made our policies clear, but if you have any questions, please let us know by contacting us at contact@marriageheat.com. You can also check out our FAQ.

Focus

MarriageHeat exists to help build and support a culture of hot biblical monogamy. We ask that all maintain a Christ-centered mindset because MarriageHeat is a mission field. We want to show the love of Christ through all we share, and MH is an opportunity to broaden the depth and breadth of understanding of how a holy, exclusive, Christ-centered marriage can look.

Above all, give glory to God. As spouses, we are blessed by Him to have each other to share the purity of the marriage bed. He created sex! He made all the nerve endings, pleasure centers, and biochemical cascades along with the ability to recognize and stimulate them. He gave us language, our imaginations, and creativity to keep things fresh and interesting. Keep that in mind as you are writing and responding. Let’s be sure that those who read know who we thank for it all and that we remain obedient—not just because He knows best, but because we love Him!

Manners

MarriageHeat is a community. We are all real people, and whether our stories are real or fictional, we submit them with the intent to encourage and uphold hot biblical monogamy within a God-honoring marriage relationship. All communications between users of this site will be conducted with respect for each other and maintain proper boundaries.

Also, please refrain from asking about the appearance of other members or boasting about the physical characteristics of your spouse or yourself. If one’s proportions are relevant to the story or advice, we get it. But we are here to encourage one another, not create a comparative atmosphere. Whether younger or older, big-boned or petite, tall or short, curvy or willowy, more or less well-endowed, we want all to embrace the body God has given them and enjoy the one He gave their spouse. We also want to avoid crossing into conversational areas that may be inappropriate.

When responding in comments, don’t take disagreement personally or attack the character of others. State your opinion and respect that others may hold a different one. Don’t politicize issues and do try to take other people’s points of view into consideration, rebutting points gently if you feel it is warranted at all. Build each other up in love.

NOTE: Before submitting comments or posts, please re-read and understand our Terms of Service. You will have to confirm that you have read them both and understand them before you can create an account. Only registered users may comment or submit posts.

Usernames and Online Safety

We will keep most stories and their comments available to the general public, with some premium content set aside for our supporting members. But to comment on stories or submit your own, you’ll need to register for a free account. We do not ask for your name, just a username of your choosing, keeping in mind the nature and mission of our site and its audience, and an email address to which you have access. Once chosen, the username can’t be changed, even by us. Please do not use your email address as your username and don’t give it out in comments. It just isn’t a safe thing to do. We won’t distribute or share it either. Free accounts with no stories posted and no sign-in activity for six months may be deleted to save server space, but feel free to sign up again when you have something to share. (Note that such deletions will not affect any comments you’ve previously submitted.)

Comments

Comment lengths may vary, but please be as concise as possible. We understand that responses to requests for advice will need more detail than a simple appreciation for an author’s work. But if you have a tale to tell, give us a hint then share all the juicy details in a story that can get the attention it deserves. It doesn’t take much to get to 300 words.

New (11/6/2021) Comments should not evolve into a back and forth one-on-one chat. Instead, they should relate directly to the original content, for instance as commentary on the post or relating a (short) similar incident or desire. Also, please don’t post the exact same comment on multiple posts. It’s spammy. At our discretion, we will edit or decline to publish comments that do not support our mission.

New (11/12/2022) Comments by the author of a post should not add to the story published. This has the effect of bypassing our approval and editorial process since authors’ comments auto-publish.

Submission Process

When you click on Start a New Story, a submission panel will open that allows you to type or paste in your content, give it a title, and choose up to two categories you feel are appropriate. You then have two options: save the project as a draft if you wish to continue your work on it later or submit it for approval. You can access drafts from your My Account page. (We strongly recommend that you do all your creative work on your own word-processing program and only paste your finished copy to the site to submit. We’d hate for something you worked so hard on to be lost to some technical glitch.)

If you are interested in suggesting a photo for your story’s illustration, you can do so as described below.

Once submitted, your story waits in the pending file for an administrator to approve and schedule it. If it is not approved, we usually return it to draft status with a notice that it didn’t meet the guidelines. If accepted and assigned a date for intended publication, an editor will make grammatical, stylistic, and any other changes deemed appropriate. Understand that we assume full editorial control of the story in the interest of meeting the mission of our site. The actual date of publication may change, but usually only by a few days.

After your story is published, be sure to check for comments. Sometimes it takes a day or two before people visit and catch up on the stories, so you may have comments coming in for a week or more. Currently, we don’t have a mechanism in place to send authors an email notification when someone comments on a story of theirs. We do hope to remedy that in the future.

Monogamy

Stories and comments you submit may only involve sexual escapades between one married heterosexual couple. Feel free to share or discuss how you handled the dating/engagement period or any challenges to your monogamous relationship, but we won’t publish stories describing premarital or extramarital sex. We don’t mean that stories must be restricted to two characters, only that all sexuality be exclusive to the married couple. Stories with intertwining character arcs that meet these requirements are fine, but no affairs, wife swapping, swinging, threesomes or other group sex, even if restricting full intercourse to the married couple. The exception to this rule would be testimonies involving a return to godly obedience from such scenarios. But they must not glorify the sin, only explain the situation and its consequences.

Another related issue is that of enjoying the knowledge of another person’s or couple’s sexual activity. We don’t publish stories about planned encounters of this nature. But hearing the people in the next hotel room or seeing a couple in the camping space beside yours and being inspired by their example to seek or fantasize about your own marriage heat would probably be acceptable.

Length

Posts (except advice needed – see below) should be at least 300 words. We may consider stories of 2000 words or more for publication as premium content. If accepted, they will help incentivize support of the site by becoming part of our members-only area. We will also allow serial stories, as long as they stand alone as a complete tale (beginning, middle, end). Creating your own fictional characters and “universe” through which you follow their antics is acceptable, too. Stories on a theme — for example, the  “Sex Outside the Home” series — also create a form of series.

Advice

We welcome requests for advice. Just submit them as a story and ignore the length requirements; the length of the comments you receive will balance it out. But please don’t degrade your spouse in any way. Sharing struggles and seeking perspective or support is encouraged, but putting down a spouse is not acceptable. We are all real people who fall short and pointing that out about another person in a public forum is unfair.

When responding to advice requests in the comments, please be considerate and humble. Try not to come across as if you know it all. Instead, just offer the benefit of your experience, study, and insight. Refrain from arguing with those whose advice differs from yours.

If you would like to submit a longer editorial-style piece to impart your wisdom and experience, the story guidelines above also apply. And if you have particular credentials that you want to share, feel free. But, readers, be aware that we have no way of verifying such claims.

Ratings:

We encourage sex-positive communication in posts and comments but be mindful of tone, how to share, how much to share, and what may be comfortable to a wide readership. We want posts and comments to be authentic and expressive, and to broaden the mindset of readers but also take into consideration the audience.

Commenters, please keep language appropriate to the rating of the story you are commenting on, and ensure any details of your response focus on you and/or your spouse. Comments also will be edited as necessary to conform to guidelines and ratings or rejected.

Language (L)

Stories that include the use of cursing (in the sense of speaking ill of someone or using words of a sexual nature in a non-sexual context) will be either edited to tone them down or rejected outright. Sexual words used in a sexual context or expletives expressing extreme pleasure will not generally be edited out, but those stories we will label with an (L) after the title for the benefit of those who would prefer not to read them.

Anal (A)

We will mark stories that involve anal play and/or penetration of either marriage partner with an (A) for the same reason given above. Please remember to mention precautions taken for safety and comfort, for the sake of those who might be considering following your example.

Fantasy (F)

MarriageHeat believes in the sanctity of the marriage bed. But we also recognize the safety in marriage to share and explore fantasies that we would never seek to carry out in real life. Talking through or writing down those fantasies to share with our spouses is one way to explore them, as is role-play. MarriageHeat has been known to publish stories involving either, but we will mark such stories with an (F) for those wishing to avoid them. This policy is a new one; you may find stories of this nature published before 1 June 2019 without such warning. We also have the following guidelines specific to that type of fantasy.

Be clear in your narrative that you are playacting with your real spouse. Stories must involve only one married couple, even if you are pretending not to be married or even know each other. Keep in mind that the mission of MarriageHeat is to encourage Hot Biblical Monogamy, so we will edit or decline to publish stories that we feel don’t support that goal. For example, fantasies in which the turn-on is for *others* to believe you are not married probably would not be accepted.

If a fantasy involves using toys to simulate the sensation of more than one partner, keep it to descriptions of the activity and conversation rather than writing it out as a fantasy. Example here. Understand that stories of this type will be infrequently published. We want to keep the content relevant to the broadest audience possible while acknowledging the trust and vulnerability required for spouses to open up about and accept each other’s private turn-ons.

There is also the possibility that when the two of you discuss a particular fantasy, you will decide that it is permissible within the guidance that the Bible gives for marriage. Sharing the story of fulfilling that fantasy together in love and with respect for others is acceptable to MH, provided it meets all the other guidelines, including that of exclusivity.

BDSM and Kink

Dominant/submissive roles, bondage and pleasure-pain play in marriage are real turn-ons for some and acceptable for publication on MH. Safe, sane, consensual, and loving are the bywords.

Though we have not instituted a rating for stories involving BDSM or kink, we do have a category tag that shows up on the byline of the stories. That’s your early warning system if you wish to avoid reading them.

We will not publish stories that contain language that we believe involves even a fantasy of degradation, physical harm, under-age sex, or incest. That said, we don’t consider pet names such as “Daddy” or “Baby Girl” alone to imply such. Context and our interpretation will guide whether they are allowed or not. We won’t try to tell you what terms are right and wrong in your private conversations, only what is fitting for our mission. Again, as in all of Christian life, the guiding principle is mutual love.

Images

MarriageHeat usually assigns an image to each story that we hope supports and gives a teaser of the content.  We buy a license from public stock companies that allows us to use these pictures on our website legally. One such company is Shutterstock.

If you would like to suggest a photo for your story, you can go to Shutterstock.com and search for an image that meets your preferences. There is no need to create an account there to explore. For more risque offerings, you might consider turning off Safe Search in the left-hand menu. When you find one you like, click it to go to the download page for that image. Then paste the URL from that page at the top of your submission. (If your story is already in the queue for publication, you can paste it into a message to us at contact@marriageheat.com ) Feel free to give us more than one option; in fact, it would be helpful! We can then open the link from our account and get the rights to publish.  However, we can’t guarantee that your preferred image will be selected. For more detailed instructions, you can visit this post.

We will not publish images that do more than suggest sexual acts nor that show the genitals or anus. Full nudity is permitted on occasion with strategic arrangement/placement of body parts to obscure the genitals, but we prefer more evocative and less explicit art.

We do not at this time have a mechanism for turning off images. If you have convictions against seeing nude or suggestive pictures, it might be best if you avoided visiting our site. We do hope to make images optional in the future for those who would prefer they not be included. You can also use a search engine to look for instructions for turning off images for your browser or specific websites. (e.g. https://kb.iu.edu/d/acpv — dated, but close to accurate for Google Chrome on a computer.)

We appreciate hearing about websites and products that have helped you, but please describe them without linking to them. Only our administrators will post links to outside websites at our discretion. You may, of course, include links to previously published MH stories that have a bearing on yours, such as prequels or ones that inspired you.

Biographical Information (Author Page)

After the publication of your first story or post, an Author Page appears on your account. By default, this page will only contain a mention of how many stories you have contributed to date and a linked list of them. If you wish to give more in-depth biographical information on this page, you may submit the desired information by contact form or email it to contact@marriageheat.com. We cannot vouch for the truth of any such information provided, but ask you only to share information about which you feel comfortable being honest. If you believe you need falsehoods to hide your identity, you would be better served by not sharing details at all. Under no circumstances will contact information be allowed on Author Bios.

We’d also like to make you aware that your username will appear in the URL for your Author Page. So if you have previously asked for a different display name than your username, you may wish to request the closure of your account and then create a new one before submitting stories or posts, as we cannot change usernames.

Originality

Posts you submit must be your own original work and not previously published. By submitting them, you exclusively and irrevocably convey to us all publication rights, as detailed in Section 9 of our Terms of Service.

Questions?

Check out our FAQ. If your query remains unanswered, you can email us at contact@marriageheat.com. We’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.