Why Isn’t Romantic Porn More Popular?

Happy Valentine’s Day! The day seems to bring about mixed feelings. Some people don’t care either way about the day. Others get frustrated by the amount of love-dovey stuff you can find yourself surrounded by. A number of people can’t wait for the chance to get romantic.

Why Isn't Romantic Porn More Popular

I tend to fall into the first category. Celebrating it isn’t ever something I’ve wanted to do, but I don’t get mad when people do. That said, I love the idea of romance. I’m the type to watch the most predictable movies on Netflix so I can enjoy a love story with a happy ending.

There have also been times when I’ll watch romantic porn. Recently, I’ve discovered that romantic porn isn’t actually as popular as I thought. Since today is Valentine’s Day, there doesn’t seem to be a better day to look at why.

What is romantic porn?

Trying to find a definition of romantic porn is difficult. As you might have guessed, putting the term into Google brings up tons of sites I can watch it on. That’s great for me in the future, but not so good when I’m sitting in the Escort Scotland office with a deadline to meet!

I’ve watched a fair amount over the years. Admittedly, I’ve been watching traditional porn a lot less lately and finding porn alternatives to enjoy instead. But that doesn’t mean I don’t watch porn. I still do when I’m feeling in the mood. For me, romantic porn is what happens after the ‘fade to black’ or ‘fade away’ in romantic movies.

You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re watching a romantic movie, the couple will start kissing, lie down on the bed, and the scene fades. It either cuts to black or drifts away from the action. We then come back once they have clearly had sex and have a sheet strategically covering their bodies. Remember the car scene in ‘Titanic’? That’s a great example.

Romantic porn is essentially the missing scene. It’s the slow and sensual screw, where the focus is entirely on one another. It feels intimate to watch, often with very few close-ups on the action. You get to watch the entire scene rather than focused moments.

As Susan Donaldson James tells us, it tends to involve “softer, wider shots of lovemaking and not so much of pornography’s pumping”. It makes sense with my description of what romantic porn is, and it does seem reasonably popular.

Looking at romantic porn

How many of us pay attention to the numbers when we go looking for porn? I know that I don’t. But for the sake of this article, I went looking for them. Yup, I went onto porn sites with the intention of not watching a video. Even though there were tons of great looking videos, I had to ignore them and focus on the numbers. The things that I do for my writing!

I looked at a few sites, but the most any of them offered when I searched for ‘romantic’ was about 5,000 videos. A lot didn’t even have a romantic category. But Pornhub, the giants of the internet, did! So I used their site to give me an idea about how popular it is.

The results from Pornhub searches for romantic porn
Original source: Pornhub

The first half of the image shows the number of results that come up when I searched for romantic porn. As you can see, there were a grand total of 55,455 videos to choose from. A pretty solid collection… or so you’d think.

Pornhub is one of the few sites giving the genre its own category. Looking at it, it’s surprising that there are so few videos in there. It only has 4,129 videos at present in the romantic category. That’s not much, considering how many videos came up in the result. It isn’t actually as popular as I thought it was, as we can see from the categories around it!

Does romance have a place in porn?

It seems that people don’t go looking for romance on porn sites. They’d rather search for MILFs and fetishes instead of romance. I’ll admit that it isn’t often I think ‘romantic’ when looking for porn. If I want something romantic with my porn, I tend to go for erotic stories instead.

So I have to ask… does romance actually have a place in porn? Should the two be kept separate? I would love to hear what you think about this issue. You can join in the discussion in the box below or vote in the poll.

Lara Mills
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