Threesomes: Hot or Hurtful?
Dear Dr. Patti:
After much discussion my husband and I agreed to invite my best friend to join us for a threesome. We have done it several times, but I am having trouble with my emotions. Sometimes I am excited at the thought, and sometimes it hurts. Do you know how I can make up my mind, once and for all?
L
Dear L:
The human heart is a powerful muscle yet a delicate glass flower. It can break easily when dropped. Your ambivalence over your forays into the land of threesomes has you confused for good reason.
I have the idea that perhaps your husband wanted to expand the envelope of his eroticism by asking you to open your bed to another woman. Often that leads to the two women becoming intimates and each of them expanding upon their bisexual nature.
In your situation it seems that you were game but that this is not necessarily what nature intended for you. Sex is much, much more than just an exercise in the physical, as you have found out. Sex involves the whole person, the body/mind/emotions/spirit of each individual who engages with one other or with a thousand partners at a time.
You are in the desert of confusion, looking for answers from the outside that only your innermost feelings can provide. What do you want from your marriage? What was missing in the first place that led you two to explore this world of three-ways? What feelings do you have alone with him? What feelings do you have with this other woman in your duo? What do you feel for her? What do she and your husband feel for you? What do you all say to each other? How much of your relationship is now oriented around the sexcapades, and how much is about real intimacy and closeness? Where is this going?
There is a wonderful book by a real-life menage-a-trois, Three in Love. The traditional paradigm that says that marriage is about two people in love and caring for each other till death do they part, with all the trappings, is not for everyone. As these authors so aptly put it, alternative arrangements for real, lasting and lusty intimacy have abounded since recorded time, and even today there are permanent relationships that permit more than the one-man, one-woman thing to reign. I think that if the three of you want a long-term relationship as a unit, that's great. If your heart is breaking because this is not giving you what you seek or want, then it's time to talk about it and make a change. If going back to being a traditional couple is the way you want it, then set the stage for negotiating a change. If he refuses to budge, then you either live with the new life you are in or find a way out. I send you my support whatever way you choose.
Visit Dr. Patti's website at www.yoursexcoach.com for more advice.
