“I told her if we made it 10 years I’d get her a diamond. If we made it 25 . . . threesome.” They’ve been married 34 years; still no threesome. Oh, and the “they,” well, “they” would be my parents. Dad claims Mom agreed to this way back in 1980; she says no way.
Like mother, like daughter, because there’s not a chance in hell you’ll ever find me in the midst of a threesome. I am way too jealous and insecure to engage in anything like that. I don’t judge anyone who does like to partake in a ménage à trois, but it’s not for me. Pretty sure it never will be. I know what you’re thinking . . . never say never. Well, sorry, but I’m saying never.
Fortunately, the world is full of people much more adventurous than me. And some of them happen to be my friends. I talked to a few of them, some women, some men, some gay, some straight, some bisexual. All of them had very different things to say about their experiences, but I did find one similarity: Real-life threesomes are a bit chaotic—not like what you see in porn, which is what my naïve mind assumed. Instead, my friends say things like, “It’s such a mess,” and “It’s kind of a pain in the ass.”
Unlike some of my other topics, finding statistics on threesomes was difficult. “We just don’t have good data,” said Jennifer Bass of the Kinsey Institute in 2009, when asked how many Americans have tried threesomes. But I managed to find some. Back in 2013, the Metropolitan Report, which gathered data from more than 5,000 interviews with 18- to 39-year-olds around the world, found that 20 percent of men and women have had a threesome. This number may surprise people, especially given that back in 2004, the ABC American Sex Survey found that only 14 percent of men and women reported having a threesome. Either people are becoming more frisky, or just more honest.
Hollywood, as he likes to be called, had his first and only threesome when he was 17 with two men whom he met online. “I felt like a prince . . . like I was having the royal treatment,” he says of the “strange and amazing” experience. He says he always wanted to be “taken over” by an older man, so when this guy told him he was cute, he was sold. “It was finally my turn!” he says. When asked what his expectations were going into the threesome, he said, “Well, how do you feel when you want to do bang-bang? Complete ecstasy.” He reflects on the experience positively, but age has changed him. Hollywood now says he would rather jerk off than do what he did 12 years ago.
It seems sexual preferences do change as we get older. My friend Patti, who says she’s had “some” threesomes, is now interested only in monogamy. Now that she is older and more secure, she loves monogamy and needs it, she says. But when Patti was younger, she felt differently. She was just a teenager when she had her first threesome. The best part for Patti was having two people do things to her simultaneously. “That’s purely selfish, but there is nothing that feels like that.” The worst part, she says, was “the emotional things creeping in during the act” and wondering afterwards if her partner would still want her or want to do it again, leaving Patti feeling like she wasn’t enough. “I was a wild mess of insecurity,” she says.
This is exactly why I’m staying far away from threesomes. You need to be more like Kaelin, who seems to be extremely secure and confident about her sexual lifestyle. She is in a committed relationship with Dominic, but they don’t practice monogamy—at least not in the way most people think of it. They claim to have their own form of monogamy. “We don’t cheat; we don’t lie; we don’t go behind each other’s backs; we don’t seek sexual desires without the other’s consent.” These are some of the things they don’t do. Something they do: threesomes. “First of all, it’s every guy’s fantasy,” says Dominic. They’ve had three since they’ve been together, and it seems to be working out quite well for them. They both say engaging in threesomes makes their relationship stronger and keeps their sex life interesting. “We both appreciate being together more after the fact,” Kaelin says. She also says the best part of having a threesome is the next day. “During sex we talk about what we did the night before and it’s such a turn-on,” she says.
Regina was 19 when she had her first threesome, which happened outside a bar with two guys. “I was very confused,” she says. “I felt like I was being pulled and humped in all different directions.” Having a threesome wasn’t something she’d thought about before. She was walking outside with two of her guy friends after a night of drinking, and things escalated quickly. “It was just three friends having some fun,” she says. The best part for Regina was simply being able to say that she had a threesome and that two guys wanted her. “They were best friends, so chances are they had talked about wanting to do it in the past. It turns me on knowing that I was talked about in that way.”
Leah has never had a threesome, but the guy she’s currently sleeping with has brought it up to her. He wants to “tag team” her with another guy, which she’s considering. “The idea of having two men fuck me is a huge turn on, but rather intimidating at the same time.” In her opinion, a person has to be very secure with themselves to have a threesome. “Not only is there the whole jealousy factor, but you now have two people looking at you, touching you, and you’re now responsible for two individuals’ pleasure.” She adds that if you aren’t feeling great about yourself, a threesome is probably going to be pretty uncomfortable. I’d have to agree.
Then there’s some threesomes that just aren’t meant to be. My friend Cole learned this in a way than can only be described as awkward. After hanging out with some friends one night, Cole found himself on the couch with a guy and a girl he just met that night. “Emboldened by alcohol, I proposed a threesome,” Cole says. He adds, “It was strange and wrong.” “First, she has no top and we have no bottoms. Second, there is no foreplay, no kissing, no caressing.” It already sounds awkward, but it gets worse. “As my friend and I stand up and take our boxers off, careful not to stare too longingly at each other’s dick, we notice that she is crying.” The guys went to her side to console her, still pantless. She then told them that she was homeless and lived in her car. “My friend and I look at each other awestruck, and try to tell her that it’ll be alright, but we just tried to complete the Eiffel tower. . . . There is no return to normal.”
If you’re thinking about having a threesome, I hope it works out better for you than it did for Cole. And I recommend taking some advice from my friends:
“Be comfortable with yourself in order to let yourself go.”
“Don’t have threesomes over 24. They are dumb. Fuck one person till you get bored, leave them, find someone new, then fuck them. One at a time. That’s the way.”
“Communicate a million times before it happens.”
“Shower. Brush your teeth. Wear clean underwear. Drink some tequila. Foreplay is vital. Don’t get wasted before. Don’t be fucked up on anything. Don’t talk a lot.”
“Communication is key. Make sure you go over ground rules and what you expect from the situation beforehand.”
“Do it! See what all the talk is about.”
Evie is a writer, bartender, and graduate student who lives in Albany and wants to know more about your sex life. Contact her at .
