No doubt the threesome’s appeal to swingers has points in common with its appeal to others as a form of marriage, but we will limit ourselves here to permanent relationships.
The threesome exists in a great variety of forms. The two obvious categories are triangles of one man and two women and those of one woman and two men. But within these categories there are a great many variables. A threesome may be heterosexual or bisexual. Incest, actual or symbolic, may be a component. A man’s two wives or a woman’s two husbands may or may not be on an equal footing. One of the three participants may be the apex of the triangle, as it were, with both of the other participants relating more to that one than to each other. The old maxim that all happy families are alike does not apply to threesomes; all of them, happy or otherwise, are quite different.
The examples which follow are by no means presented as a complete catalog of the forms that may exist. They are merely an enumeration of troilistic relationships with which I have some degree of firsthand familiarity. The first four are examined in detail in Three Is Not a Crowd. I have written about a few of the others elsewhere; the rest are noted here for the first time.
1. A man, his wife, and the wife’s younger sister. The sister, after having lived alone, moved in with the couple. Her own sex life was promiscuous and unsatisfying. She and the husband fell in love, had sexual relations. The wife was able to accept this, feeling that relations with the sister did not constitute infidelity, as would a comparable affair with an outsider. At first the husband would bed the two women on alternate nights. Then the three took to sharing a bed; both women, especially the wife, derived voyeuristic and exhibitionistic pleasure from this development. There has been no overt homosexual activity between the wife and her sister, nor has such activity ever been considered by any of the three. The sister has borne the husband a child — the wife has never been able to conceive — and the child is being raised as that of the husband and wife. The family lives in a remote situation several miles from a small town, which has simplified the problem of keeping the nature of the relationship from outside attention.
2. A man, his wife, and the wife’s college roommate. The wife and roommate had had an intense lesbian love affair during college, had discontinued it after a year, and had been exclusively heterosexual since. After a divorce, the roommate moved in with the married pair, presumably for a week. Before long she was having sex with both the husband and the wife, neither of whom was aware of her relations with the other. Things came into the open after the husband discovered the two women in bed. They now sleep three in a bed, and “everyone does everything to everybody.”
3. A man, his sister, and his wife. The brother and sister had sex together regularly during adolescence. They separated, and he subsequently married. He and his wife participated periodically in group-sex encounters. The sister, on a visit, had sex with both her brother and his wife, and resolved to remain as one of the family.
4. A man and wife who engage in swinging solely with other females. They particularly desire younger and less experienced females as swinging partners, and each plays a quasi-parental role in the sexual relationship. While they have not yet established a long-term relationship with one girl, it is their intention to do so; they have been hampered by their inability to find an ideal permanent partner and their fear of exposure. They have discussed the possibility of “adopting” a foster child and subsequently seducing her.
5. A man, his wife, and his older brother. The brother is married but separated from his wife. He seduced the wife one night when both had been drinking — the husband was working late at the time. He is now a frequent house guest, although he does not officially live with the couple. The husband goes to another room when the wife and the brother desire to have sexual relations. The husband’s expressed attitude is that it is “only decent” for him to make his wife available to his brother, as the brother has no other sexual outlet at his disposal.
6. A man and his two wives. He had been having affairs simultaneously with both women and ultimately persuaded both to experiment with three-way sex. The experiment was successful. The women enjoyed homosexual activity, a new experience for both of them. The three were united in marriage by a friend of the man’s who had been ordained as a minister by a mail-order church. It is doubtful that the marriage has any legal status. At the time I was acquainted with this trio, both women were radiantly pregnant.
7. A man, his wife, and his friend. The man had extensive homosexual relations during adolescence and sporadic contacts afterward prior to marriage. Shortly after marriage, he began a pattern of going out drinking and bringing home a man he had befriended. He would order his wife to have sex with his drinking buddy, an order to which she never seemed to have seriously objected. After watching the two together, the husband would then have relations with the wife. No relationship was ever established which lasted for more than a night, and although the situation obviously gratified the husband’s homosexual impulses, he evidently never had overt sexual relations with any of the other men. Ultimately he brought home a friend whose sexual orientation was primarily homosexual. The friend had relations with the wife, then joined in when the husband was embracing the wife, to the considerable enjoyment of all concerned. The friend moved in with the couple almost immediately, and willingly underwent a vasectomy so that there would be no danger of his impregnating the wife. Both the husband and friend occasionally have sex with the wife when the other is not present. The two men, however, have homosexual relations only in the wife’s presence, evidently because by including her they are able to do so without experiencing guilt that would otherwise bother them. The preferred form of sexual activity for the three is for both men to enjoy the wife simultaneously. She has vaginal intercourse with one while accommodating the other anally or orally.
8. A man, his wife, and another woman. The other woman and her husband, after financial reverses, moved in with the couple. The man and the other woman fell in love and had sex. The other woman and her husband subsequently left, but shortly thereafter the woman separated from her husband and once again moved in with the couple. She soon resumed her affair with the husband, who began planning to arrange a threesome. This worked out well, and the three engaged in a full repertoire of troilistic activity, with the two women performing and enjoying homosexual acts at the husband’s direction. The other woman eventually became anxious, wanted to possess the husband exclusively, also felt a need to keep her marriage intact for her children’s sake, and rejoined her own husband. The man, during my correspondence with him, has expressed a desire to get the threesome back together again but is fearful that any steps he might take in that direction could disrupt the lives of all concerned.
9. A woman and her two husbands. She had been living with one man for several months, then resumed an affair with the other man. Both men wanted to marry her, and each demanded she cease having relations with the other. She attempted suicide. Afterward she declared she could not bear to give either man up. For a time they took turns spending nights with her. Then one proposed a polyandrous marriage, and this was agreed upon. She married both men on successive days, with each serving as best man at the other’s wedding. The clergymen who officiated were unaware of the circumstances. Legally, the first marriage is legitimate, the second bigamous. The men regard themselves as co-husbands, and both have taken the woman’s surname “to simplify things.” They share a house, and the neighbors presumably believe that one man is her husband, the other her brother-in-law. There is no homosexual activity between the husbands.