To many, threesomes may seem to be the stuff of fairly tales. You know, like unicorns, goblins, women without gag-reflexes or mood swings, guys with diamond penises that ejaculate Hershey's syrup. They seem as likely to ensue as women having playful, feather-flying pillow fights in the nude – sorry guys, only in porn.
Two is a party – this has been established and confirmed – but is three a crowd? Threesomes can sound taboo; the idea of inviting a third person into your already intimate, private soiree might be a little strange. But then, hemlines above the ankle, birth control pills and showering daily were all considered going against the grain at certain points in history. Thankfully things have changed, right?
So let's temporarily suspend the puritanical, hum-drum and remarkably non-experimental reality that may, in fact, be your sex life, and say this is a definite possibility. Two girls at once is a pretty common guy fantasy, cliché even. It may come as a surprise, though, that it is for girls too. Dr. Kat Van Kirk, a clinical sexologist, marriage and family therapist said that “according to research, [threesomes] are one of the top fantasies for women, whether the third partner is male or female.”
But how does one actually pull off such a stunt? According to experts and college students who have given “three” a go, different strategies need to be used at different levels of participant familiarity. Different approaches need to be taken by the unattached than those in relationships for the desired… ahem, result.
Single Participants
Brian Miller*, a junior at Penn State, once participated in a 3-way hookup at a party with two willing girls, neither of whom he was dating. Miller said the attention distribution in the conversation was the most important element in the situation. “It was easy because once I started talking to them both, I'd be talking to one and the other would cut in, so I'd talk to her, then the other would get jealous,” he said. “It' went back and forth like that, I guess I played a little on their jealousy to get it to happen.”
Miller also said it is a lot easier if the two girls know each other and are relatively close; the girls he hooked up with were longtime friends. The biggest obstacle in getting girls to agree to a threesome, Miller said, is the potential label or stigma of being “easy” or “slutty” that girls think they will get – whether it be real or imagined – especially with non-relationship partners who would be more likely to blab. “Personally, I wouldn't think a girl who did it so much as slutty, more just kind of crazy,” he said. “I'd more just look at it like, 'wow, that's a party girl.'”
Miller's suggestion for non-relationship participants on what not to do: suggest it. “For me, it was out of nowhere. If I had been the one to suggest it, I don't think it would have happened,” he said. “Bringing it up could be a home run or a strikeout. Thinking back on my situation, I probably would have gotten slapped in the face if I did.”
But he didn't suggest the three-way; “it just sort of happened.”
However, not everyone is lucky enough to fall into a manhole and win a billion-dollar lawsuit, strike gold in California, or have a threesome “just happen” one night at a party. Sometimes you need to make your own luck in this world. But experts say that if you're going to bring it up, especially to a relationship partner: proceed with caution.
Relationship Participants
Participants in a relationship threesome gets a little more tricky and must be careful not to introduce insecurity into the mix. Alyssa Brown*, a junior at Penn State, said if her boyfriend had begged her for the threesome her insecurities would have killed any possibility of it. “If he would have kept asking me to do it, I would have felt like our sex life wasn't good enough,” Brown said. “My first thought would have been that he wanted a free cheating pass with another girl, with having me there as a loophole.”
How to bring it up without breaking her heart
Don't bug her about it, and make it about what she wants. Van Kirk said that research shows that a threesome can be as psycho-sexually gratifying for women as it is for men. “The girlfriend's desires and fantasies should be addressed too,” Van Kirk said. “In fact, that can be a great way to titillate her; by making sure she is satisfied with the experience.”
For couples, communication and negotiation beforehand is extremely important, Van Kirk said, and that setting boundaries are a part of the negotiation process. “Questions you should ask one another include, 'Should our threesome include someone we do or don't know?' 'How do we handle the post-coital exit?' 'What behaviors are OK and what aren't?' Trust me; you'll avoid a lot of hurt feelings and awkward moments if you discuss these issues first,” she said.
Van Kirk also said that in long-term relationships that aren't “open,” jealousy is a common bedfellow.
Brown said numerous factors of the situation made the three-way ok, including the other girl being “like a sister to her,” and living with her and her family in high school. “She had slept around with guys a lot, so I knew that just another guy meant nothing to her. It meant nothing to him either – I'm the one that had the intimate thing of waking up in his arms the next day. I knew I was the one he actually loved. She left right after so she wasn't there in the morning – and that was really important.”
“Three-ways in the real world are very emotionally confusing, especially if you get so turned on that you can't keep your hands off the friend (and end up ignoring your girlfriend),” said David Wygant, an author and sex and dating coach who has been featured in Maxim and New York Magazine. “Whatever your girlfriend says about it, you need to respect. Remember one thing which is the most important advice I can give you: make it about her and her pleasure, and it's amazing how far you can stretch those boundaries.”
Just be sure not to push those boundaries too far. Van Kirk said that relationship destruction is always a potential outcome of threesomes, and that without good communication and a strong relationship, it can undermine things very easily. Brown said if her threesome hadn't happened exactly how it did, it could have hurt her five year relationship with her boyfriend.
But, she said, it didn't. She doesn't regret the threesome at all, and would not discourage other couples from giving it a try.
“We didn't look at it as something cool we did, or something gross we did, and we didn't brag,” Brown said. “No need to make a big deal out of it – it was just another fun cross off the bucket list.”
