The Third Wheel Gets The Grease. Or Should.

After listening to a bunch of Savage Love podcasts, and watching The Secret Diary of a Call Girl and old episodes of SatC, and now checking around on the internet, I am newly irked by something: Almost anything you see/read about threesomes focuses on the effect it has on the couple...and completely ignores the third person. Askmen focuses largely on how to reassure your "girlfriend or wife," and insultingly advises you to kick the other girl out afterwards. Cosmo terms even offering your man a threesome "a bonehead move,*" and treats the hypothetical Other like a potential homewrecker. Lame and a half.

I've had two threesomes, the first of which I often don't count because it was in many ways a Bad Scene (plus it was just a drunken one-off) and the second of which rates as one of the best sexual experiences of my life**. A threesome has the power to be really life-affirming or really destructive for a single person, and not enough people talk about that.*** And yeah, I understand that there are a lot of issues a threesome could bring up with a couple, but these arrangements can be just as tricky for the non-becoupled one. Attachments can form, complications can arise, and one might wind up feeling used, feeling in the way, or just plain feeling left out.

I never really thought about this until I engaged in a threesome of my own, but one of the things that annoys me the most is that, apparently, some couples want there to be a No Kissing rule****. Why would the person agree to this??? Do you have NO concept that you owe your partner pleasure, as you do any sexual partner, and that ze's not there solely for your own entertainment??? It's important to respect a couple's boundaries, but it's just as important for a couple to make their single friend feel like ze's part of the team. If you can't handle that, you should take Dan Savage's advice, which is to hire a professional.

Dan, of course, answers the questions he gets, and he has in fact addressed questions posed by a threesome "guest star" (as Samantha Jones calls it). And most often he is rolling his eyes at a couple who thinks they're going to walk into a bar and find a hot bi girl who will come home, do exactly what they want and nothing more, and then disappear afterwards. Dan points out that there are plenty of women like this, and they are called prostitutes--if you don't want any strings on your threesome, look one up.

I have found one essay from the point of view of the non-girlfriend, a young woman named Caitlin McRae who finds herself drawn to couples as a general rule. The best part is where she contrasts the "part of the team" couples with the "probably need a hooker" variety:

These aren't invitations to sexual exploration. They're requests for a favor, wherein I'll be a means to an end, a one-time antidote to this particular couple's sexual ennui: I push from the bumper while they pop the clutch. This doesn't do much for my self-esteem, as you can imagine.

So to all you couples out there, remember there are different kinds of threesomes. Figure out which you want. And if you can't afford a good call girl, don't take it out on your friends.

On a side note, Maxim UK offers the worst piece of sex advice I've ever heard: "DON'T, whatever you do, at any point, laugh." I know it's Maxim but, seriously?!?!?! In any sexual situation, however many people it involves, sense of humor is a MUST--the best partnerships I've had are the ones that involved laughing in bed. It's extra important in a multiple partner situation, where there's more room for fumbling and awkwardness and injury.

And I mean, c'mon. It's funny.


*Which it could literally be; three people moving around in one bed can easily result in head-to-bone collisions. Not that Cosmo would know that.
**Interestingly, the first was not with a couple, though one of the dudes had a girlfriend in another state. (Yeah. Bad Scene.) The other dude was basically gay. Totally hot, followed by months of fallout. Definitely in the category of "Glad I made that mistake already so I never have to make it again."
***I will point out that the "bad threesome" was when I was younger and less mature, someone insecure about both my appearance and my virginity. It's totally possible that I couldn't have handled my "good threesome" back then--even as an adult, it's required lots of communication and reassurance. Seriously: people pay a lot of lip service to communication, but it's amazing how helpful it is, even if it seems hard sometimes.
****No one's ever tried this with me, for the record. That's what makes me so incredulous that some people do.