I've spent the summer having threesomes. Here's what I've learned

IThere are plenty of moments in movies where two women and a man get together for a threesome. They're often crude and exploitative, and unavoidable in a male-dominated Hollywood system, but to their credit, they're at least representations of something most of us crave. According to research by Dr. Justin Lehmiller of the Kinsey Institute, 87 percent of women and 95 percent of men have fantasized about having sex with more than one partner.

On the contrary, whenever two men and a woman are lovingly connected in movies, it is almost always framed within the safe, gentle confines of a “love triangle” (take the French romantic drama). Passages from 2023 or the Korean movie Past livesabout a married woman reuniting with a childhood sweetheart as recent examples). I missed the April release of Challengers – which was provocatively marketed around a single moment: when the film’s tennis star protagonist (played by Zendaya) is kissed by two men in a bed. Instead, I spent the summer having a series of escalating, somewhat unlikely situations. current sexual encounters with men and women at the same time. It made me wonder what movies are so afraid of.

Only a small part of me was looking for this kind of encounter at the start of the summer, but things developed surprisingly quickly. There's no formula for a threesome, but using apps to make like-minded friends and building a network of sex-positive people is a good start. Being open-minded and reasonably good at communicating desire helps a lot, as does being single: you're more likely to be approached affectionately by the much-touted “partner looking for a third.”

Despite being attracted to men, I tended to mostly meet “straight” heterosexual couples. In the world of sexual acronyms, this is sometimes controversially expressed as an “MFM” (male, female, male) scenario. I say controversially, because that pattern of letters puts the woman in the middle, as if the only sexual position that could occur is a barbecue joint (where a woman is penetrated orally and vaginally at the same time). While sex shouldn’t be rife with judgment, “MFM” always seems like a red flag to me: too many stories about insecure guys shyly hiding at opposite ends, engaging in drab, unsexy sex or, God forbid, wanting to high-five each other halfway through (apparently it’s called Eiffel Towering, bro).

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As couples talk more about, understand, and embrace open relationships, the walls surrounding different modes of sexual play are also coming down. In my summer of MMF, I've had adventures with heterosexual couples who cohabit, co-parent, and love each other like most other “straight” couples. The word “straight” takes on a rather elastic quality when you start meeting men who love watching another man slide his penis over their partner's body.

While threesomes, foursomes, and friend groups have been common in gay and queer lifestyles forever, there's something quietly new and radical about the number of MMF-friendly straight men I've met over the past few years. In many cases, they're driven by a sincere desire to maximize his Pleasure. They are supporting women's rights by, in some cases, literally holding up their partners' bodies while they are gleefully penetrated by other men. One man I know enjoys the “hotwife” aspect of his married life. These arrangements involve a woman he is married to having consensual sexual encounters outside of a relationship. He loves hearing every sordid detail the morning after his wife has gone on a date. For him it's not about power or cruelty or degradation – he just finds his wife very, very hot and likes to fantasize about her whenever possible, in a wide range of scenarios, sometimes involving other people.

It's been overwhelming to meet so many men who defy the atavistic alpha male clichés of how a man should behave with a partner: i.e. proud, possessive, and growling with jealousy at a potential threat. While men who want a date with their female partner and another woman are far more common on the dating scene, in my experience, men who come across as “friends of men and women” have almost always done the talking, thinking, and other “work” that goes along with it, making it unlikely that they'll suddenly freak out in the middle of an orgy. I dare say I even recommend it for couples who are in an open relationship. I think it's sometimes easier to keep everything under control by directly participating in watching your other half have sex with someone else, rather than abstractly imagining it in your head for a lifetime. It's certainly more exciting.

Because the reality is that there's an incredible normality to all of this that's hard to convey until you've had group sex. The best way I can illustrate it is to think about how men often soften any awkward situation with humor. You can imagine how much energy comes to light in situations involving erect penises. You don't need to be a voyeur, a pervert, or even a bit of a depraved person to enjoy the sight of someone you're attracted to having sex. As with many sexual adventures, part of what makes it so healthy is that, by the end, you realize how carefree and joyful your attitudes toward sex really are. In the process, it also makes you realize how confident you really are.

After what was objectively an eventful summer, I finally sat down and watched Challengers Last week. As I feared, despite the fact that the trailer and the film's publicity played heavily on the idea of ​​MMF, it was just another timid Hollywood “love triangle” movie, this time featuring jealous men waving their rackets and hitting each other's balls. What a waste. I wish someone would make a movie about how many men are comfortable playing mixed doubles.