This article originally ran in the February 2020 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see the digital edition.
Look at any recent sex survey and it will tell you the number-one sexual fantasy is having a threesome. (Followed by having sex with a neighbor, but that’s another story.) Both men and women fantasize about having two people doubling their pleasure, and it’s such a popular fantasy that practically every porn movie has three people doing each other.
However, getting someone to indulge your fantasy in real life is another story. If you are a straight man, how do you get your wife or girlfriend to bring another girl in when she’s super jealous? If you are a straight woman, how do you get your husband or boyfriend to bring in another guy without him telling you he’s never touching another dude’s dick? If you are bisexual or gay and already in a couple, you are in luck, and your fortune cookie will read “You will have the most chances to join a ‘throuple.’”
Negotiating the Three-Way
There are so many people who fantasize about having a threesome that someone decided to teach a class on how to have one. I took such a class at the Pleasure Chest in Los Angeles, where sex educator Reid Milhalko told students, “Find the girls who are bisexual. Try a girlfriend of one of your female friends who is bisexual—that always works. The secret to threesomes is finding those bisexual women.”
But what if your partner wouldn’t want a threesome in a million years? Discuss. As many men have realized, during the post #METOO movement, they may have been being super creepy and didn’t even realize it. Milhalko himself realized his own behavior was more obnoxious than he thought, and says that when negotiating something as awkward as a threesome, he has learned that men should be “non-creepy.”
“Don’t pressure someone to do something they really don’t want to do,” he says. “Have you ever tried to get a friend to do something she didn’t want to do? How did that go? Be polite, but be direct.” If you are already in a relationship, he suggests “asking for what you want with no shame”—but don’t pressure anyone. And if you’re single, go to a poly “meet up” or a “How to Have a Threesome” class. At the one I went to, Milhalko told everyone in the (packed) class, “Turn to the person next to you and introduce yourself”—a sort of speed dating for threesome enthusiasts. One guy’s pick-up line to me: “So, how many threesomes have you had?”
Couples and Their ‘Plus Ones’
If you want to figure out how to have a threesome, just ask a “poly person,” who will tell you that the biggest obstacle to any consensually non-monogamous relationship is jealousy. The polyamorists (known as “swingers or wife-swappers” back then) had it all figured out by the late 1960s. They replaced jealously with “compersion,” a polyamorous theory that encouraged people to “find joy in the sexual pleasure of your partner having sexual pleasure with someone else.” Even if someone is pleasuring your partner right in front of you. People into “the lifestyle” will tell you that they actually get turned on watching someone else doing their partner. No jealousy, no problem. With this thinking, “wife swapping” can turn into consensual “wife tasting.”
But eliminating jealousy in a monogamous relationship is the big challenge. Sexologist Dr. Jess O’Reilly cites a 2018 study that found that of those married couples who had engaged in a threesome, 50 percent of them reported that it had “no effect” on their relationship, 14 percent said it “caused tension in their relationship” and 7 percent of them said that it caused them to break up. But the most interesting take-away from the study was the 17 percent of couples who said they “felt closer” after the three-way. Who knew?
“Another challenge couple face after a steamy menage-a-trois involves latent feelings of insecurity, which can surface during or after an intense experience. Most of us can’t help but compare our bodies, technique and performance with that of a third party. Other concerns include fear of emotional attachments. In fact, many couples I work with report feeling closer to one another after a threesome, as it was a shared experience where they genuinely put their partner’s needs ahead of their own. An unintended emotional attachment seems to be a rare occurrence.”
If You Can’t Have a Threesome, Watch One
For couples who are terrified of the unknown, she suggest taking baby steps into the three-way by “extracting the emotional elements of the threesome” without actually doing it: for example, going to a swinger’s sex club and watching other people having threesomes; having a “plus one” watch you but don’t touch; or watching porn.
When in doubt, go pro. Crystal Cooper, a courtesan at the Mustang Ranch in Reno, Nevada, says that “many couples who want to try a threesome for the first time and are afraid go to the Ranch” for a safe introduction. “We get a lot of couples,” she says. “Sometimes the couples are so nervous they are shaking with excitement.”
Three-Ways Rule
Once you’re actually lucky enough to land a threesome, you have to set rules and boundaries beforehand for things you want to do and don’t want to do. Tell the two other people, “It’s okay if you do this, but it’s not okay if you do this.” (E.g., “It’s okay if you lick my ass, but it’s not okay if you take a shit on my glass table.”)
While three-way porn is a good to watch before you actually have three-way sex, Milhalko says that sometimes porn “gets right to the hardcore sex,” but sex in real life, especially three-way sex, requires a lot of “build-up” and “warm-up.” Discussing expectations, agreeing upon rules and confronting fears will dispel the nervousness. It’s about “negotiating the awkward,” he says.
A Three-Way Scene to Watch
Director Axel Braun reports, “The most awesome three-way scene I ever shot was in Captain Marvel XXX: An Axel Braun Parody. I mean, it just doesn’t get any hotter than having Captain Marvel [Kenzie Taylor], Jean Grey [Lacy Lennon] and Deadpool [Seth Gamble] banging each other silly in full costumes, and staying completely in character.”
He says, “The chemistry between them was insane, to the point that when I yelled ‘Cut!’ they literally didn’t hear me and kept going for another 12 minutes. I almost felt like I was a peeping Tom through the window of somebody’s bedroom. Needless to say, the scene is epic.” And it was nominated for Best Three-Way Sex Scene – Girl/Girl/Boy at the 2020 AVN Awards. (Though that scene didn't win, the movie did come out on top in five other categories at the 2020 AVN Awards Show.)
Anka Radakovich is a certified sexologist, sex educator and author of three bestselling books, including her latest, The Wild Girls Club, Part 2. She wrote columns about sex and relationships for Details, British GQ, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Redbook and Cosmopolitan. She is now a columnist for Brides, and a screenwriter who writes romantic comedies filled with dick jokes. Follow her on Twitter: @ankarad.
