Dear John,
I’m not sure if this is the type of question you’d normally answer, but after reading posts on your blog about relationships involving more than two people [1 Man, 2 Women In A Polyamorous Relationship, Dancing Cheek to Cheek to Cheek, The Sole Christian in a Three-Way Relationship], I figured I had to ask.
My husband wants to have a threesome with me and another man we know. I don’t know whether to entertain the idea or cry. My husband and I have known the guy since high school. I was friends with him, but my husband just recently started to talk to him. I liked him well enough until he started sending naked pictures to my husband.
He was always very flirty with me, regardless of whether I was single or not. He’s very open about his bisexuality. (He actually took my younger sister on a date yesterday. So things have gotten a little weird.)
My husband had originally brought up the idea of him and this other man doing sexual things without my involvement, as well as a threesome. I tried discussing both options with him, but the more we talked about option 1, the more frustrated and insecure I felt.
I was raised by two loving mothers, so the idea of my husband possibly being bisexual doesn’t necessarily bother me. But I was also raised to believe that relationships should be monogamous in all ways, especially in regards to sex.
I’ve always prided myself on being open-minded, but I cringe at the idea of sharing my husband with anyone, whether I’m present or not. Should I be open to the things he wants to try?
P.S. My husband and I have a daughter who will be turning a year old next month.
So (to state the obvious) you have a problem. You want to be in a monogamous relationship. Your husband doesn’t. That’s a problem.
In a nutshell, you have to decide whether or not you’re okay with your husband having extramarital sex. If you think that you can live with him sleeping with people outside of your marriage, then pat him on the back on his way out the door and tell him to use a condom. If you can’t live with that, if his having sex outside of your marriage is a deal-breaker for you, then he has a question for himself that he needs to answer—the same question every person in a committed monogamous relationship sooner or later has to ask themselves: Is my desire to have sex outside of my relationship worth the cost of what that would do to my relationship?
I can’t tell you what you should do or feel in your situation. There is no should here. There’s just what you need, and what you believe, and what’s best for your daughter, and what you and your husband can and cannot live with. And that’s a conversation that can only be had first between you and yourself, and then between you and your husband.
Speaking for myself personally, I chose, at twenty-three years old, to spend the rest of my life in a monogamous marriage. My wife chose the same, and thirty-three years down the road we’re pleased we took that route. But there are lots of different ways to arrive at a good place.
Readers? What’s been your experience in these matters? If you’re married, have you or your spouse ever tried to include a third person in your relationship? How did that go for you? How has monogamy—or being in an open relationship—worked out for you? What would you say to this woman?
I’m the author of UNFAIR: Christians and the LGBT Question:
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