I'm not sure where to begin.
I'll start by openly admitting that, like any story, this one has two sides. Three sides, really -- mine, my wife's, and the "other woman's". My wife and I have written the text below in our own words. We're sharing our sides of this story. I'm "Ethan," the husband. My wife is "Michelle." Our names are over the sections we've written.
That being said, I'm still not sure where to begin.
Here are some important things to know about me: I'm in my 30's, but people are always mistaking me for being in my 20's. I keep in shape and I have a cheerful disposition, which most people associate with being young. I'm living the best life I can imagine and am married to the woman of my dreams.
Of course, things haven't always been this way. Most of my life has seemed mindlessly routine and limited. I grew up working hard, avoiding trouble, and doing what was expected of me. I was awkward and shy as a teenager (who wasn't?) but sort of came into my own in my late teens. I had girlfriends, but for as long as I've been aware of sexuality, I had felt repressed -- as if I had to censor what I was really feeling or wanting.
I had a longtime girlfriend in high school, and shortly before we would probably have become sexually active, my older brother got his own girlfriend pregnant. I saw how that became a wrecking ball through his life, so out of fear of impregnating somebody and wrecking my own life, I refused to have sex with my girlfriend. It kind of bewildered her, but I learned to give great oral sex and so she seldom pushed the issue. That how it went with all my girlfriends through my teens and into my 20's: when they wanted me, I exhausted them with my tongue.
I didn't actually have intercourse until I was 22, and then to a girl I ended up marrying. We didn't have a healthy sex life, and when we divorced seven years later, I became determined to live the life -- and the SEX life - of my dreams.
I didn't expect to find the woman of my dreams so quickly. I thought I'd have a bunch of girlfriends - get a lot of steam out of my system - before getting "serious" and settling back down with somebody. But when I met Michelle, realized what an amazing person she was and how much she had to share, trading a future of brief relationships for a committed relationship with her was a no-brainer.
It's cliché but true: Michelle is the woman of my dreams. She's intelligent, inquisitive, funny, sweet, beautiful, and eager to please. Sexually, she's very appreciative of my oral skills and we've enjoyed exploring new sexual experiences together. First it was oral sex, then toys, then porn, then everything from fun with our video camera, to visiting a strip club, to having a college girl take pictures of us going at it.
Everything a guy could want in a sex life, right? Well... it's hard to explain exactly why, but I found myself craving more. More experiences, more interactions. We began talking about experimenting with a threesome.
Michelle:
"Whatcha thinking about?" I asked my husband as we walked our dog through the woods in the local park. He glanced over at me with a familiar look in his eye. I ask him this question quite often, and his answer almost always has something to do with sex. I smiled at him, inviting him to share.
"Oh, threesomes," he said somewhat wistfully.
"Hmmm..." I replied. I felt a tingle of anxiety in my solar plexus. Threesomes were a common theme in our bedroom fantasies, and I was comfortable acting them out in pretense. Having a real threesome, however, was definitely outside of my comfort zone. I had experienced two threesomes in my life, neither of which turned out well. The first one led to the breakdown of a friendship and the second to the dissolution of a marriage. There was also the issue of whom we would invite into our bed and how we would find her—wouldn't it be painfully awkward? The threesomes I had been involved in before had been helped along by large quantities of alcohol and/or other recreational drugs, and neither my husband nor I now indulged in any of these substances. The thought of being fully present, in my right mind, having sex with my husband and another woman, made me grimace and squirm.
On the other hand, I knew that Ethan had never experienced any of this, and that the fantasy of being with two women at the same time was a constant attraction for him. He was always talking about how we were not going to be young and beautiful forever; how he wanted to be sexually adventurous while he had the chance. I felt that it was only fair for him to have the chance to explore the awkwardness for himself. He had been much less sexually adventurous during his teens and twenties, so of course he felt like having spicy sexual liaisons now that he was in a stable and committed relationship.
There was also the issue of the difference in our libidos. In general, frequent sex was much more necessary to Ethan's well-being than it seemed to be for my own. Even if we didn't always have intercourse, I tried to keep our bedroom life exciting and satisfying for him by acting out fantasies, dressing up in special outfits, and studying up on new techniques. This was a fun and exciting way for us to connect and had definitely given my sex drive a boost. I even found that pretending there was another person—man or woman—in the room with us was a big turn-on for me, getting me aroused when I would otherwise have been somewhat diffident. We had gone so far as to discuss ordering a realistic sex doll from the internet in order to make things more authentic. Perhaps it was time to take the plunge and try out the real real thing.
"Okay, let's do it," I said suddenly. Ethan, startled out of his daydream, tripped over a split in the asphalt path and stopped walking. He turned to face me.
"Ummm, really?" he asked disbelievingly.
"Yes, really. I really think we should have a threesome. We've been talking about it for over a year and we both seem to have a genuine attraction to the idea of it. I think we should find somebody and see what it's all about. I think you're right—we're only young once—and I also think that we have an incredibly strong and stable bond. I think we can handle it. I think it might even be good for us. And if it isn't good, I think we can handle that, too." Although I was being truthful, I sounded much more confident than I actually felt.
Ethan immediately began to search for another sex partner for us. We both agreed that it should be a woman between the ages of twenty and forty—someone sexually experienced, confident, mature, and at least moderately attractive. He placed ads on an erotic message board as well as on Craigslist and got down to the difficult work of sorting through the respondents. I found out later that this was a tedious and frustrating job, often involving many emails back and forth with various people who ended up being too sketchy, too eager, too socially awkward, or too busy to be a good fit for us. Weren't there any normal people, people like us, who wanted to have threesomes with other normal people? A year passed, and though we talked about the prospects every so often, we never got close to finding a lady who seemed to fit the bill. This was not distressing for me until I found out how frustrated Ethan was feeling about the whole thing. He had been spending hours of his free time searching the internet for a third person, and here I had been just blithely going along as if this issue wasn't that important. I made halfhearted attempts to get involved, but the whole thing just wasn't as fascinating for me as it was for him. Searching Craigslist for sex partners was at times hilarious, but I would much rather be spending my time in the kitchen concocting new gluten-free desserts. I felt vaguely guilty about this lack of interest in something that was obviously so important to my best friend and darling husband, but not guilty enough to spur any action on my part. And so time passed. Ethan searched. I baked.
It was April when Ethan said to me, "I think I found someone." His tone was casual and I figured it was another of the many prospects that would turn out to be a dud.
"Okay, tell me about her," I responded.
"Well, she's young—only 21. She seems nice. We've exchanged a couple of emails and she has agreed to meet us in a public place." Ethan kept his voice calm, but I could tell that he was pretty excited about her.
"Wow," I said, starting to feel a little nervous. I read through their correspondence and agreed that she seemed nice. I had the feeling that she was somewhat naïve and a bit shy. I wondered why she wanted to have a threesome with a married couple in their thirties. She said she was mostly interested in watching, but was open to whatever the situation offered. She really did seem to be a good fit from her emails.
"Want to get together with her on Saturday?" Ethan was at the computer, poised to reply to her message.
