By Nest Valorfixer
When I was young, a lady flirted with me and my then-boyfriend. I remember it seemed like having sex with her would be easy to slip into. We were all curious, but we hesitated, and then that mood didn’t occur again. We were afraid, and then things changed. We saw her one more time and then she moved away.
I often wonder how my life would have gone differently if that threesome had happened. I ended up marrying that long-ago-boyfriend, and we had a conventionally bad relationship for a few years. More unconventionally bad would have been preferable! Or something more interesting that worked better, with a different distribution of needs and ways our needs could have been met.
I can’t not love people, especially people who I touch, so it’s not possible for me to have a threesome without feelings. I’ve wanted threesomes, with many people—I’ve fantasized about being the filling of a person-sandwich. It would be overwhelming in a sensory way and social way. But if I was resilient, maybe the feelings could be powerfully joyful! My circuits would be full, the feelings of being overwhelmed part of the ecstasy.
Now I’m middle-aged, and it’s never happened. I wonder if it will. I have so many fantasies and I’ve seen it in porn. I want to watch someone else sexually please my spouse, and I want to share. I want the generous newness of sharing sexually. I want to be thrumming with desire for two people at once. I want to collaborate on a sexual experience with more than two participants. I want to feel new emotions, like jealousy or fear—not about something theoretical or past, but about something happening right before my eyes. Sounds masochistic, but I’m curious. I feel ready for it.
Taking a chance seems right for what I have now. I feel safe with my spouse and pushing on that seems like a good idea. But there’s no one we have plans with, or with whom the friendship seems to be going in that direction. We’ve invited a few friends into our family over the years, but no one wanted to join. I attract people who are curious and want to research other ways of living, maybe experiment obliquely, but not actually jump in.
I experience sex as an intense, vulnerable ritual that creates veil-rending pleasure. I see God in the beautiful sensations and union. To have that union with two people at once sounds very different and I’d like to prioritize that. But the emotions will matter, and it will change my life in a big way, to let someone else into me, besides my spouse who I know so well.
Life feels exciting, and I hope to live another forty years. There should be plenty of chances. Maybe the ways I do sex are too strange, and if I try a threesome, I’ll get my heart broken really fast, by someone who signals they want emotional connection, but really doesn’t do honesty. It’s happened like that before. I would believe for a few months that someone was earnest, as advertised. Then they couldn’t keep up the illusion and things fell apart.
Maybe my spouse really is once in a lifetime – someone who walks their talk. Or maybe someone else who could fit into this family will come along, when we least expect them. Two people seems unsteady, like a chair that needs to be balanced just so.
When my mom died last year, I learned how stabilizing she was. I hadn’t known she was doing so much to help me feel safe. I keep looking for sweet, trustworthy family love in the world, and people can be bewildered, when I seek that. So, this essay comes back to family, not only sex. I want to care and be cared for by multiple people, in many ways. That feels like the point of life, for me. Everything else is just messing around.
Sex is my favorite way to care and be cared for, but only a few people enter that inner sanctum, so it’s always strange to welcome a new person there. The new, shining being is a unique miracle. Love to all of us who do family, feel a lot, change, and take risks with the deepest parts of ourselves.
Nest Valorfixer is a queer writer living in Nevada who loves community, ecstatic states, and doing intimacy in many ways. She blogs at fallingintotheblissfulsublime.com.