“Weirded out by what you were feeling and saying”? Well yes, it is unconventional territory. That doesn’t mean it has to stay weird. Eating snails sounds weird until you spell it escargot.
But let me ask: did your final letter from this morning include all the weird stuff, or is some of it still shoved under the bed?
Also, “35 years ago”? As in 1982? I knew it was a long time but I was guessing close to a decade later. Oops. But even so 1982 sounds really early.
So, you ask a bunch of questions and then you say things that make me want to ask you questions in turn. Which do I address first? I suppose I’ll try answering your questions, pretty much in the order you ask them.
Why did Wife keep replicating the threesome configuration if she didn’t like it? The first one just kinda happened, and I think she hoped that it would keep each of us (Boyfriend 1 and me) from being jealous of the other. And it helped but it didn’t really work. Also it is possible that she thought, “Oh wow, this is cool. I’ve never done this before,” kind of like you saying it’s good to be able to look back on something exotic in your misspent youth. (BTW, The Last Psychiatrist has a great bit on the phrase “it just happened”. He says that girls always describe threesomes this way, and guys never. He says the only times a guy will say “I dunno, it just happened” are if he’s talking to his girlfriend and just cheated on her, or if he’s talking to the police and holding a head.)
With Girlfriend 1, ... it’s hard to remember for sure this far back, but I think that may have been how she first got Girlfriend 1 into bed. Wait, let me explain. That is, Girlfriend 1 had been in love with Wife while her student; after graduation, Wife invited her to visit our apartment for a weekend; Girlfriend 1 slept on the sofa but came in to say Hi one morning, sat on the bed and started to caress Wife’s hair, and it went from there. (I am certain I have telescoped the real course of events by a whole huge lot.) After that, my sense is that Wife didn’t really want Girlfriend 1 and me in the same bed; but a precedent had been set, and of course I wanted Girlfriend 1 there (hope springs eternal), and it was a small apartment. I don’t know what Girlfriend 1’s own preferences were. (Wife told me plenty about what Girlfriend 1 allegedly wanted, but I no longer trust anything she said on that score, though I did believe it all at the time.) I do know Girlfriend 1 and I exchanged Christmas presents for a couple of years. I have at least two books that were gifts from her. So if she wanted me to outright vanish she hid it well. That still leaves a lot of other choices. It is likely that she didn’t want sex with me, though I do not guarantee that she would have been forever unpersuadable. In the event, though, it never happened.
Boyfriend 4 was more than a decade later, and he and Wife talked it out first. I think she brought it up (not he) but I don’t remember why. She said privately, months later, that the only time she came with Boyfriend 4 was when I was there helping too, but that might have been a lie to make me feel better.
Apparently part of what Boyfriend 4 said when she suggested it was, “Well OK, Hosea’s not bad looking.” So it is possible that Boyfriend 4 was expecting some action between him and me. I’m sure (on theoretical grounds at any rate) that my programming on that front is at least partly social and not 100% biological, but I’m also certain it would take a highly controlled lab environment to even think about changing it at this point. So we didn’t. And after a short while Boyfriend 4 called it off.
Rereading your letter, I think the foregoing addresses most of your questions. That is, you ask a lot but circling around the same topics. Let me know what I missed.
As for the questions from my side, ... well it’s mostly that you say a lot of different things about how you felt, and I want to make sure I understand you right. So mostly I’m going to ask, “Did you really say X and did you really say Y?”
First, it sounds like you say that you felt self-conscious being watched — which I think means, you felt self-conscious having L watch while you were fucking D. Is that right?
If yes, that’s no surprise the first time it happens. I don’t know if it makes it better or worse to remember that you were also hoping to watch D fuck L. And you sound a little embarrassed when you write even that, but of course you shouldn’t. It can be enjoyable to watch other people fuck. Admittedly that’s why there’s a porn industry, but I’m not talking about porn. I’m talking about people you know and (hopefully!) care about — and at that point I think the dynamic is not pornographic or prurient but something else. Something deeply caring, even loving. And if you can watch lovingly while others fuck (assuming you love at least one of them), then in the same way it can be just as loving for one who loves you to watch you fuck. “On display” is when you’re on a stage, under a spotlight, showing off for strangers. But in a warm bed at home, basking in the love of L while enjoying physical closeness with somebody else ... it’s not the same thing. Of course it’s way too late to tell you that now, and yes I remember that you said in retrospect you didn’t enjoy it so much. But remember it if it ever happens again. (As for enjoyment, there’s a quote out on the Internet. I thought it was from Billy Crystal, but Google turns up names like Mel Brooks or Sharon Stone. “Sex is like pizza. Even when it’s bad, it’s pretty good.”)
You talk about jealousy, but I’m not sure I understand what you mean, because right away in the same paragraph you say you would have liked Girlfriend 1’s role. But wait. Jealousy is when you don’t want your Beloved fucking someone else. But in Girlfriend 1’s role that’s exactly what you would have gotten: L would have fucked D in front of you. If you were jealous, wouldn’t that have been a problem for you? Or is “jealousy” really the right word?
In that setup Wife’s role was the one position that should have felt no jealousy at all, because neither of her lovers was with anybody else besides her. But you say you would have hated being the vertex of that angle. I will add that whoever is at the vertex in that setup gets the most sex, because she gets twice what anybody else gets. That wouldn’t have been your main motive of course, but FWIW.
So think if there’s a better word than “jealousy” for what you mean....
“Join in timidly” — I have to smile. Sweetheart, when there are only three people in bed there’s no place to hide. And for the most part people don’t expect to find timid virgins in threesomes. (I include spiritual virgins, ignoring the hymen for now.) So yeah, they would have had every reason to expect you to be bolder and more sexually aggressive than you say you were ... also at least potentially interested in experiencing the new person, whoever that was. You weren’t, but I think it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for them to think you might be ....
Oh well. Live and learn. Trust me, every single time I was in bed with two other people it was awkward too, for one reason or another. It ain’t easy. Anyone who says otherwise has never tried it and is just extrapolating from having watched a lot of porn.
I hope this works as the next step in the discussion. Do let me know what your next questions are, and how weird you feel now.
Loving you ever, intellectually and carnally and every way in between,
Your Hosea
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