Men's Health & Tips: Sex with Multiple Partners

Where Do All of These Body Parts Go?
Before the printing press existed to print pornographic literature, or the camera to take lewd pictures, or camcorders, phones, computers, and so on, men and women still found ways to enjoy elicit pleasures. The most common was to have more than one sexual partner. Some cultures, such as parts of the Middle East, gave this act official sanction by allowing men to take more than one wife, which probably took half of the fun out of the practice.

To some degree, adultery in ancient times was more forgivable than today. Some marriages arranged by parents worked, and some didn’t. If someone got stuck with a sexually incompatible partner or one whom he or shehated — and especially because divorce was almost nonexistent — it’s easy to understand why some people looked for greener pastures.

The lure of adultery
The statistics about how many people commit adultery may not be reliable, but you don’t need statistics to know about something that takes place under your very nose. Incidences of adultery abound all around us, be they among the rich and famous whom we read about in the news, or among our neighbors and co-workers whom we hear about through the grapevine.

Cheating comes in all different forms, from the man who goes to a prostitute while on a business trip, to the woman who sees an old boyfriend every Wednesday afternoon, to adulterous couples who see more of each other than they do of their respective spouses. But, whether quickies or lifelong affairs, all cheating tears at the bonds of marriage.

One recent development that has impacted this type of behavior is the risk of disease.

Nowadays, I find that more and more people try to patch up their marriages and work things out simply because they fear the health consequences that fooling around on their spouses can bring. To the extent that people try to have better sex with their spouses, I applaud this movement. Nevertheless, I do wish that it had arisen in greater part because of the spread of knowledge about good sexual functioning rather than out of fear of disease.

Wife swapping, swinging, and group sex
Of course, not all sex that married people have outside their marriage involves cheating. Some couples make the conscious decision to have sex with other people.

Some couples bring a third person into their bedroom, be it a man or a woman, which is called a ménage à trois.

Sometimes two couples get together and trade partners, which is called wife swapping. (I think that the fact that it’s not called husband swapping is significant, but more on that in a minute.)

Sometimes a larger group of regulars meets in someone’s home to exchange partners, which is called swinging.

And sometimes a group of strangers just gets together, usually at a club, and has sex with anyone else who happens to be there, which experts label group sex and people used to call an orgy.

All of these activities grew in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I believe this practice mostly resulted from the development of the birth control pill, which allowed people to have sex without the risk of pregnancy. But this type of behavior has been going on for a long time (for example, the notorious Roman orgies or the scenes depicted in Angkor Wat, the temple in Cambodia), and the behavior will never totally disappear.

Throughout this book I say that sex becomes better as the couple learns to communicate on a higher level and further their relationship. So why do people want to have sex with people they barely know? What’s the attraction?

A little bit of exhibitionism and voyeurism lives inside us all. Some people are appalled at those feelings and do the best they can to hidethem, while others enjoy giving into them, and you can certainly do that at an orgy.

Another attraction is the promise of strong visual stimulation that comes from watching new partners or other couples engage in a variety of sexual activities.

How fulfilling are these exchanges sexually? For many men, to whom visual stimuli are very strong, these scenes can do a lot for their libidos. On the other hand, many women need to concentrate to have an orgasm, and these situations aren’t conducive to their sexual functioning. Therein lies theanswer as to why the practice is called wife swapping — because men usually derive the most pleasure from these situations and push their wives or partners into them.

Although the men are usually the instigators, I’ve seen situations where they’ve also been the ones to most regret having started their wives on this path. As Phil and Betty found out, wife swapping can cause unexpected emotions and unintended results.

Betty and Phil
Betty and Phil were married for about five years when someone Phil knew at work — I’ll call him Gary — invited him to go to a wife-swapping party. Phil was very eager to go, but Betty wasn’t. He kept begging and pleading, and eventually she consented, but she kept to herself the real reason that she had said yes. Betty had met Gary at the company Christmas party and found herself attracted to him. She would never have acted upon that

attraction, or at least that’s what she told me, but when Phil begged her to go to the party, she decided that maybe the chance to be with Gary was an opportunity not worth passing up.

In fact, Gary had caught Betty looking at him, which is why he asked Phil to join the group in the first place. Naturally, when things started getting hot and heavy at the party, Betty and Gary gravitated toward each other and wound up having sex. Phil had sex with someone at the party and then went looking for his wife. When he saw her going at it with Gary, he at first dismissed it, but after a while he started feeling jealous. This jealousy affected his ability to have a second erection, and so he became really upset. On their way home, Phil lashed out at Betty, who fell back on the argument that going to the party had been his idea.

Eventually Phil’s jealousy calmed down, and he started fantasizing about the party. When the next one rolled around, he decided that they should go. Betty tried to talk him out of it, but he swore up and down that he wouldn’t be jealous, and so they went.

I’m sure that you can guess the ending of this story. Betty came to me to see whether I could help her repair her marriage, and I did try. But it was really too late. Gary aroused much stronger sexual feelings in her than Phil did, and because she and Phil had no kids, she finally decided that she’d prefer to spend the rest of her life with Gary.

So, while Betty did find the experience of wife swapping pleasurable, her focus all along was really on one man, Gary, and not having sex with a variety of different men. I think that many women who enter into this scene have similar experiences to Betty’s. Even if, initially, a woman does have sex with a lot of men, she doesn’t necessarily have to be sexually aroused for that to happen. Eventually, however, she fixes her focus on another man, not her husband. And then, when her husband realizes this, the trouble begins.

Of course, couples for whom swinging works out don’t go to see a sex therapist such as myself, so perhaps this sort of lifestyle works for more people than I know. But I’ve seen enough people who’ve had problems with these situations to know that the risks to a marriage are great. You see, the libido is very strong, but it’s also easily satisfied. There’s no such release as an orgasm for jealousy. Jealousy is the type of emotion that tends to build and fester over time, and that usually spells trouble. The only advice I can give you now is to keep thoughts about group sex as your fantasy and don’t try to live them out.