Fabulous Sex Begins in Your Head and Ends in Surprising Places

Intrigued by the word threesome in the title, I read the piece below because it’s by Toni Crowe an author I enjoy. Just as important, I’ve been there myself:

I won’t spoil Toni’s reveal — the upshot of her husband’s and her search for the perfect third — but I will share the comment I left:

Poor dears! I loved this piece and your writing in general. My threesome led to an enduring love of women! I haven’t written about that yet.

That got Toni’s attention. She responded:

I can not wait to read about your experience.

Sorry, Toni. I choose not to write about my current sex life. The present is private. And I won’t reveal how my ex-husband planned our threesome. It was the drugs-sex-rock’n’roll seventies. Who didn’t? However, in response to your request, here’s a story about my awakening to bisexuality, which began in my head.

Studying Theory and Therapy — Discovering Myself

This story takes place in the early 70s. It is my story, but I know it resonates, because I’ve interviewed and written about others’ experiences with men, women, multiple partners and all the possible permutations and proclivities, including S & M.

No two journeys are alike, but the signposts along the way are often familiar. And like most of what we do in life, sex begins in the mind….

I’m 29, expecting a second child, mourning the death of my mother, and considering the possibility of becoming a family therapist. To test the waters, I enroll in “GROW” (Group Relations Ongoing Workshops) — an alternative school for psychotherapy, specializing in the teachings of humanistic psychologists like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers who challenged the more rigid theories of Freud and Skinner.

In every class, we sit in a circle — on the floor or in folding chairs — to learn theory, discuss controversial ideas about sex, relationships, and gender fluidity (much of which would seem ho-hum today), and practice various techniques on each other.

In Gestalt, we partner up and do the “empty chair” exercise in which you have a dialogue with an imaginary person. It’s a way to gain perspective and to jog the creative juices.

In a class inspired by Virginia Satir’s “family sculpting” technique, we place our classmates, stand-ins for family members, in a tableau that portrays the dynamics of our familial unit. When it’s my turn, I direct “my father” to stand on a chair — the commander telling everyone else what to do.

The school is all about breaking down barriers and resistance. “Sexuality, Homosexuality, and Bisexuality” might well be a group therapy session for sexual confusion. As my classmates reveal their appetites and assorted sexual adventures — group sex is given for most of them — I feel very “vanilla.” Being pregnant doesn’t help.

Psychodrama Warms Me Up

A new semester begins with Psychodrama 101. “Bob,” a guy in his twenties wants to figure out how to tell his parents he’s gay. He’s not even sure he wants to tell them, but he suspects that he will feel better if he does. Given the tenor of the times and this being a school we call “GROW” (Group Relations Ongoing Workshops) everyone eggs him on.

The teacher, Hannah Weiner, a well-known psychodrama practitioner, whose credentials include Esalen, listens compassionately. Every so often, Hannah nods knowingly. When Bob is finished, she asks him to pick fellow students to play his father, mother, and younger brother.

“Before we start,” Hannah says, “as a warm-up, I want each of you to understand what it means to be in Bob’s shoes. So, look around the room….

“Find someone you might be attracted to. Walk toward that person and introduce yourself. Talk about the first time you make love. Where will it be? What do you imagine it to be like?”

Nervous laughter erupts quietly. The men seem more anxious than the women. Part of me is intrigued; the other part wants to run.

I scan the faces of my classmate. I meet eyes with a beautiful Asian woman. We walk toward each other. It is electrifying. Thankfully, she feels it, too.

Equally uneasy, yet strangely in synch, we talk about our first time. Neither can imagine what “it” would actually be like. We agree that “it” should happen on a beach. A few minutes later, we both admit that just discussing the prospect of making love with each other was beyond exciting! The brain is the most important sex organ.

Hannah asks us to return to our seats and draws attention again to Bob. She takes him through several scenes with his family. He tells his family he’s gay using the same words, but Hannah directs the parents and brother to respond differently in each scene: Be resistant. Be compassionate. Be angry. The idea is to let Bob see he can deal with any reaction.

I can’t imagine being Bob. But that warm-up exercise pried the door open a little more.

Shifting Sands

In retrospect, I was already emotionally tied to female friends. I couldn’t imagine being with a woman sexually, although I entertained the thought when my best friend Bonnie told me she had:

Her phenomenally rich (married) boyfriend surprised her on their last trip to Paris with a visit to Katmandu, a chic lesbian club. Several drinks later, they picked up “a cute little French girl.” He’d done it before — of course, not with his wife — but it was a first for Bonnie.

“I was scared. I couldn’t imagine going down there. But I liked it. It was like making love to myself. We’ve been with her three times.”

I tried to act nonchalant. As the proverbial “good girl,” I was confused and, at the same time, questioning.

After my experience at GROW, curiosity eventually crept into my marriage. My husband and I, now parents of two, began having what-if conversations. Like Toni, we parsed likely candidates. We had friends who were experimenting with “open marriage” — they had affairs and shared the details. Some were into “swinging” with like-minded couples. A threesome seemed safe by comparison.

Decades later, collaborating on Our Turn, a book based on a study of middle-class women of my generation who divorced after long-term marriages, I discovered that my friends and I were hardly unique. Products of privileged and traditional girlhood, we were expected to be wives and mothers. Just like our mothers. We were not supposed to initiate or even desire sex, no less entertain same-sex liaisons.

With one foot in the fifties and another in the seventies, many of us felt as if we were perpetually doing a split. Some wanted more than the Cinderella story. Whether it was a degree, a job, a career, or sexual adventures we missed out on, Ms. magazine told us we could Have It All.

My young husband was not turned off by my sexual curiosity. Few men are! My first experience with a woman was with him. (And we will leave it at that.) We traveled together in life for thirteen years, happy most of the time. But the ground beneath us kept shifting. We each became restless in our own way.

The thing about experimentation is that you usually don’t know where it will lead. I wouldn’t ask for a do-over even if I had the chance. I like who I became and who I’m with as a life partner now: a woman. But I certainly didn’t see a lot of it coming!

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