There is no spelling error in the title of step nine. I suggest that couples “manage” a threesome. This is not a sex threesome, but dinner or some activity with another man or another woman with the spouse present. It is a chance to involve spouses in business relationships and other friendships that they would not otherwise be a part of.
We live in a time when the complexity and anonymity of life provides temptations for sex outside of marriage. We are exposed to attractive, available potential sexual partners almost every day. We typically relate to these people when we are well dressed, impressive, demonstrating our social or occupational competency, energetic, and without our spouse. In our marital ijfe we may feel spent, de-energized, dressed for comfort. The managed-a-trois is an opportunity to see our partner at his or her best, being reacted to and reacting to other attractive, interested, and interesting persons. With both husband and wife present the temptation or competition of outside relationships is reduced, while the positive effects of newness and energizing input from others is available.
If there is someone important to you whom your spouse does not know, super marriage depends upon using this managed-a-trois opportunity to acquaint your spouse with that person. A good marriage does not require this all-inclusiveness of the partner, but super marriage does.
“We went to a play with my friend. He loved it. He walked in with a woman on each arm. We had dinner and talked. It was really fun,” reported the wife. “People weren’t used to seeing that, and he was proud and smug as hell.”
“We went a step further. I went out with a married couple we both know and she did the same last month. It really breaks the pattern and gives us a bunch of new stuff to talk about,” said one husband. “It’s probably not surprising that the stronger our marriage gets, the more independent we feel. This ‘managed-a-trois’ assignment is just good fun.”
Marriages tend to stick with marriages, to go to the theater, to parties, to dinner as couples. This opportunity provides the chance for a different pattern, for relating outside of the “two with two” pattern. Couples report a different view of their spouse when they see her or him in this context. Couples develop friendships with one person instead of just couples, developing a wider friendship circle outside the confinement of “couples only.”
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Once we remove the manipulation from courtship, and from marriages attempting to re-court, we are free to develop a wide range of relationships. ‘ T don’t think men and women can ever really just be friends. Once they see you as a friend, you either become their mother or their therapist, or they just vanish, to come back once in a while when someone breaks up with them.” This report from one of the wives illustrates the cliche about men and women relating, that it is always sex or nothing at all between women and men.
We can develop into new relationships and modify others; we do not have to dump people. Think of the friends of both genders we would have if we did not allow our sexual immaturity to dictate that male/female relationships are either hot or cold, if our courting added to our list of friends instead of to our list of failures.
We are so genitally oriented in our society that we define infidelity by juxtaposition of the male and female genitalia. If the genitals get near one another, and particularly if an unauthorized penis enters an unauthorized vagina, cheating has occurred. If we become workaholics, ignore our families, neglect our health and the health of those who love us, if we spend most of our time outside of the family and the home, that is not infidelity. I suggest we have this backward. There is probably much more unfaithfulness to marriage because of work and play than because of extramarital sex.
Work at keeping and making friends, even if you used to have a more romantic involvement with them that changed for some reason. Men and women can play tennis without having sex. Super marital sex depends on maintaining attractiveness to others, experiences with others that enrich the marriage. The same goes for courtship. Don’t dump people, save them. Keep their name and number. Keep them as friends. It may sound impossible, but it works. If you view courtship as collecting a wide range of friends, one of whom will become that one special lover for life, then courtship will lose its defensive orientation, its manipulation and pain. It will become a process of personal and social growth.
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