Remember that conversation that you had with your parents about going to college? And you didn’t know what the hell you wanted to do with your life other than smoke dope and watch The Simpsons?
Well, Ryan Scoats was just like you. Well, until he decided to go to college and get his PhD in threesomes.
I mean, I didn’t even know that was possible, but shout out to Birmingham City University and their soon to be at capacity enrollment.
Years ago, Scoats and his then-girlfriend developed a friends-with-benefits-type relationship with another woman. Curious, Scoats went looking for academic studies about him and his ex-partner’s new relationship coupling. He didn’t find much, and what research did exist about threesomes often lumped them in with polyamory and swinging. But this didn’t reflect his own experiences—he wasn’t in an open relationship and didn’t consider himself a swinger.
Wanting to know more about threesomes in their own right, he decided to conduct research on the subject himself. This led to a PhD about threesomes among two men and one woman (MMF), and a book on the same subject, to be published in 2018.
Plenty of the guys Scoats interviewed had had MMF threesomes without much interaction between the two men. The experience was less about sleeping with another guy than about bonding with a male friend. For instance, in Scoats et al.’s amazingly titled research paper “‘I don’t mind watching him cum,’” an interviewee named Brent says, “You get to ‘high five’ your mate over her back and that’s about it really.”
And while the idea of being with two women is often exciting for a man, Scoats’ research with women suggests that many are initially intimidated by the idea of a threesome with two men—but this is only if the expectation is that the two men won’t touch. If all three are interacting sexually, women are more turned on.
As 26-year-old Isa, one of his survey participants, memorably puts it, “If there is no homo, there is no trio.”
Not all heroes wear capes, my friends.
