Turns Out, People Are Really Into the Idea of Threesomes

Have you ever thought about having a menage a trois? Yeah, that’s you and 64 percent of the population. According to a survey of 274 heterosexuals ages 18 to 24 published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, people—guys especially—are definitely on board with threesomes.

In addition to the 82 percent of men and 31 percent of women interested in hooking up with two people at once, 24 percent of men and eight percent of women say they’ve already done it. Men preferred to know the person who would join them and their partner, whereas women only cared whether they knew the other two people if they were the third party brought in to accompany a couple.

Another study of 18- to 39-year-olds across the globe in 2013 found that an even greater number—20 percent—of people say they had engaged in threesomes. According to a New York magazine article from 2009, Craigslist NYC had 1,493 requests for threesomes in one week. And according to a survey by BaDoink, threesomes are men’s No.1 sexual fantasy.

The authors of the Archives of Sexual Behavior study noted that while people appear fairly open-minded about threesomes, there’s a pretty big difference between how many people want to have them and how many actually do. “The fact that attitudes and interests were more strongly correlated with each other than with behavior is in keeping with research that has documented a discrepancy between sexual attitudes and beliefs and sexual behavior,” they write.

They particularly noticed the “logical inconsistency” in more men than women reporting threesomes even though most of the encounters reported involved two women. The most likely explanation? “There are biases in self-reports of number of past sexual partners that are consistent with gender role expectations,” they write. So either a lot of young guys are having threesomes with older women who weren’t included in the study, or you should take men’s stories about their risque sexual rendezvous with a grain of salt.