Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

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Good day Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer,

I’m Emmy. I have some questions regarding my husband and his behavior. We’ve been together for almost nine years now and we have two kids. I’m also older than him by a decade.

I’m already in my late 40s and I feel that I’m in the menopausal stage already. When we are having sex, I’m dry, and my husband is a bit mad because of it. Because of that, he asks me to date and have sex with other guys – specifically Caucasian guys with big tools.

I found it hard to date at first, but when I did try having sex with them, I do get very wet and come a lot. My husband likes to watch, and after I play with the other guy, it’s then my husband’s turn to have sex with me.

My questions now are: Is it normal that men have this kink? Does my husband need to go and consult a doctor? I want this to stop, but I’ve also realized that ever since we’ve started doing this, he has become sweet and our relationship has improved. Does this swinging lifestyle really improve our relationship?

Emmy

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Dear Emmy,

Thank you for your message.

Our columns here and here both deal with threesomes, but your questions also raise other issues.

Threesomes are not a mainstream form of sex, and so in that sense they are not normal. However, you need to ask yourself whether “normality” is a useful yardstick. Just because a majority does not do something does not necessarily make a behavior more or less acceptable in and of itself, after all. The fact that you describe your husband’s predilection as a “kink,” however, does indicate that you already consider his behavior abnormal, so perhaps you are only asking the question in order to validate your own conclusion. The real question is surely whether it makes the slightest difference how you simply describe it.

Normal or not, the key ingredient of threesomes is consensuality, and here your message is unclear. On the one hand, you say that sex with a Caucasian makes you wet (unlike with your husband) and come a lot. This suggests that you get a great deal of pleasure from it. Then you say you want it to stop. And finally you state that the outcome is an improvement in your relationship which is clearly a good thing. Why then would you want to stop doing something that you find pleasurable and that makes life better with your husband?

This reply would not be complete without a comment on your husband’s attitude. It is not a sign of love to get mad at one’s wife just because menopause is making her lubricate less, any more than it would be for a wife to get mad with her husband just because age is reducing his angle of erection or his ability to have sex multiple times per night. In fact, your dryness might even be attributable not to menopause at all but to your husband’s sexual ineptitude, which might also be why he is seeking to deflect the blame onto you.

If there are other issues at play here, please write again.

Best wishes,
JAF Baer

Dear Emmy:

Thank you very much for your letter and for your very clear way of asking questions. Thank you too, Mr. Baer, for answering all of Emmy’s questions so well that there is nothing more I can say to add to its logic, wisdom, and generosity of spirit. 

Engaging in threesomes is not the only solution to dryness. Two that immediately come to mind are:

1. Lubrication;
2. His engaging in what we call foreplay (perhaps longer, definitely more imaginatively). Filipinos replace this cold, mechanical-sounding English word foreplay with “romansa.” This includes not just physical touching, but words, sighs, facial expressions, and the subtext that you find your partner right here, right now, is the most sexually arousing woman for you. 

You have both agreed that it is your “fault.” But it isn’t, is it? You could not help being older than him. This is not a choice you could have made. It is what it is. But he had a choice: to marry you or not. 

You are now not as wet as you used to be and he gets “a bit mad because of it.” However, if you have sex with the men he chooses for you, he is “so sweet to me and (your) relationship has improved.” You “want this to stop” but you cannot because he has the upper hand.

Doesn’t this sound like blackmail to you, Emmy? Because it sure does to me. True, you get “very wet and come a lot” but sex is more than the physical (both for you and for him), and that is why you don’t enjoy the kind of sex, the threesome, you are having now.

A blackmailer will negotiate only about how much the blackmail-ee (in this case, you) pays. Right now, you have negotiated for sex with Caucasian guys. No one knows what you will need to do to keep your husband happy in the future. One thing everybody knows, however, is that it will not be less.

That’s the thing about blackmail. It never stops. 

That is why some (with a totally different compass from ours) resort to murdering their blackmailers – not that this is what I recommend you do with your husband, of course. There are far healthier, morally more acceptable ways to deal with your dilemma.

Would you be willing to tell us more, Emmy? That way we could suggest more realistic, perhaps far less drastic ways to change your marriage from one that is merely tolerable to the one you’d thought would continue when you first tied the knot. 

All the best,
MG Holmes

– Rappler.com

Please send any comments, questions, or requests for advice to twopronged@rappler.com.