How to invite a guy on the Other Chair

I spent an afternoon recently going through everything I've published here, sorting it into shelves so the library actually better makes sense to walk through. There are over a hundred posts now. I counted them, which was a strange thing to do to your own sex life on a Sunday.

What that afternoon showed me was the gaps. And the biggest one, by some distance, is him. The third man. Well over a hundred pieces about what this does to us, what it does to a marriage, how to survive the drop and negotiate the rules — and almost nothing about how he's doing in all of it, or what he actually gets out of standing in the middle of somebody else's marriage.

Which is a strange oversight, given that he's arguably the most important person in the whole thing.

And as we all know, there is a lack of good third guys (aka bulls). That's why this week we focus on how to adress, invite and educate him. Starting with two thoughts:

The first is belonging. We tend to frame this as "we need someone," as though he were a resource we're sourcing. But look at it from where he's standing: a lot of men move through the world going from one couple's dinner table to the next, always the guest, never quite part of anything. And what you're offering, if it goes well, is not a slot to fill. It's two people who are glad when he arrives. Who know how he takes his coffee. Who talk about him when he isn't there — warmly, and in some detail. For some men that's the rarest thing on the table.

The second is an internal contradiction he might get to resolve. Most men are handed two boxes and told to pick: you can be the hard one or you can be the kind one. Dominant or caring. Take what you want or look after people. And a lot of men who have a genuinely rough streak spend their whole lives sitting on it, because they don't want to hurt anyone and see no way to have both.

In this, he gets both. In the same evening, sometimes within the same ten minutes. He can be merciless and then hand someone a glass of water and mean both of them completely.

That's what an invitation into a triad actually contains. An offer.

And that brings me to this week, which is about finding the words for it. Because the thing between the two of you took years to understand, and he gets it in a chat window at half past eleven at night, from whichever of you is better at typing. Chances are high that this comes out wrong.

So on Wednesday I'm publishing something unusual for this place: a letter that isn't addressed to you. It's addressed to him — what we get out of this, why he isn't destroying anything, what he's allowed to want for himself, and what happens afterwards that nobody warns him about.

And on Friday, something useful, of course.

Have a good week.

A.