Why So Many Guys Want To Watch Their Woman Having Sex With Other Men

When Chris Ryan, author of Sex At Dawn, appeared on Dan Savage's podcast, The Stranger, the first letter he answered was from a woman whose husband wanted to watch her have sex with another man, a request she fulfilled.

She described the enjoyment her husband had experienced watching her have sex, as well as his excitement, having sex with her himself while the other man's ejaculate was still inside her, and how this had made her feel concerned that her husband might be gay.

Ryan and Savage's responses normalized the husband's desire and behavior, suggesting that her husband is, in fact, most likely, heterosexual, and driven by the biological impetus of sperm competition, as well as by a kinky desire for voyeurism.

I like Ryan's responses, especially the non-pathological viewpoint he comes from.

And I also believe this desire to enact a cuckold fantasy is a very complex behavior with many more reasons behind it.

Even though the practice of wife-sharing seems to focus on the woman's sexuality, in my experience, it is almost always (perhaps 99% of the time) prompted by the husband's request. Wives simply do not often go to their husbands unprompted and request permission to have sex with other men, and certainly not in his own presence.

In my own research, I've heard a wide variety of reasons for this desire from various husbands. Some of these reasons were nice, and some were not so nice, and I believe a thoughtful discussion of this phenomenon deserves careful consideration of all of the reasons and motivations men have shared.

So here you go — my list of 11 reasons men may be interested in watching their wives have sex with other men:

1. He may be excited by the idea of being a voyeur.

Many folks suggest that we live in a "pornified culture," meaning that most men of college-age and older have seen pornography and use it as a part of their sexual repertoire.

If men are used to being voyeurs in their sexuality, there is some legitimacy to suggesting they may incorporate that into their marital sexuality. Watching your wife have sex with another man may be a next step, or progression, from watching yourselves have sex by first having a mirror on the ceiling during sex, then using a video camera to during sex, and then finally watching one's spouse with someone else.

Many men told me "My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world to me. I'd rather watch her having sex than some porn actress I don't know."

2. He may be driven by sperm competition

As Christopher Ryan, author Terry Gould, and researchers Baker and Bellis have suggested, there is a biological response at play here which affects the male sex drive.

After watching his wife have sex with another man, a husband experiences these biologically prompted responses:

• A drive to have longer, more vigorous sex.
• A shorter refractory period between erections. 
• Stronger ejaculation.
• Produces ejaculate containing more sperm.

Nearly every couple I interviewed told me that after an episode of the wife having sex with another man, the couple felt like they were both "in heat."

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3. He may crave the thrill of the taboo

There are few things in our society as stigmatized as a husband whose wife is unfaithful. Historically, such men have been beaten, ostracized and ridiculed, and regarded as weak "sissy men."

Some of the men I interviewed described explicitly that the taboo was the thrill for them, from the excitement of the forbidden and the naughty.

4. He may authentically enjoy his wife experiencing female empowerment.

I was surprised to learn how many of these couples embrace powerful feminist principles and how many of these husbands described the joy they felt at their wife's increased independence, confidence, and assertiveness, that came from the wife's freedom to have sex with other men.

Many of the men expressed that through their wife's open sexuality, the couple was actively and consciously rejecting social pressures to suppress female sexuality, assert monogamy and patriarchal power.

5. He may be exploring bisexuality.

For more than half of the men I interviewed, male bisexuality played a role in the husband's desires to watch his wife have sex with another man. This played out in many different dynamics.

Sometimes, bringing a man to bed with the wife was a pretext, a bait-and-switch if you will, for the husband to then engage sexually with the man as well.

Sometimes, the husbands were concerned about being seen as heterosexual, but they spent an awful lot of time looking for well-endowed men for their wife. To my mind, a man who is that focused on the size of other men's penises really doesn't qualify as all that straight.

6. He may have physical health issues.

In Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lord Chatterley was physically unable to have intercourse with his wife (though, as my own wife points out, his fingers and tongue still worked just fine, so why wasn't he using them?).

I did hear from a number of men who reported that due to physical complaints, they weren't able to be as vigorous in bed as they and their wives would like, and while the wives, by and large, were happy with things as they were, the husbands often felt their wife's loss of sexual satisfaction more strongly than the wife themselves, and were, therefore, motivated to encourage her to sleep with other men.

7. He may want his woman to be sexually fulfilled.

Women's sexual capacity is often far greater than that of men.

The world record for male orgasms is about 26 in a 24-hour period, whereas, per the research of Mary Jane Sherfey, women have documented as many as 60-65 orgasms in a single hour.

I saw many men who reported that their wives were highly sexual beings with a greater sexual capacity than their own, and it simply turned the husbands on and pleased them to be able to see their wives sexually satisfied to a degree he couldn't match on his own.

I also speculate that there is a degree of vicarious experience here — that by being a part of her experience, a husband gets to vicariously experience what it's like to have his wife's greater sexual capacity and is thereby able to identify with his wife and the essence of her female sexuality in a way most men never get to experience.

8. He may be into masochism.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was a 19th-century fan of flagellation who wrote Venus in Furs about dominant women —  and the kink of masochism was named after him. Leopold posted ads in German newspapers of his day looking for "energetic young men" to befriend and pleasure his wife. Check out Craigslist and you'll see Leopold's modern counterparts at work to this day. 

His particular interest in the experience was specifically the aspects of humiliation — of being a cuckold who is treated as weak, lesser, and not a real man.

Like those who seek the taboo aspects of the practice, such cuckolds often seek out a strong S&M flavor, where the husband is dominated, belittled and degraded.

9. The couple may have a financial need.

Most of the women working in Nevada's brothels have husbands and boyfriends at home who benefit from their wives sexual exploits for pay. It's not always about the money, of course.

One woman I interviewed in my first book told me that when she was working as a manager at a brothel, one of the women always called her husband on her cell phone right before bringing a man back to her room for a "party." Unbeknownst to these men, her husband was getting off listening in on the phone as his wife's services "were engaged."

The financial part of this is a piece that can't be ignored, however, as this has been happening for quite a long time.

In England, men would sometimes set up their wives to be seduced by a man so that the husband could then sue the "offending" man in court. In Florida, in the 1990's, the Sheriff husband in the case of the "Housewife Hooker" hid in the closet videotaping his "nymphomaniac wife" with other men (most notably, Republican politicians), whom the husband then blackmailed.

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10. He may want "the royalty perk."

In the 1960's Motown song by The Drifters, the line goes "save the last dance for me," as the husband watches his wife dance with other men.

Many of the men I interviewed got a thrill — a sense of being "king" — from the knowledge that they had a wife who was so sexy that other men wanted to be with her, but who ultimately came home with him, her husband. This idea made these men feel powerful and successful purely because they had such a sexy wife.

11. It may just be misogyny, plain and simple.

Sadly, I met some couples for whom the husband's encouragement of the wife to have sex with other men was about degrading her. Some of these men talked openly about treating their wife as a whore and a piece of meat in order to take her down a peg.

A common fantasy among men is to start the practice of wife-sharing by catching the wife in the act of cheating, then finding himself strangely turned on.

This does happen sometimes, though very, very rarely, but, it lies at the root of Dan Savage's past responses to such men — a response Savage and Ryan didn't repeat in the conversation referenced at this beginning of this article. Usually, Savage quotes the "eroticization of fear" hypothesis that these men so fear their wife's infidelity that they eroticize that fear in order to reduce their anxiety around, managing it through their sexuality to the point they turn the fear into a sexual fetish.

I have only ever encountered one man who described this scenario.

It might happen, but it's a lesser answer than all of those above, and hopefully, through their partnership, Christopher Ryan will open Savage's eyes (and the eyes of others) to this far wider range of explanations.

David J. Ley, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized expert on issues related to sexuality and mental health. His second book, "The Myth of Sex Addiction," triggered a firestorm of debate around the concept of sex addiction, allowing people to finally challenge the hype behind this pseudo-disorder. His latest book, "Ethical Porn For Dicks: A Man's Guide To Responsible Viewing Pleasure," uses a question/answer format to offer men a non-judgmental way to learn to view pornography responsibly.