Ménage à trois

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Postcard, c. 1910

Ménage à trois is the French term describing a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household.

Term

The French phrase ménage (household), à (of), trois (three) literally translates as "household of three." Simply put, a ménage à trois is a romantic relationship in which three people live together and have sexual relations^[1].

Of late, the term is also used to describe^{[citation needed]} any sex act involving three people, otherwise known as a threesome.

Examples

Some known examples are

• Emma Hamilton, her husband, and Horatio Nelson.
• Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the Duke of Devonshire, and Lady Elizabeth Foster
• Henry Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett his wife, Amy Gwen Wilson, and writer Gilbert Cannan.
• In Sweden in 1775, Count Adolf Fredrik Munck af Fulkila had reputedly been hired by king Gustaf III to assist him in the consummation of his marriage with Queen Sophie Magdalena. He was to act as sexual instructor for the couple. His "aid" is alleged to have resulted in the birth of the future King Gustaf IV Adolf in 1778. By further rumors, he was the lover of the king as well as of the queen. These rumors eventually had serious political implications in the end of the House of Vasa's rule in Sweden.

In fiction

The ménage à trois is a recurring theme in fiction and has been the subject of a number of books, plays, films and songs. Some notable examples include:

• Design for Living (1933), a play written by Noel Coward and then adapted as a movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
• "Friends" (1994), Phoebe meets her real mother and learns that her real mother, her father, and the woman who raised her were extremely "close" and all had sexual relations together (#3.25).
• In "Les Diaboliques" (1955), a film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the husband is led on by his wife and mistress to believe that he will have a sexual encounter with both of them.
• Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roché, adapted and filmed in 1961 by François Truffaut.
• Paint Your Wagon (1969) — in the film version, Ben marries Elizabeth, but she falls in love with Partner. They decide that if a Mormon man can have two wives, then a wife can have two husbands.
• Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), directed by John Schlesinger, a movie about a threesome with a homosexual man, a heterosexual woman, and a bisexual man.
• Summer Lovers (1982), a film with Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah, in which a vacation in Greece leads to a female-male-female relationship that is both emotional and sexual.
• Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976), adapted from Jorge Amado's novel of the same name, tells of a woman who lives simultaneously with her second husband and the ghost of her first.
• Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982) relates the relationship of King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot as a ménage à trois.
• Also The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay ends with Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere - at the end of numerous adventures - departing on a ship, the three of them happily holding hands, embracing and looking forward to a shared future.
• The Garden of Eden, a novel by Ernest Hemingway, written between 1946 and 1961, and published in 1986, centers on an American expatriate couple who bring another woman into their marriage.
• A Home At The End Of The World by Michael Cunningham centers for the most part on a ménage à trois.
• Three of Hearts (1993), directed by Yurek Bogayevicz.
• In Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Frex admits that he and his wife loved a itinerant glass-blower named Turtle-Heart "equally," implying Melena's long-running affair became a threesome.
• Kiss the Sky (1999). Aging married friends try to form a threesome while building an island retirement refuge. Though they fail, they learn to accept their situation with the help of a Buddhist monk.
• Y tu mamá también (2001), a somewhat controversial Mexican coming-of-age movie that focuses heavily on the sexual lives of the three characters, played by Maribel Verdú, Diego Luna, and Gael García Bernal. Features mixed jealousy, hedonism, and repressed bisexuality as major themes.
• Politics, a novel about a ménage à trois ("the socialist utopia of sex").
• In Bandits (2001), a ménage à trois is a major part of the plot.
• The Dreamers, a film starring Eva Green, shows a beautiful and functional ménage à trois with a very unfortunate end.
• In the film Shortbus (2006), James and Jamie meet a young ex-model and aspiring singer named Ceth and the three begin a sexual relationship.
• The 2004 film Head in the Clouds, starring Penélope Cruz, Charlize Theron, and Stuart Townsend, tells the story of these three characters' sexual and romantic relationship with each other.
• The 2008 Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona depicts a dysfunctional, sometimes violent relationship between two Spanish artists (played by Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz) that is finally brought in to balance with the addition of Cristina (Scarlett Johansson).
• Science fiction writer Bob Shaw, in The Two-Timers (1968), gave the theme a new twist in having a Ménage à trois in which the husband and the lover are two versions of the same man, from two alternate time lines.
• Quartet (1928), originally titled Postures, a roman à clef by Jean Rhys in which she fictionalised her affair with Ford Madox Ford.
• David Crosby's Song (Triad) is a about a ménage à trois

See also

• Polygamy
• Swinging
• Polyandry
• Polygyny
• Polyamory

References

Further reading

• Barbara Foster, Michael Foster, Letha Hadady. Three in Love: Ménages à trois from Ancient to Modern Times. ISBN 0595008070
• Vicki Vantoch. The Threesome Handbook: A Practical Guide to sleeping with three. ISBN 1568583338