DAVID J. LEY - Insatiable Wives

I first encountered what is called the hotwife phenomenon in 2005, while collecting e-mail responses for a research study surveying couples on the Internet. Two respondents described their participation in what they called the hotwife lifestyle, and offered descriptions of the wifes sexual promiscuity, with the full support and encouragement of the husband. One of the women was a corporate executive with a personal salary well into six figures. She had lived this lifestyle for many years and described a history of literally hundreds of different male sex partners, all with the explicit support and encouragement of her monogamous husband.

At first disbelieving, I assumed that this was akin to an urban legend, a phenomenon that existed solely in the fantasies of some males, as they used the Internet to wildly exaggerate the Madonnawhore image of their wives. But a few Internet searches revealed numerous sites dedicated to the discussion and celebration of hotwives, and led to the suspicion that there was far more to the story. And yet, despite the growing presence and long history of this subculture, there is incredibly little mainstream attention to it.

Kai Ma published Take My Wife, Please, on the website Nerve.com. The article is one of the very few in the popular press, addressing this lifestyle. It discussed the phenomenon of hotwives, and introduced a couple and one of the men with whom the wife had sex, while the husband filmed. I was intrigued by the articles premise; these were normal people. Healthy and successful people. These werent marriages that were on the rocks, where permissive infidelity was a last ditch effort to save the marriage. Many of the couples living this lifestyle were successful, often highly educated people. These were folks I expected to see in college classrooms or around business boardroom tables. I didnt expect rampant sexual promiscuity, and a celebration of female sexual infidelity in such couples.

When I talked about this to friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances, once I got past their strange and suspicious looks, I found I wasnt alone in my disbelief. Universally, people responded with the belief that such a lifestyle was bound to destroy a marriage, a husbands self-esteem, and couldnt possibly, in any way, shape, or form, be a healthy part of a married couples sexual life. Certainly, people who chose this lifestyle could only be doing so out of deep-seated pathologies, character flaws, and histories of sexual trauma and abandonment. The very few people who didnt respond with such automatic assumptions revealed that they had kinks of their own, which had led them to develop broader opinions about what is and isnt healthy.

Researchers have explored the perceptions held by therapists regarding marital relationships that are not monogamous, by agreement within the couple. Therapists, psychiatrists, and others in the helping professions view such relationships as inherently dysfunctional and emerging from deep-seated psychopathology and personality disturbance. These viewpoints still persist, despite the increasing occurrence and awareness of nonmonogamous relationships. Many polyamorous and swinging couples have expressed distrust and resentment toward revealing their lifestyle and details of their sexual practices, due to stigma and judgment from society.

The couples I encountered encouraged me to explore this phenomenon further. It struck me how wrong my base assumptions might be, and how those erroneous assumptions could affect my own clinical work. If I held such assumptions, and couples that practiced this lifestyle entered my office, would they tell me? Would I allow them to tell me? At this point, I frankly suspect they would not, and that chances are good Ive had clients who did not disclose their interests in this lifestyle. How is it that the field of health care is so conflicted about this lifestyle that most couples simply refrain from disclosure? How is it that these couples are out there living a lifestyle that is so contrary to core assumptions about love, sexuality, monogamy, and fidelity? Why also are those core assumptions out there? Is this a new lifestyle, fueled by the Internet, or is this something that has been around as long as marriage, and if so, why is it such a secret?