“My First Threesome with Them Was a Religious Experience”: A Mixed-Methods Study of Symbiosexual Experiences

Abstract

People of diverse backgrounds and identities report experiencing attraction to the energy, multidimensionality, and power created by people in relationships (Johnston, 2024a). Due to cultural privileging of monosexuality and monogamy, and stigma specifically within polyamory communities against people interested in sex and relationships with couples, very little is known about this population. Lack of recognition and validation negatively impacts those who experience this attraction, known as symbiosexual attraction (Johnston & Schoenfeld, 2021). I conducted a mixed-methods analysis of secondary data from The Pleasure Study (Harvey et al., 2023) to investigate the sexual and romantic experiences of this population. I found that people who experience symbiosexual attraction engage in a variety non-monogamous, multi-person sexual and relationship dynamics. Those who engage in these dynamics specifically with couples report a variety of unique and heightened experiences, both gratifying and undesirable. These findings fill a gap in the literature on this largely unexamined population and challenge the stigma in the polyamorous community as well as within our broader mononormative culture against sex and relationships with established couples which may be preventing people from engaging in ways that best align with their desires and center their pleasure.