I remember being at a university party when I was 21 where two straight girls snogged for ages in the corner while their boyfriends watched with amusement and more than a little lust.
I asked them the next day why they did it. ‘To turn the guys on, of course,’ they said.
Let me be clear where I stand on this. If you’re in a monogamous relationship, engaging in any sort of sexual activity with anyone else, regardless of gender, is cheating.
However, it’s not difficult to see how women end up thinking their partner would view them having sex with a woman as a titillation rather than betrayal.
Some men are known to beg their wives and girlfriends for threesomes (nearly always the female-female-male combination). They also make claims about wanting to watch their partners with another woman.
But here’s the clincher: fantasies and reality are very different beasts.
As these women found out the hard way.
Women have learned the hard way after their partner reacted badly to a same-sex encounter (picture posed by models)
I looked over thinking he’d be turned on… Instead I saw anger
Anna Marie, now 39, was 26 when she kissed a gay friend as a laugh at a party in front of her boyfriend. It ended their year-long relationship
It was one of those drunken, funny nights when anything goes. Well, that’s what I thought.
My partner and I went to a party at the house of some new(ish) friends of ours. They were great fun, there were loads of people there and it, predictably, all got a bit rowdy.
I was really into my boyfriend. A year was a long time for me to be in a relationship, and I was convinced he was The One. I was keen to have kids and very much in love with him. But I was still a party girl and being in love didn’t have to stop me having fun.
I loved sex and he did too, and I genuinely thought what happened would turn him on rather than end the relationship. He was also always jokingly trying to talk me into having a threesome, so he should take some blame for what happened.
Two of the people the couple had invited were lesbian. Really fun and very attractive. The men spent the whole night saying stupid things like: ‘What a waste. Let me try to convert you.’ It became a running joke.
I got on well with them and was sitting with them when my boyfriend said, ‘We might not be able to convert you but by the looks of it, you’re converting my girlfriend.’
He was only joking but everyone pounced on it and started chanting, ‘Kiss her! Kiss her.’ The lesbians laughed but then the one sitting closest to me grabbed me and started kissing me.
I was drunk and everyone was laughing and clapping, so I kissed her back. It wasn’t a particularly long kiss, but it was a proper kiss. I felt flushed afterwards but quickly pulled myself together and laughed along with everyone else.
I looked over at my boyfriend expecting to see him laughing. Instead, I saw anger. He looked like he was about to explode. I went over to ask what was wrong and he insisted we leave immediately. I agreed because I didn’t want a scene and could see that was on the cards.
He didn’t speak at all on the way back but once inside our flat he started shouting at me: How dare I humiliate him. I was clearly a lesbian and how dare I show him up like that.
I told him it was just a laugh and I thought he’d find it titillating not threatening. Wrong thing to say. He told me he was a ‘normal’ straight man. Why would he want to see his girlfriend with another woman?
British relationship expert Tracey Cox says that if you’re in a monogamous relationship, any kind of sexual activity with another person is cheating – even if they’re the same sex
I was really confused by this. I asked him why he’d talked about a threesome so often, and he looked at me astonished and said he’d only been joking around. He went on and on about how I was a closet lesbian and how everyone could see how much I’d enjoyed it.
We were both drunk and angry, and there was no point arguing, so we went to sleep (in separate rooms). The next morning, I went in to apologise but he was still righteous and on his high horse about it all.
I was annoyed by this stage. Seriously, it was just a kiss and done in front of him as a laugh, It wasn’t cheating because I didn’t do anything behind his back. It didn’t make me gay and he was totally overreacting.
We broke up over it and I was devastated for a month or two, then decided I was better off without him. He was incredibly judgemental and homophobic about it all. It didn’t paint him in a good light. The upside is I am still best friends with the two lesbians ten years on, so it was all worth it. No more kissing though! And no, I wasn’t converted.
‘What can she possibly have that I don’t?’
Laura, 34, slept with a female friend and didn’t tell her husband. Years later, he found out
I’d been married to my husband for four years when I had a sexual encounter with a woman I met at the school gates.
We became close friends – our kids had playdates. Then her partner left her for someone else, and she couldn’t afford to live in the area by herself. She bought a place on the other side of London. We said we’d still see each other but we were both worried that wouldn’t happen.
We had one last night together, at her place, with both the kids sleeping over somewhere else. My husband was working late. He always worked late.
I’m not sure how it happened. But we drank a lot, got very sad that we wouldn’t see each other all the time and had a big hug. We put our foreheads together and then, totally unexpectedly, she kissed me. I think she was as shocked as I was that she’d done it. I knew she’d slept with women in her youth, but she’d been straight for over a decade.
She apologised profusely but I told her to stop apologising. I said I’d never been with another woman and had always wanted to. So, we slept together, and it was amazing – still is the best sex I’ve ever had.
I didn’t tell my husband: it was my secret. My friend and I never repeated the experience: we weren’t embarrassed but didn’t talk about it again. I still see her but not often.
About four years after it happened, my husband and I had a discussion about what makes someone gay or straight. I said women are more likely to experiment with same-sex sex because they’re less hung up on being judged by it. Plus, all women have fantasies about sleeping with another woman.
He looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘Have you ever slept with a woman?’. I hesitated a second too long. He pulled back, looked at me and said, ‘I knew it! You slept with Jo didn’t you?’. I was so shocked that he somehow knew, my face told him all he needed to know.
I asked why he thought that, and he said he’d had a strong feeling when I came home that night.
I couldn’t see any point in denying it at that point, so I told him what had happened and tried to make him understand that I didn’t consider it cheating because it was my best friend and a woman. It happened once and I didn’t want to put the marriage at risk for something that wasn’t a threat to it.
He was OK at the time. Not happy but OK.
But things got worse over the next few weeks. He couldn’t let it go. He said it made him question everything about our marriage. He’d always thought I was ‘too mannish’. I’m a strong person who likes to be the one in control. He admired women who let ‘the man’ be the boss. Simpering, I’d call them – he’d say they were feminine.
He kept saying, ‘What can she possibly have that I don’t? She doesn’t even have a penis’.
Looking back, I can’t understand how I ended up with him in the first place. I’m a curious person and he had no curiosity about anything at all, including sex.
It was wrong what I did, but it should have caused a massive argument, then an honest conversation about sex and finished with a heartfelt apology from me. Not a split then divorce.
Friends said turn it around: Would you have stayed if he’d slept with another man? My honest answer is no. There’s something different about that, surely?
Two women together is most men’s fantasy. I know loads of women who are bi-curious and have either fantasised or thought about sleeping with another woman. A few of my friends have and enjoyed it. But it didn’t make them question their sexuality. They recognised it as sexual curiosity, that’s all.
But two men experimenting – that’s totally different. That’s still such a taboo for straight men and I don’t know one woman who would find it a turn on to think of their man with another man, though all my male friends would be aroused at the thought of their wives with another woman.
I don’t know why we think two women having sex is titillating and two men aren’t but that’s the way it is.
Visit traceycox.com for more info on Tracey’s podcast, SexTok, her books and products (sold exclusively through Lovehoney)