Reading Skin Contact, Watching The Invite, and Rethinking Desire

1+1= Infinity

There’s something happening in culture. Especially when women are allowed to write about desire. Many of us grew up with the idea that we’d meet a man, he’d be our everything, and we’d live happily ever after. This fairy-tale notion is being picked at and prodded from so many directions that it’s pretty clear there isn’t a single way to live and find contentment, joy, and happiness.

There are now more narratives than the fairy tale. Recently, I consumed two stories about ethical non-monogamy. Both from different corners of my world, one a book and the other a film. They aren’t in conversation with each other, and I’ve decided that they should be. The book is Skin Contact by Elisa Faison, and the movie is The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde and written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormick.

Skin Contact is about a couple, Frances and Ben, who, after the loss of Frances’ mom, decide to open their marriage. It tells the story of falling in love with other people while staying in love with your spouse. It reveals what non-monogamy can look like. It’s honest, not romanticized, insanely spicy, and shows what happens when people are open and radically honest with themselves and their primary partners, your partnership can take on any shape.

A passage that I absolutely love from page 18,

…I put two fingers inside her, she went totally silent, and for a second, I worried that she might have stopped breathing. But then I realized that it was just that she had stopped performing for me. Stopped thinking about me at all and started thinking only about herself.

That’s the theme: that in true intimacy, a threesome or a foursome isn’t a performance, it isn’t a notch on a belt, it is a connection. With ethical non-monogamy, there’s no room to hide. The couple needs to be completely in sync, to be in it for the same reason, and all parties involved need to join together without expectations. They aren’t playing out porn or a movie in their head; they are completely present with one another and let it unfold in whatever direction the pleasure takes them.

That’s the core of the wanting. It’s a deep guiding force that’s more in sync with yourself, and as you step into it, your body responds with peace, pleasure, and a sense of connectedness. And if you force something or move in the wrong direction, your body responds with friction.

A week after reading the book, I went to the movies. I had a sitter, no plans, The Invite was playing, and I had no idea what to expect. A couple stuck in a cycle of bickering and bitterness for how their lives turned out get visited by their upstairs neighbors and are invited to a sex party that never happens. And I saw the same thesis.

The film opens up an honesty that the couple desperately needed. They say things that are hard to hear, but the honesty allows them to see each other. A line that Penelope Cruz delivers, as I remember, ”‘This relationship is over. Sometimes you can start a new relationship with the same person”

And somehow, after all of that, it ends slightly hopeful. That there is a future where both can be happy. Is it together, or apart? Well, that isn’t answered. The movie is funny, quirky, and also completely floored me. A smack of reality, or the consequence for not telling your partner your truth, and how, through the pain and the distance, there might be a way back to each other. The inability to relax and have fun, even with other partners, causes neither participant in the relationship to take responsibility for their own misery. That they prefer to stay unhappy rather than name their pain. And when they do, even for a fleeting moment, they find the music.

I’ve been invited to two threesomes in my life. Once when I was in my late 20’s, a couple, the wife recovering from cancer, and the husband a former porn star. We were at the Rose Bar, which was a hot spot at the former Gramercy Park Hotel. They had a table, and the friend I was with told me that the couple was going to proposition me. And they did, each taking time to get to know me, knowing glances between them. I was so incredibly flattered, but I also knew that I didn’t want to be a couple’s third. That I wanted to be in a partnership so intensely that I’d only derive pain by being a surrogate for another couple’s passion.

The second time happened last winter. Just before the holidays, I had a rare night when my son was sleeping at my mom’s. I wanted to spend the night with the man I was casually sleeping with, who was separated but not legally, and still living in his family home. We never get to actually sleep together after sex, and I wanted that intimacy with him. We’d talked about our fantasies. He told me he wanted a threesome, and he decided without me that our one night to have intimacy would be used for a threesome with another woman, with whom he cheated on his wife. A woman I’d never met, and he’d already invited her over to my home.

I got the literal ick.

The feeling I heard about but never truly felt until that moment. I was then clear with him that if we were to do that, we’d have to be an actual we. For me, it needed to be about us exploring our desires together, which would only increase our mutual intimacy. He and I had barely found our intimacy; there were only glimmers of possibility given our insane chemistry.

It was clear he wanted to conquer two women at once. I was clear that I do not want an equilateral triangle. I asked him to leave. Our “whatever it was” turned into a friendship, one built on honesty. We have not been physically intimate again, and he’s finally getting a legal separation from his wife.

Can desire deepen commitment rather than threaten it? And what happens when women stop performing desire and start listening to it? I want to live in a world where men and women can both be free from the constraints that traditional values place on couples. I’ve avoided being in a partnership because it seemed like a prison. Being locked away from what some see as a shameful desire, and that if only I can find someone able to talk about it. To explore with integrity, that we can straddle the line between tradition, exploration, and love. It’s a duality that’s been hard to grasp. And I’m so grateful that through these stories, I’m finally seeing that I’m not alone.

I do not know what my future relationships will look like, but I know I want ethical desire. They aren’t the same thing. Desire isn’t something you can decide in advance. Every relationship will evoke something different. That’s the core of The Wanting.