Ménage à trois

Ménage à trois is the French term describing a relationship or domestic arrangement in which three people share a sexual relationship.

Term

The French phrase ménage, (household) à, (for) trois, (three) literally translates as "household of three." A ménage à trois is simply put, a romantic relationship in which three people, such as a married couple and a lover, live together and have sexual relations, otherwise known as a threesome, double penetration^[1].

A living arrangement comprising three people in a sexual relationship. Alternatively, a sexual liaison between such a group of people^[2].

Examples

An example would be Emma Hamilton, her husband, and Horatio Nelson. Another example is Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the Duke of Devonshire, and Lady Elizabeth Foster. Sometimes the term is also used to describe any sex act involving three people, otherwise known as a threesome.

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.
Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roché, adapted and filmed in 1961 by François Truffaut.
David Crosby's song about ménage à trois, "Triad" (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
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.
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 This 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 This 1990 book by Michael Cunningham centers for the most part around a ménage à trois.
Three of Hearts (1993), directed by Yurek Bogayevicz.
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), 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 disfunctional 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 Scarlett Johansson.
The 2008 film The Duchess, based on the biography by Amanda Foreman of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire who ends up in a ménage à trois with her husband and her best friend Lady Elizabeth Foster
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.

Ménage à trois

Term

Examples

In fiction

See also

References

Further reading