Book Day 23: Case Study of Mushy Submissive Threesome
Katie comes over to visit a couple. She’d hooked up with the guy before, but now he has a new girlfriend. Katie is married herself, to a woman, and so is pretty bi.
She doesn’t know exactly what their dynamic is, but is game to vibe.
Tom and Sarah have been dating for a few years, and started off open when they got together.
Tom always just vibes with people to see what they want to do.
Katie comes over. She is vibing as she knows she’s the third wheel, and wants to see what everyone is comfortable with.
Tom vibes, hoping to make Katie comfortable, given that she is the guest.
Katie vibes, hoping to make Tom and Sarah comfortable, given that she’s the third wheel.
Sarah vibes, given that there has been no additional instruction, this is Tom’s guest, and she has no idea really who Katie even is.
So we have three people who are all “vibing”
Katie is trying to make Tom and Sarah comfortable
Tom is trying to make Katie and Sarah comfortable, (Katie as a guest, Sarah because he doesn’t want to piss off his gf)
Sarah wants to make Tom and Katie comfortable (Katie as someone who might be uncomfortable, who might want to get to know her, Tom as someone whose vibe she doesn’t want to kill given this was his suggestion).
So we have three people, all trying to make the other two happy.
Sometimes this ends up fine. Often, without a leader, this ends up being a disaster.
You see, these three people are not actually “just vibing.”
They each actually have goals. And they each actually have different goals.
Sarah’s goal is to help Tom have a nice time, and not seem too scary to Katie, given that Sarah is an intrusion into Tom and Katie’s existing dynamic, casual as it may be.
Katie’s goal is to seem cool and “game” given that she’s entering an explicitly sexual situation with a new girlfriend who she does not know.
Tom’s goal is to make sure both women are happy.
How does this lead to conflict?
Let’s map out the potential lines of conflict. People have chill goals around making other people happy, outlined above. But let’s outline additional goals, that might be secondary to “make everyone happy and have a good time” but that perhaps still should be specified.
Katie already knows Tom, but has never met Sarah. So Katie, entering a sexy situation, and already having a sexy rapport with Tom, will be flirty with Tom unless she makes a specific agenda to get to know Sarah a bit more first. She came because she’s into Tom. She might be into Sarah, and actually be into Sarah more, but she came for Tom in that he’s the person she knows and he invited her.
So her goal is not to make Sarah unhappy, while having a good time with Tom, and potentially a good time with Sarah too.
Tom sees Sarah every day. He doesn’t see Katie much. He hasn’t seen her in a year. He and Katie aren’t particularly close, and so he wants to make sure that she has a good time so that he doesn’t lose the connection with her. He also doesn’t want to do anything that makes Sarah too uncomfortable because he has to live with her.
From this point we can name some tensions.
Tom wants to have as much fun with Katie as possible, but not piss Sarah off.
Katie wants to have as much fun with Tom as possible, but not piss Sarah off.
Sarah wants to not ruin the vibe, and also have a cool night with Tom and his friend.
We see that in this situation, the person most likely to end up with implicit leadership is Sarah, because the two other people do not want to piss her off, so they’d defer to her. (Or at least make some impressions that they are deferring to her.) Meanwhile, given that she is the one with the most information asymmetry about what the other two actually want, she has the least information about how to make the situation good for the others.
The decisions she makes are therefore likely to be contested (and probably not even register as decisions, given that she’s vibing, and her explicit goal is not to impose on the dynamic), thus likely to put her in the position of “ruining the vibe” — the exact thing she does not want.
Thus in “trying to make Sarah happy” there is a reasonably good chance that she will end up extremely unhappy, and also blamed for it, as a structure of likely possibilities.
Without leadership, the “chill vibes” and “everyone being chill” actually ends up being 3 people in tension with two other people.
When you have a lot of tension, that can quickly be a lot of not fun.
If one person implicitly takes leadership by having a preference about something, or a clear desire, and the other two people follow, it can be a lot of fun and the initial lack of leadership isn’t a problem.
But also, if one person takes leadership (implicitly or explicitly) by having a preference or a clear desire, and one of the other two people do not follow, that can actually cause a lot of trouble as the people strive to both do their desires and appear “chill” while doing it.
For example, if Sarah starts off by saying she wants to do something way less hardcore than what Katie and Tom had implicitly hoped for, probably Tom would step in on Katie’s behalf to do something different, or just mope around, confusing Sarah deeply, who wanted to be fun and chill and just made a suggestion. Then Tom would not want to lose face in front of the two people, and is likely to start being sullen and inactive in some confusing way, leaving Katie and Sarah kind of alone with each other even though they don’t really know each other.
Or, Katie starts off by making some bid, but then that bid is actually too hardcore for Sarah. Tom is reactive to the bid in some hardcore way, and Sarah sees this new side of Tom. She doesn’t really know what to do. Tom doesn’t really know what to do either, because he doesn’t want to deescalate, and is enjoying the flirting thing, but also doesn’t want Sarah to think that he is just ignoring her or her concerns. An “Are you ok” spiral might start with Tom not actually being interested in the answer or guiding the situation into a situation that would be ok for Sarah. Later he would probably blame her for either not being communicative enough, or for being too communicative “at the wrong time.”
The really sucky version of this scenario can be avoided by not scoffing at the idea of having legible plans, and not believing that “just vibing” is going to always save the day.