Question:

I've been married to my husband now for more than 10 years. We live very busy lives and have three children. However, recently we seem to have started talking about our sexual pleasures, fantasies and desires again after we spent some quality time together not that long ago, which sparked up our marriage.

I know it's important to be able to understand one another's sexual side, and what attracts one another — even down to wearing different lingerie for him to spark it up and watching movies with him. To keep sex in our marriage open, my husband and I are open to each other secrets fantasy's desires and recently he told me one of his lust fantasies is to have a third person, a woman, involved for a night.

I am worried if I do fulfil his fantasy he will he want more of it then just one night or might wonder off and seek out more women as I've allowed this in the first place. I am really confused about what I should do. Should I fulfil his fantasy and maybe be hurt from my own mistake? Or could I be wrong and it could turn out to be the spark to revive our marriage?

Response:

It is nice to hear that you are both open about thinking of each other's sexual needs and wanting to fulfil them. And that is really what makes relationships work well. Both of you have your own needs and they are different from each other. Therefore in order to make your partner happy, you need to try to fill most of his needs and for him to make you happy he needs to try to fill most of yours.

Between the two of you, you have to set up a verbal "relationship contract", of the do's and the don'ts within your relationship, including what works well for both of you (not just for one of you). However, an important part of this is to express your needs and then setting up some healthy boundaries around these needs. What I mean by that is you should not fulfil your partner's needs when that means completely forgetting about your own needs, morals and values.

So before consenting to bringing in a third person in the bedroom, I want you to ask yourself some important questions. Why would you consent to it? What would you get out of it? Are you comfortable with it? Would this fulfil your needs as well as his? Is this within your norms and values? Is this crossing the boundaries of your "relationship contract"? How would you feel if that happened? What are the risks?

If you then decide that bringing another woman into the bedroom is a good idea, I would want you to think about the boundaries around setting this up. In open relationships, which are relationships where partners have both agreed to having other sexual partners, the lack of clear boundaries around that situation is what causes intense problems and difficulties.

So when deciding on the clear boundaries of a situation like this, you need to consider what will be allowed and most importantly what will not be allowed and this needs to be clearly defined in order for a situation like that to work well.

Finally, think about whether this is really an essential need of your partner or whether this is just a fantasy. Because remember, fantasies are called fantasies, because they are just that: a fantasy, not a reality. And for a fantasy to stay a fantasy, that is completely okay.

For more information please visit the Sexual Health Australia website.