My ultimate fantasy is watching my boyfriend have sex with another man. Welcome to How I Do It, the series in which we give you a seven-day sneak peek into the sex life of a stranger. This week, we hear from Ottilie, a 26-year-old English graduate who lives in Birmingham with her boyfriend of three years, Matt.
‘We moved in together not long after graduating, and from the outside we probably look painfully normal,’ she tells Metro. ‘But people would never suspect what turns me on.’ While Ottilie is heterosexual, her boyfriend is bisexual, and over the last two years she has realised she is incredibly turned on by encouraging him to flirt with, kiss, and sometimes sleep with other men — although flirting is currently as far as they have gone.
‘Most people would immediately assume there’s something wrong underneath it,’ she adds. ‘Like I must secretly feel insecure or not enough, but honestly it feels like the opposite. The excitement comes from trust more than anything else.’ It did not come out of the blue; in her past relationships Ottilie would occasionally feel jealous in a way that blurred into attraction. ‘I never explored it because those relationships weren’t emotionally open enough to survive conversations like that,’ she explains. ‘This is the first relationship where I have ever felt safe enough to actually say those thoughts out loud without immediately worrying I would be judged for them.’
Monday
We both work from home today so there is a weird atmosphere in the flat where we are meant to be productive, but instead we are constantly distracting each other. By lunchtime we have both fully lost concentration and end up talking about the holiday we have booked to Barcelona. Matt jokes that I will spend the entire holiday trying to set him up with men in bars, and honestly… he is probably right. In the evening I show him random men on Instagram I think he will find attractive because I love watching his reactions. Instead of jealousy, I get a rush knowing he feels comfortable enough to openly look at other people in front of me. Soon the conversation stops feeling hypothetical, and he kisses me halfway through describing a guy he fancies. We end up having sex our favourite way. He leans over me in missionary, pinning my hips lightly against the bed while I wrap my legs around him. This is always how we start and end, orgasming together in unison. The entire time I keep thinking about the conversations we have been having. There is something about hearing him openly describe attraction to other men that makes him seem even more confident and attractive to me physically. Afterwards we stay awake talking for another hour because neither of us want the mood to end.
Tuesday
After work I meet a few friends for drinks and the conversation turns to relationship stuff. One of them complains about her boyfriend liking girls’ photos on Instagram and I nearly laugh because meanwhile I am literally sending my boyfriend men I think he would fancy. The first moment I realised this turned me on was about a year into our relationship. We were out with friends and a man at the bar kept obviously flirting with Matt all night. I remember expecting myself to feel threatened, but instead I could not stop watching them interact. They kept leaning closer together when they spoke, and every time the guy touched his arm, my stomach flipped in this way I could not understand. We got home afterwards and had some of the best sex we had had in months because I was so affected by the attention he had been getting. That was the moment I realised this was not just a passing fantasy. When I get home, Matt tells me a guy at the gym had been flirting with him earlier that day. I ask for details: What did he look like? Was he confident? Did you flirt back? Did you realise he was flirting? The more details he gives, the more ridiculously turned on I get by the whole thing. We spend most of the evening on the sofa with him retelling the conversation while I listen way too carefully. The exciting part is not ‘losing’ him to someone else. It is knowing he could have attention from other people and still comes home to me afterwards. Still chooses me. That is the part that gets me every time.
Wednesday
The day rolls by and when evening hits we cook dinner together, open a bottle of wine and talk about our boundaries for the Barcelona trip the entire evening. It is not serious; we are just checking in with each other and working out what feels exciting. I think people imagine open relationships are chaotic and impulsive, but ours involves a lot of communication. The boundaries side of things has been a big learning curve. We realised pretty quickly that fantasy is easy but reality needs structure. Our main rule is nothing happens without us talking about it first. No secrecy, no disappearing off with someone impulsively and pretending it ‘just happened’ afterwards. Sex itself does not actually feel like the biggest boundary to me weirdly enough — emotional dishonesty would be far harder for me to deal with. What would hurt is feeling excluded rather than feeling jealous. We discuss everything, from whether we would rather things happen separately or together to what happens if one of us suddenly feels weird halfway through something. Matt admits he still worries about accidentally pushing me too far emotionally, but as long as we are always talking I do not see how that could happen. We get into bed and watch some straight porn together but I barely pay attention to the women. It is always the men being wanted that gets me. Seeing confidence, attention, tension.
Thursday
Tonight, Matt goes out for drinks with colleagues, including one man he has admitted he finds attractive. Before he leaves, I joke he should flirt a bit if the opportunity comes up. He asks multiple times if I am sure and I tell him I am. At midnight he comes home slightly tipsy with this smug grin. He spent most of the night talking one-on-one with his crush, and at some point his colleague touched his arm and joked he was ‘dangerously charming’. I can feel myself getting turned on as he speaks. At one point Matt admits he had wondered what would have happened if he had stayed out longer with him. The rest of the night feels very charged after that. Matt tells me I look flustered, and on that note it is super late, so I decide to head to bed. He drunkenly falls onto the mattress beside me and is snoring in no time.
Friday
I feel a little unsettled today, because the reality of our sexy holiday is getting very real now. Now my fantasies feel possible, little insecurities appear too. I would be lying if I said I never feel intimidated sometimes. I spend the day half-working, half obsessing, and when the evening comes, Matt makes it clear he is in the mood. We have sex, but this time it feels softer and reassuring. He pulls me into his lap while we kiss, and slowly moves my hands to the back of his head. I give his hair a slight tug and that is when my panties were moved to the side. We f*** with them still wrapped around my hips as I sit on him. He finishes in me while we watch ourselves in the wardrobe mirror. I think we both needed it after spending the day slightly in our heads about everything.
Saturday
Today is a lazy day in bed, and in the evening we order a takeaway. We spend most of the night half lying on each other in bed talking rubbish and occasionally drifting back into conversations about attraction and sex without even meaning to. At one point, Matt admits he likes the confidence boost he gets from male and female attention. He feels he spent years trying not to seem ‘too bisexual’ in past relationships but now suddenly he does not have to edit himself around me at all. I get a bit emotional hearing it, and that makes me happy. While I have only ever fantasised about it until now, I ask Matt if he would actually want me there watching if something happened with another man, and he says it would make it very exciting. Planning all this makes me feel emotionally close to him. I have never talked this openly with anyone in my life about sex, attraction, or jealousy.
Sunday
It is a quiet morning until Matt mentions the guy from the gym had been flirting with him for weeks, not just the other day. He says it smugly because he knows exactly what reaction he will get out of me. All day I imagine the tiny moments between them. Lingering eye contact. Little comments that sound innocent but obviously are not. That weird tension when two people know they fancy each other but neither one is fully saying it yet. I enjoy imagining it — not in a detached fantasy way either. It feels weirdly personal and intense. A few months ago conversations like this probably would have terrified me. Now they have become part of our relationship somehow. Getting into bed I find myself genuinely excited for our Barcelona holiday and all that we will get to explore — I have a feeling it will bring us even closer together.
