Insatiable Wives - a Book Review

"Insatiable Wives - Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them" by David J. Ley is one of the very few books to seriously address the subject of trioilism, better known as wife sharing or the hot-wife lifestyle.  And while the treatment is uneven with its personal stories interleaved with history and academic research, it is one of the best sources on this fairly obscure topic so far published.

Actually, the most surprising thing about this book is, what took so long to address the topic?  For decades watching the wife with another man as been the most common scenario submitted to Penthouse Letters.  And questions about being cuckold are among the most common submitted to Dan Savage.  So is David Ley just the first guy with the balls to tackle the topic in a seriously?  Maybe.

And seriously may be generous when it comes to the personal stories, most of which seem to be there as blatantly teasing examples, as if David wanted to make sure and attract the guys of this inclination. And it works, at least for me.

Some are certainly interesting stories, but their selection also clearly demonstrate the weakness of the book - it surprisingly lacks focus and theme.  The author can't seem to decide if he's writing about trioilism, BDSM, cuckoldry or insatiable women.  Even the subtitle bears out his confusion.  Is the topic the women who stray?  Or the men who love them?  For they really ARE two different topics.  These two and many more are covered in this book with uneven application.  At one point, Uri Wernik's work was discussed which is his key to unification, but Ley lets it drop.

Instead, one chapter will have you deep in some cuckolded fantasy, then you get a bucket of cold water with the next chapter trying to guess how women in history might have affected politics.  Still, even the academic chapters steadily become more interesting as they become more useful.  "This Is No Easy Ride" and "A Wild New World of Wife Sharing" are especially good.

In the end, the author gets tied up with all of the "Madonna / Whore" contradictions of our standard narrative so nicely unraveled by "Sex at Dawn" a couple of years later.  In summary, if you're interested in the topic, "Insatiable Wives" is worth the read, but don't forget to follow it up with "Sex at Dawn", which addresses all the issues only touched on by Insatiable Wives.