It’s interesting to consider how our dating habits have changed in the past decade. I would argue that the currently accepted use of online dating, through sites and apps, has led to a sexual revolution that rivals the one in the 1960s, spearheaded by the newly minted contraceptive pill. Then, people could have far more sexual liberation without fears of pregnancy – now, we can connect with people and share our deepest intimate secrets, fetishes and desires and be met with an enthusiastic “me too!” instead of uncomfortable looks and judgment. It actually is a wonder of the modern age.
It has allowed people of all sexual orientations, ages and genders to meet people. Some dating sites are designed for the LGBT+ community, some are marketed to boomers, millennials or Gen X, and some (3FUN for example) serve swingers looking for threesomes.
Traditionally, polyamory has been a bit of a punchline. Jokes about key parties are easy fodder for comedians, and anyone who takes it more seriously looks like a weirdo, a hippy or a cult leader where one man is surrounded by younger, more attractive women who swoon over him with vacant eyes. The thing is, this isn’t really the case.
Polyamory is a legitimate sexual orientation and just as complicated and varied as any other. It follows, therefore, that something that has typically been associated with shame and misconceptions would find a home online where people can be open, safe from judgement and able to find willing participants.
Background on 3FUN.
Enter 3FUN. Launched in 2015, just when dating apps were starting to take off, the site is designed to help couples match up with “thirds” so all three people can become romantically and sexually involved. You can use it as a single person looking to link with a couple or as a couple (the account is shared) connecting with singles.
Then you can match and take things from there. The 3FUN app is keen to stress that it’s totally safe and they work hard to protect data, so you can make sure that there aren’t any embarrassing leaks where your in-laws find out what you get up to with their offspring.
Signing up for 3FUN.
With that in mind, I decided to sign up and write a 3FUN review. Apparently, the signup process is the same for singletons as it is for couples, so I created an account for one to save time. The first thing was the option to sign in with Facebook. They claim that they won’t post anything, but that certainly set off alarm bells so I decided to use my phone number instead. Aside from anything else, I don’t want to deal with that kind of targeted ad.
The site then asked who I was. The options were actually really inclusive: single male, single female, male + female couple, male + male couple, female + female couple, trans woman, trans man and non-binary. I clicked “single female” and moved on to “basic information”: nickname, birthday and orientation – again, pretty inclusive: straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, queer, heteroflexible and bicurious.
“Bisexual” selected, I moved on to choosing who I was looking for and decided to try all options to gain the best understanding of the app. Weirdly, I could choose single people, which presumably is not especially conducive to threesomes, but whatever.
The site wanted me to share something “real and interesting” about myself in at least 10 characters. I decided to add that I can lick my elbow because that can be suggestive, or not, depending on what kind of person you are. Then email addresses, photos (no pornography allowed, which, ok?) and a page that allowed me to block my phone contacts from seeing my usage of the site.
I’ve written about things like this before and I’m certainly in favour: I don’t want my boss to know that I use the 3FUN app or my brothers to get shown my Tinder profile whilst I’m home for holidays. Finally, there was some photo verification and I was able to connect with other users.
Interaction with users.
My first suggestion was a lovely looking bald guy called “KinkyFuhReak” who is apparently into all kinds of filth, bicurious and single. He’s also 55 miles away, which is quite a distance to travel on an app for threesomes for just one single person. Next was Mark, who is straight and in a Male + Female couple and describes himself as “open minded”.
His profile contained a link to his girlfriend, who is gorgeous and whose bio gives a little more information about herself and her life. Whilst I was scrolling through her page I received a message from someone whose profile I had not come across, asking if I would lick their asshole since I can lick elbows.
Harassment.
This was unexpected. Firstly, that’s an extremely explicit first message to receive without any sort of prior introduction, and secondly, it felt extremely odd to have someone message me without any sort of vetting or agreement to match. In fact, it made me wonder what the point of matching would be because presumably you could chat straight away without bothering to officially connect. Creepy harassment aside, this felt like a design flaw.
Interacting with couples.
Some couples didn’t bother with separate accounts, like one I found where two people in their late 20s wanted to find a couple to have sex in the same room as them, with no sharing of partners. Each to their own, of course, but if you find an alley near a club on a Friday night you’ll be able to do that with far less hassle.
VIP members.
Naturally, the 3FUN app has a VIP membership to entice people into giving them money. With the VIP, you can see who liked you, which has always struck me as a bit of an ego trip because the only reason you would want to do this is to see who liked you but you didn’t like, because if the feeling was mutual you’d eventually connect with each other.
A look at the website didn’t offer any enlightenment about what else the VIP membership included: literally, all it says is “enjoy all premium services” and nothing else. The 3FUN free trial seems to include everything that you’d actually need to use the app, and I’m not sure that my experience would have been enhanced by the 3FUN VIP membership.
3FUN website.
In fact, 3FUN’s website generally was a little bare. Most people would, I imagine, want more information before discussing possible asshole licking online but the only thing forthcoming on the website was that it was a threesome app, and app for threesomes. Also, they misspelt “ethical” as “ethnical” which is a pretty bad mistake to make.
Closing the account.
The final straw was being told that my photograph failed the verification check. As I don’t believe in catfishing, I did actually use a picture of my real face and then verified it with another picture of my face – no makeup, hair tied back, but still definitely me. Perhaps their technology isn’t that good, but they wanted different pictures and at this stage, I’d had enough. It was easy enough to delete my account. They asked for a reason, offered to “pause” instead of permanently delete my account and then took my profile down. This seems to be the end of my 3FUN app time.
Conclusion.
My final thoughts are that the 3FUN app might advertise itself as discreet, sexy and safe, but the end product is a sparsely populated dating site with a collection of unphotogenic folk from all walks of life. If I had a fantasy of being whisked away by a wealthy couple who wanted to adore and spoil me, fuck me and then remain on Christmas card terms for a few years, this was disillusioning.
For me, this wasn’t the top swinger app, or the best swinger app: it was the only swinger dating app, and it made me want to get off the swing and just go to a sex club in Berlin, instead. There just aren’t any apps like 3FUN, so I guess it’s both the best and worst at what it does. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed my experience, although part of that is because of the awful message I received. It wasn’t the least pleasant way to spend an afternoon, though.
Rachel Hall, M.A., completed her education in English at the University of Pennsylvania and received her master’s degree in family therapy from Northern Washington University. She has been actively involved in the treatment of anxiety disorders, depression, OCD, and coping with life changes and traumatic events for both families and individual clients for over a decade. Her areas of expertise include narrative therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and therapy for traumatic cases. In addition, Rachel conducts workshops focusing on the psychology of positive thinking and coping skills for both parents and teens. She has also authored numerous articles on the topics of mental health, stress, family dynamics and parenting.
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