Ancient history Traditional ideas of the
Abrahamic faiths and
Christian views on marriage are prevalent in literature and media discussing this topic. Patriarchs
Abraham and
Sarah had an arrangement with Sarah's
handmaiden Hagar. Interpretations of this vary, for example Judaism and Islam treat it much more like a
polygamous situation, whereas Christian sources sometimes discuss the
love triangle aspect of it, which are not directly analogous with a ménage à trois. Similarly when
Jacob married
Leah and
Rachel, the polygamy and love triangle perspectives are well researched compared to the ménage à trois.
Sappho's writings influenced the early Christian church, and the topic of
lesbianism within the ménage à trois framework of
Christian couples began to be explored in post-
Renaissance literature within
Christian media. The regent's relationship with Mengden caused much disgust in Russia, and many believed her preoccupation with her relationships with Lynar and Mengden at the expense of governing made her a danger to the state. She was later overthrown in a coup. In his youth, thirteen years her junior, the French philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was a
protégé of the French noblewoman
Françoise-Louise de Warens, who would become his first lover. He lived with her at her estate on and off since his teenage years, and in 1732, after he reached the age of 20, she initiated a sexual relationship with him while also being open about her sexual involvement with the steward of her house. The German intellectual
Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer (1770–1825), her husband Mattheus Rodde and the French philosopher
Charles de Villers also had a
ménage à trois from 1794 until her husband's death in 1810. The British Admiral
Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) was in a
ménage à trois with his lover
Emma, Lady Hamilton, and her husband
William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples, from 1799 until Nelson's death in 1805. At the age of 16, in 1813, the future author of
Frankenstein,
Mary Godwin (1797–1851), eloped with her to-be husband
Percy Bysshe Shelley and engaged in a
ménage with
Claire Clairmont, future lover of
Lord Byron, with whom the Shelleys would later have an extensive relationship. The Italian composer
Luigi Ricci (1805–1859) married Ludmila Stolz, while still maintaining a relationship with her identical twin sister Francesca. He had a child with each. The political philosopher
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) lived in a
ménage à trois with his mistress
Mary Burns and her sister
Lizzie. The Belgian artist/illustrator
Félicien Rops (1833–1898) maintained a remarkable ménage à trois with two sisters, Aurélie and Léontine Dulac, who ran a successful fashion house in Paris, "Maison Dulac". They each bore a child with him (one died at an early age) and they lived together for over 25 years until his death. The author
E. Nesbit (1858–1924) lived with her husband Hubert Bland and his mistress Alice Hoatson, and raised their children as her own. In 1913,
psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875–1961) began a relationship with a young patient,
Toni Wolff, which lasted for some decades.
Deirdre Bair, in her biography of Carl Jung, describes his wife
Emma Jung as bearing up nobly as her husband insisted that Toni Wolff become part of their household, saying that Wolff was "his other wife". The Russian and Soviet poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) lived with
Lilya Brik, who was considered his muse, and her husband
Osip Brik, an
avant garde writer and critic. The English poet, novelist and critic
Robert Graves (1895–1985) and his wife Nancy Nicholson for some years attempted a triadic relationship called "The Trinity" with Laura Riding, a woman that Graves met and fell in love with in 1926. This triangle became the "Holy Circle" with the addition of Irish poet
Geoffrey Phibbs, who himself was still married to Irish artist
Norah McGuinness. As recounted by the author and journalist
Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) in
The Invisible Writing, a conspicuous fixture of the intellectual life of 1930s
Budapest was a threesome—a husband, his wife and the wife's lover—who were writers and literary critics and had the habit of every day spending many hours, the three of them together, at one of the Hungarian capital's well known cafes. As noted by Koestler, their relationship was so open and lasted so many years that it became no longer the subject of gossip. The Italian surrealist artist
Leonor Fini (1907–1996) sustained a
ménage à trois until her death with Italian
Count Stanislao Lepri and Polish writer
Konstanty Jelenski in Paris. The relationship is believed to have impacted Fini's work, as she depicts gender neutral individuals or figures where traditional gender roles are reversed with a passive male and dominant female, such as
Woman Seated on Naked Man (1942). The writer
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) and his first wife Maria engaged in a
ménage with Mary Hutchinson, a friend of
Clive Bell. Huxley coined the term "
omnifutuent", referring to
bisexuality. From 1939, the
Nobel Prize winning German physicist
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), his wife, Annemarie Bertel, and his mistress, Hilde March, had a
ménage à trois.
Charles Moulton, the creator of
Wonder Woman, lived with two women, his wife
Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and
Olive Byrne, until he died. Charles had two children with each. Elizabeth supported the family financially while Olive stayed home to take care of all four children. The French President
François Mitterrand, his wife
Danielle Mitterrand and her companion Jean Balenci, in a
ménage à trois which constituted Mitterrand's 'official' family (for their close circle) until the start of his presidency in 1981. Some 21st-century examples of notable triads include
Seven Lions, who lives with his wife Emma and their girlfriend Courtney Simmons;
Bella Thorne, who was publicly in a throuple with rapper
Mod Sun and influencer
Tana Mongeau from 2017 to 2019;
Frankie Grande, a gay actor, describes living in a gay triad and ''
RuPaul's Drag Race'' contestant
Derrick Barry and his partners Nick San Pedro and Mackenzie Clauda, a fellow drag queen better known as Alaska Thunderfuck.
Cultural influence Folie à Deux winery has a popular set of
wines labeled as Ménage à Trois. In the
Seinfeld TV series,
season 6, episode 11, titled "The Switch," Jerry and George use this term as they devise a solution to address challenges in their relationships with women.
Wonder Woman is based on two women that were in a real life ménage à trois, as featured in
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, the creator of the comic,
William Moulton Marston, and his legal wife,
Elizabeth Holloway Marston, had a polyamorous life partner,
Olive Byrne. ==See also==