Hotwifing came up in yesterday's SLLOTD...

After my own affair I became a prostitute—with his befuddled blessing—but all of that is over. Now he wants me to be a hotwife. I want to be his sub. He has issues with being a Dom and I have issues fucking strangers.

...but at least one reader has issues with the term:

I've been with my husband 16 years, married for eight, open the whole time (starting as an idealistic long distance college kid relationship, we placed our earnest emphasis on trust, honesty and loyalty over monogamy—everything since has flowed from that). Pre-kids, we each did some fooling around/sleeping with friends, separately and together, exploring kinks along the way. Following a seven year "dormancy" of our non-monogamous shenanigans (and, largely, our own marital sex life), spring has sprung. With a vengeance. And we are getting off on each other and the reality and possibility of sleeping with others, FWB and strangers.

I write to take issue with the term "hotwifing" as inaccurate and stuck in antifeminist/heteronormative thinking. My spouse gets off on me getting excited for a potential date. He has the impulse to "claim" me before and after; I like the thrill of his making me tell him what I've done and thought. But the inverse is true too: I have the impulse to claim him, I make him tell me what he's done and thought, and we share the thrill. And I would like to think that that symmetry is the result of the 18 years of effort we've put into good communication and getting over cultural hang ups. So: can we change the language, please? "Hotwifing" makes him the agent and purpose of my sexual experiences. And that's not what it feels like at all. "Hotspousing" sounds like Sriracha or firefighting, so I would propose "hotmating"—both mates feeling hotter as the result of some "mating competition" frisson.

Here's another argument: there's some pretty interesting research on female arousal that jives with my experience and says adding expectations to fulfill can seriously put on the sexual arousal "brakes."

Nonmonogamous thoughts and shenanigans and sharing them back with my spouse felt like it helped bring sexual agency and arousal back to me after kids. Hearing it described as "hotwifing" feels like it takes that away.

Hoping Our Terminology My Expand

Thanks for writing, HOTME, and I agree that we need a term for the kind of egalitarian, opposite-sex, non-monogamous, mating-competition-frisson-for-all relationship you describe. "Hotwifing" clearly isn't the right term for what you're doing—and consequently it rubs you the wrong way—because hotwifing isn't what you're doing.

hotwife—A married woman who has the feedom in her marriage to pursue sexual relationships with men other than her husband. Her husband has full knowledge of her activities and consents to them.

In most "hotwife" couples the husband doesn't seek other female partners. His wife screws around, with his consent, and he enjoys hearing about and facilitating her sexual adventures; it's cuckolding without the overlay/frisson of erotic humiliation and/or displacement. You guys are in an open relationship—or a reopening one (congrats on the sprunging of spring)—and you're both free to pursue other partners. So I can see why the term would bother you: it doesn't actually describe what you're doing. But just because "hotwife" doesn't describe what you're doing, HOTME, it doesn't follow that the term is inaccurately applied in all cases. There are plenty of hotwife couples out there. You're not one of them.

All that said...

We do need a term for couples like you guys—marriages/relationships in which both spouses are equally free to seek outside sex and where both partners are equally aroused by the other's adventures—and hotmating seems like a good option.