Thomas Middleditch will be the first to confess that he and his wife, Mollie Gates, have a “nontraditional” relationship.
The Silicon Valley actor, 37, revealed in an interview with Playboy on Tuesday, September 17, that he and his wife of four years are active swingers.
“I don’t know how much I can say, because I don’t want my wife to be mad at me,” he said. “Only after I got married was I like, ‘Mollie, I’m sorry, but we have to get nontraditional here.’ To her credit, instead of saying ‘F–k you, I’m out,’ she was like, ‘Let’s figure this out.’”
The HBO star, who credits the lifestyle for bettering his relationship, explained that he and Gates have different sexual preferences, which is why swinging works for them.
“To be honest, swinging has saved our marriage,” he said. “We have different speeds, and we argue over it constantly, but it’s better than feeling unheard and alone and that you have to scurry in the shadows. By the way, it’s now called being ‘part of the lifestyle.’ The term swinging is old.”
The Emmy nominee made it clear that he wasn’t always into swinging but became interested in it when he saw the romance in his previous relationships fade away.
“I self-deprecatingly call myself a pervert, but that’s not what it is. I just like it. I’m sexual,” he said. “I’d always thought I was a romantic and that when I fall in love, that stuff fades away. It does for some years — enough to be like, ‘I should get married, and I’ll be different.’ But it’s part of me. If that’s part of your being and it feels important to you, find a way to explore it, because repression sucks.”
The Canada native, who revealed that he’s writing a comedy series with his wife about their swinger lifestyle, said that the couple have “strict” rules when it comes to sleeping with people outside their marriage.
“For anything sexual — whether in terms of the sex act or identity or kink — you want to know where the walls of the box are,” he said. “Mollie and I have created our own rules, and compared to most of the people we’ve met who do this kind of s–t, our rules are strict. We’re not off on our own; we’re together, a unit.”
He continued, “It’s a perpetual state of management and communication, to the point where it’s like, ‘All right, we’ve got to stop. Chill.’ I’m gas, and she’s brakes. This is actually the premise for a comedy series we’re writing together.”
The comedian first hinted at his and his wife’s open sex life in July with Interview magazine, where he revealed that he and Godzilla: King of Monsters writer Zach Shields went to an adult swingers club with their significant others while filming the sci-fi remake in Atlanta.
“There’s my wife and your girlfriend, Kelli. We all had a double date, and we went to this fun little place in Atlanta called Trapeze, which is a known adult swingers club,” Middleditch said. “The first night that we’re all bonding, we saw each other naked. We didn’t do anything, but we certainly witnessed what a swingers club on Sunday night at like 1 a.m. is like. It’s pretty sparse, let me tell you that.”
Middleditch and Gates married in August 2015 after two years of dating. The two met in 2013 on the set of the comedy Search Party, for which Gates was a costume designer.
“They’re very funny together,” a source told Us Weekly after the couple’s engagement in June 2015. “And Thomas is always making the whole room laugh.”
