Roleplay in costumes: 53.7% of couples are open to it — far fewer both say yes

A question couples answer with hesitation

Every Spicer question is answered by each partner privately — yes, no, or maybe — and only mutual yes or maybe answers ever surface to the couple. That design produces a complete, honest picture of where two people actually stand, including the answers they would never volunteer across a dinner table. For costume roleplay, that picture is unusually undecided. At the individual level the three answers split almost evenly: 39.3% yes, 29.5% maybe, 31.3% no. At the couple level, no single outcome reaches a quarter of couples, and the combinations involving a maybe together account for nearly half of all pairs.

Three groupings summarize the matrix:

• Mutual yes — 21.5% of couples (88,695) both answered yes.
• No explicit no — 53.7% of couples. This groups mutual yes (21.5%), one yes with one maybe (20.9%), and mutual maybe (11.4%); the grouped share is computed from exact values before rounding. A maybe is not equivalent to consent — it indicates openness or uncertainty, not agreement.
• Disagreement involving a no — 31.1% of couples: one yes with one no (13.9%) plus one maybe with one no (17.2%).

Mutual no stands outside the groupings at 15.2% — outright shared refusal is the least common of the three “both agree” outcomes’ counterparts and covers 62,660 couples.

Where men and women differ — and where they don’t

Men answered yes at 42.0% and women at 33.1% — an 8.9-percentage-point gap, and the direction is consistent across every measure in the data. Yes was men’s single most common answer; women’s was no, at 35.2%. That pattern fits the broader fantasy literature, where men and women reliably differ in the nature and intensity of reported sexual fantasies^[1].

A maybe is not a soft yes. It is an honest answer that asks for a conversation — and it promises nothing.

What this finding suggests

The shape of this question is distinct: an almost even three-way split at the individual level, and a couple-level distribution where hesitation — not disagreement — is the largest force. The fantasy literature offers context. In Lehmiller’s survey of 4,175 US adults, novelty, adventure, and variety ranked among the most common fantasy themes, yet most respondents feared their fantasies were abnormal and hesitated to voice them^[2]. Joyal and colleagues, testing 55 fantasy themes in a general-population sample, found the large majority to be statistically common^[1].

Costume roleplay sits exactly where imagination is common and follow-through is uncertain. Playing a role in front of the person who knows you best asks for something ordinary sex does not: a tolerance for feeling silly. The data cannot see motives — it records answers, not reasons — but the pattern it records is a population of couples in which the most frequent obstacle is not a partner’s refusal. It is one partner’s undecided pause.

What this suggests couples can do

Treat a maybe as a sentence, not a verdict

In 49.4% of couples, at least one partner answered maybe — and a maybe carries information a no does not: the door is not closed, and the terms are unspoken. The productive follow-up is not persuasion but curiosity: what version of this, if any, would feel comfortable? Lehmiller’s central practical finding points the same way — communicating desires, including hesitant ones, is associated with more satisfying sex lives^[2]. A maybe that never becomes a conversation stays a maybe.

Shrink the costume

Hesitation often attaches to scale, not substance. A full costume is a production; an accessory, a borrowed line, or ten minutes of a character is an experiment. In a national US study of more than 38,000 partnered adults, sexual variety — trying new things together — was among the behaviors most strongly associated with sexual satisfaction in long-term relationships^[3]. The association does not require theatrics; it requires novelty both partners chose.