Entries Tagged 'Swinging and Open Relationships' ↓

So you wanna be a swinger. You and your mate have talked at length about all the things to consider before swinging, and you’re ready to give it a try. So how do you pick another couple to swing with? This can be a daunting step, especially since people don’t walk around wearing “swinger” tags to identify themselves.

When you are first starting out in the swing lifestyle, it is important to choose the right couples to play with. It is important to look for people who have similar interests, in addition to having a shared physical attraction. It is a lot easier to take that extra step if you feel comfortable with the other person or couple, trust me. A lot of couples are not interested in playing on the first meet; often the first meet is just to get to know each other. Here are some tips on meeting the right person or couple to swing with:

• Websites. Start out by looking at a website that allows couples to post their profiles, and look for people who posted things that interest you. Most sites have programs that show you other couples or individuals that match your profile. You can look by distance as well, and you can look for people as close or as far away as you like. Personally we look for people who are close by because we enjoy hanging out with people, not just meeting to play. A great example of this is my fiancé and I love to go off-road, so after a little searching we found a group of swingers who also enjoy going off-road. We started out just going off-road, than we went to a party after that we started spending weekends with some of them. It is rarely just about sex. Believe it or not, it is more about friendship.

• Instant Messaging. Another step to take if you want to protect yourself is to create an IM ID that is separate from your regular ID so that you can give that out to people you think you would like to get to know better. Chatting on IM gives you the ability to maintain some anonymity while still getting to know people better.

• Meet in Public. If you get to the next step and want to meet the other individuals, choose a public setting. Keep yourself safe. We have heard too many reports of people who were not careful and got hurt. There is good and bad in every group of people and it is important to make sure you’re safe before proceeding. Meet at a restaurant or a coffee house, and enjoy each other’s company to see if you want to proceed.

• Discuss Boundaries. After that, it’s time to make a choice - do you want to play or not? You can play whenever everyone is ready, but make sure to discuss everyone boundaries first. Take care not to cross the line, and take the time to enjoy yourself. It is ok to act out a fantasy as long as everyone is ok with it. There is no shame in enjoying the company of others, and there is no shame in enjoying yourself sexually. We have to take risks if we want to find something we enjoy.

• Safe Sex. One word of caution, condoms! Always practice safe sex no matter who you are with. It is not worth the risk. You might eventually meet a person or couple you are comfortable not using condoms with, but that is a decision to make down the road. Use caution and keep yourself safe.

These are just some of the things that have helped us meet other swingers in a fun and safe way. Good luck meeting your new friends with benefits!

Editor’s Note: At Sex 2.0, I attended an insightful session led by Anita Wagner on “Polyamory in the Media’s Spotlight,” and on of the questions that stood out for me is: why does there appear to be greater acceptance of polyamory in the media than swinging or open relationships? Since I am “vanilla,” I asked our resident swinger Savannah to talk about swinging, polyamory, and how each is accepted in larger society.

So what is the difference between polyamory and swinging? Honestly I wasn’t sure myself. I have been in the swinging lifestyle for 4 years, but never really thought about polyamory in comparison to swinging. Swinging is recreational sex with other parties, that much I know. In the swinging lifestyle, the focus is on friendships and sex. While I have made several wonderful friends within the swing lifestyle, none of them are people that I am “in love with.” Don’t get me wrong, I have had sex with people I just met, but most of the time my fiancé and I focus on a small group of people that we are close with. We tend to prefer to have a friendly relationship with the people we swing with; however, we are not looking to have a loving relationship with anyone.

This is where swinging differs from polyamory. Polyamory is the practice or belief in having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. There are a lot of different ways people construct polyamorous relationships, but in the end the values of honesty, openness, trust, and love are upheld. Polyamory, in all its forms, is about having an emotional connection to more than one person, not simply about sex with more than one person.

Personally, I have a hard time with this because I am not sure I would want to share my fiancé’s love with someone else, but I imagine it is just as hard for a lot of people to understand how I can love him but want to have sex with someone else.

For our relationship, we separate love from sex. Of course we make love, but we there is a difference between making love and having sex to us. That is where I feel the biggest difference is: a swinger has sex with people they don’t have feelings for, while a person who is polyamorous nurtures an emotional connection in addition to a sexual one. Both lifestyles, though, share some similarities, including that each requires communication, honesty, and trust.

What confuses me is why it seems some people have an easier time accepting that you can be in love with more than one person than that you could separate sex from love and enjoy having a sexual relationship with more than one person? Why is it so hard to understand that I can have sex with someone without being in love with them?

As a culture, we romanticize love; we are in love with love. Most people can’t get enough of it. So it is easier to accept that John can be in love with Jennifer and Sara, than it is to accept that John and Jennifer simply enjoy having a threesome with Sara.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking polyamory, but, as is the case with swinging, I simply do not feel that it will work for everyone. I do, however, wish there was more acceptance of all types of relationships, not just monogamous ones.

I would really like to hear from all of you about this. Which do you have an easier time understanding? Do you think you could be more ok with one than the other? Why?

What do you think of swinging, open relationships, and/or polyamory?

Tara: I think that it depends on the people in the relationship. If my ex-fiance had come to me and said that he wanted an open relationship, I’d probably be cool with that. But I would not be cool with watching him have sex with another woman, so I guess that rules out swinging. And if I were ever to be in an open relationship it would have to be clear that the people we were having sex with on the side stayed at just sex, so there goes polyamory, too.

Doug:  I am 100% for it. I think that monogamy made sense when you lived to be 35 and died. Now, however, I think it makes no sense for people who live past 80. It is a hard pill for many people to swallow, sticking instead to outdated ideas which tend to be more comfortable. And I think everyone is infected with those ideas, so although I am for it, I suppose I would have my own issues to work through in order to live my own beliefs.

Savannah: Personally I think that they are very different things, and that they are not nearly well enough understood by most people.  Most people feel like it is cheating, but for me and my fiancé it is just an addition to our relationship.  It is an extreme turn on for me to see my fiancé with other women, and I know he feels the same way about watching me.  It’s almost like live action porn.  If you define your rules in the beginning and stay within the rules you decided on, it is not cheating.

How open are you to alternative sexualities like swinging?

Tara: To be honest, not very. But, at the same time, I’m respectful of other people’s decisions in their own relationships. And I’ve always been a little greedy.

Doug: See above.

Savannah: I think that there is something out there that turns everyone on.  For some people, it’s swinging. If it is for you and it works for your relationship, it can add many new possibilities for pleasure.

Do you think swinging is “trendy” right now, still fringe/kinky, or on some level appealing to most people?

Tara: I think it’s pretty trendy. It’s getting more press lately, and for some people it works.

Doug: I don’t think it’s trendy. I think we are 30. I think in the past 10 years, we began caring about politics more because we got old enough to, not because of the political events that were happening. Had Bush been considered a good president, I think you still would have seen “our” generation suddenly more involved. The same goes for swinging. When we were 18 we didn’t care, when we were 23 we didn’t even have relationships from which to swing. In our 30’s, however, like the many many many generations before us, at about this time we have relationships, kids, friends with kids, and the frame of reference to think more deeply about things then we may have in the past. Swinging has been around since long before we were born, it hasn’t changed - we have.

Savannah: I think on some level it is appealing to most people, though the level differs based on the person.  I don’t know many women who have not at least thought about girl/girl sex.  Many people won’t act on the appeal, but there is something there even if they won’t admit it.  I also think that swinging is trendy right now because of shows like Swingtown.  For example, I logged in to my swinglifestyle profile the other day and it said that there were over 8000 new members this week.  I think as people become more and more aware of swing, they become curious.  Though many of the new members might never act on the idea, they are at least interested in finding out about it.

When you explore your sexual identity, particularly if it involves a lifestyle like swinging or BDSM, you face challenges when it comes to friendships. The childhood adage “make new friends, but keep the old” is much harder than you think, especially if the old friends disapprove of your lifestyle. And when it comes to new friends, you have to navigate the sexual boundaries of everyone involved, in addition to all of the other things you have to learn and share when making new friends. While my experiences have generally been positive, making friends while in the swing lifestyle has had its ups and downs.

My fiancé and I were both in the lifestyle before we met. When we started dating, we agreed that we would stay out of the lifestyle for a while so that we could feel out our relationship. Even though we both had friends in the lifestyle, and continued to go to parties and clubs because that was where most of our friends were, we were not actually swinging. Once we felt that our relationship was ready for that, we began looking for friends who could become friends with benefits. Of course we had to go through all the 5 tips on the swinging lifestyle. Even though we had both been in the lifestyle before, we had to have the conversation about what we wanted for our relationship.

We have met some of our best friends in the lifestyle, including my best female friend. She is amazing. Now, she is in a new relationship with someone who is vanilla (the term swingers use for people who are not in the lifestyle), so she has decided to leave the lifestyle. I use this example because I want people to understand that the lifestyle is a choice. No one in the lifestyle will look down on you because you choose not to be a part of it, and all I ask is that you do not look down on those of us that do.

Since I got sick, I have learned a lot about whom my true friends are, and not all of them are the people I thought they would be. Many of the true friends who are there for me are the people I have met in the lifestyle. So my point here is that you can’t judge people based on their sex lives. Sometimes adding a person or couple to your relationship can truly enhance your sex life, but you will never know if you don’t try it.

The difference between swinging and a one night stand is that when you swing, you get to keep that person in your life. Everyone goes into the room knowing whom they are going home with and what they are looking to get out of it. With swinging, you can invite the other parties out for dinner the next week and everyone is still happy. As long as you stay within the boundaries set forth when you begin, everyone stays friends. As a matter of fact, I have a friend in the lifestyle that is always there for me when I need a ride to an appointment or just need to talk. The sex is great, but the friendship is better.

I advise anyone starting out in the lifestyle to choose their friendships carefully. Make sure before you meet someone that you have talked to them and trust that they will respect your wishes and privacy. Don’t be afraid to say no if you are not interested in meeting someone, but don’t expect to meet only Ken and Barbie types. This world takes all types to go around, and the swing lifestyle is no different.

When people learn that I’m a swinger, the big question a lot of people ask me is, “Don’t you get jealous seeing your fiance with other attractive women?” I really don’t. Many women get jealous when their man just looks at another woman, but I enjoy it. It gives me the chance to see what turns him on and come up with ideas to bring back to our bedroom.

When you are in the swing lifestyle, you have to confront a lot of jealousy issues that many vanilla (the term swingers use to describe non-swingers) couples often avoid in their relationships. It doesn’t mean that jealousy is never an issue for some people, but the lifestyle makes you deal with it and talk about it in constructive ways. For me, jealousy really isn’t a part of my life anymore.

The truth is one of my favorite things is to see my fiancé with other women. Some people might see it as arrogance, because I never worry and I know he is coming back to me. Honestly though, I see it as confidence. It makes me happy to see him with other women. The fact is that most swingers, male and female, are checking out the female half of couples. Most guys have a fantasy of being with 2 women at the same time, and a large number of the women in the lifestyle are bisexual. I know my fiancé and I are typically looking at the female half of the other couple. You learn early on to not view other women as a threat, but instead a potential playmate.

If you open yourself up and control your jealousy, you can get a lot of ideas that can spice up your sex life. I can’t tell you how to get that way, because it is different for everyone. I personally try to use everything as a chance to talk to my fiancé and adjust what we are looking for. If you feel confident in your relationship, then you have nothing to worry about. Many of my vanilla  friends don’t see how I can watch him with other woman and not get jealous. I can’t say the little green monster never shows up, but I KNOW at the end of the day he is coming home with me. I know our sex life is great and that we are both willing to work to please the other, so I don’t worry about it.

I know I have said it over and over again, but I do not think anyone can hear it enough. Communicate! If you are able to keep the lines of communication open and honest, you won’t have a problem. At one point in my life, I was an exotic dancer, so my fiancé knows that a lot of people have seen me naked. He also knew that at the end of the night he was picking me up and I was coming home to him. I know there were times he worried about me and was afraid something might happen, but he never needed to worry I was looking for someone else. Because we kept communication open and honest, he knew what I wanted and I knew what he wanted. That is how we avoid jealousy issues.