[sereneiders]

You exposed a bix mixture of things, and the situation made you shake them togheter turning into a drink you seem to dislike but, even so, it still thrills you.

First of all, most swinging couples are at first couples, who engage in activities by setting rules beforehand with the purpose of protecting the original relationship. This implies the couple is somehow already settled, and it seems you have a BF and you're (both?) unsure how long you want this relation to last, so I wouldn't say you both are swinging, moreover i'd say the three of you are just exploring your own lands.

What called my attention the most is what sounds like a "double standard", whether in fact it doesn't seem you already developed a "single standard" you'd feel confortable with: you feel yoursef engaging in realtionships, then you find yourself cheating and enjoying it, you didn't seem to have a defined limit between love and sex (which is ok for me), so when you supposedly "cheat" you're being faithfull with your own feelings, but anyway you feel guitly about it.

It seems to me you're having a hard time when faced to a definition for your own standards, that you'd like to fit with the ones you already learn and see in your social context, seldom strict, and those able to let you be as hedonistic as you want to be.

The fact is, there are no white or black, nor behavior rules engraved in stone. You have to define your own standards, and then relate with people able to accept these standards. It is YOUR LIFE, and you deserve to develop it your own way and, at last, feel your wishes and expectations fullfilled. You won't able to live to fulfill other people's expectations and under standards you don't feel confortable with.

You seem to worry too much about "normality". Normality is a blurry pseudo-statistical concept that evolve, change with time, and have different meanings depending on the culture and your social context. In the swingers "subculture" there are behaviors that are normal for us that wouldn't be normal under our social standards nor other's subcultures. The BDSM lyfestilers take for normal things an behaviors that aren't normal for swingers, and even so, this is a theoretical example: there can be swingers who enjoy BDSM or vicecersa, who have yet another concept for normality. Even, there are cuckolding lyfestilers, couples where the guy is being cheated on by their wyfes and that's the standard they choose for their lives (something that may go against what swingers calls "normality").

You seem to be finding out the social context where you grew is imposing a normality concept, and then, standards that are hard to follow for you, while in the other hand you cannot choose a private standard able to fit what you already know.

The world is big, HUGE, there are a lot of people around there that have other standards and who were more than able to accept a new standard you may define for yourself enven when not fitting your actual social context expectations. So the bottom line is:

You're FREE to make an standard for yourself, and you wont be ALONE nor isolated from the society.

Being hedonistic is fine. Wanting to share your sexuality with more than a guy is ok, not wanting to do the same with other females is also ok. If you read the board, you'll see there are plenty of guys who just want to share their GF or wifes just with another males and not with females. That is not a double standard, it just a matter of taste, and a taste for which there are a lot of matching people.

You're young and you're just exploring and learning, and for sure that will lead to a definition for your sexuality and your standards. It's just a proccess, where the goal of ahieving that definition is, at last, unreacheable, because you'll find yourself adjusting the definitions as you get more experiences.

So, i'd say you'd have to calm down, take it easy, look at this expecience as a part of the proccess, enjoy the proccess, and if you feel your tastes and standards doesn't fit your social context, move on and look for a context where they can fit. And this doesn't mean to leave the people you actually love and care of behind, insthead, to find out another people being able to accept your tastes and standards, to share, develop and fulfill these aspects of your life TOO, along the aspects fulfilled by your actual context.

We often use the word "vanilla" to define the people who doesn't share our lyfestile related tastes, or even for who wouldn't even understand it. Being swingers doesn't mean we need to shut a door behind us and stop relating with vanilla people. In fact, they're part of our life, we have vanilla relatives and friends we still love and who actually fullfill many other aspects of our lifes. Some of us hide our lifestyle from our vanilla closest people, other are open about it... everyone manages the best he or she can about this, but at last, CAN manage it and enjoy both the lifestyle and the original vanilla social context. This choice, nor any standard or taste choice, shouldn't have to lead you to an exclusive path where you'd have to loose what you already got from your life.

So, don't be affraid, and give yourself and you wishes more credit.

sereneiders