[sereneiders]

It seems to me you two still have to adjust your boundaries here.

In one hand, you're proposing something much like an open marriage, more than swinging. The only rule connecting both styles would be the one telling both of you have to be aware of what's going on. So far, everithing is ok.

Now, you still didn't deffined a couple of things about this rule: the WHEN and the HOW.

By WHEN I mean, if you encourage him to engage in sex with others, wheter you like it or not, there's some degree of intimacy he and his playmante would need to develop: From the way you understand this, the rule may mean to be enforced AFTERWARDS (which could explain his attitude) or RIGHT IN BETWEEN (which explains yours).

The HOW is related with this, because if you want it to happen RIGHT IN BETWEEN, then you're asking for the right to interfer and have control of the situation. This is ok and normal if you were thinking of swinging, where the two of you are necesarily involved in the "getting to know each other" process, but it seems a little odd if you're thinking of an open relationship.

From your words, my guts are telling me you have a problem of trust. Not necesatily that you don't trust him, but more about the way the situation could evolve. It seems to me you'd like to plan everithing in advance, and for everithing and everyone involved to stick to YOUR plan, but you're (reasonabily) not confident enough abouth this, so it reaches a point where you felt compelled to get in control of the situation (by interfering while he was chatting).

This may be seen as a double standard, since you arranged the computers in such a way that you made and accepted an statement about each other degree of privacy about what you're doing. But for this to be possible, you both need to trust on the way the other will use the privacy. The fact is, you interfered with his privacy and he ignored you, perhaps as a way to stick to this privacy related statement.

You tow have to define here how much privacy is acceptable, and which degree of detail of what you allow the other know about your privacy is required as to be honest.

As for us, we share the same computer but we keep separate profiles. We chat in several IRC channels, each one have a mIRC copy installed with separate logs that we could erase. Anyway, for me it's like my wife pursue, if she ask me something from it, I habdle her the pursue instead of taking a look inside. Besides the computer, if she have a conversation when someone, it's a private one and I have no right to ask about it, nor she about my private conversations. We both trust in each other honesty and in the understanding and good will on how to protect each other and take care of our marriage. Should something from her privacy concerns me, I KNOW she'll let me know, and even so she may chose to hide it from me (ad even lie to me) if she feels it's the better way to protect me.

I know, it's a more risky approach that require an almost blind trust on each other, and because of honoring that trust we do our best to keep each other posted about what's going on when we talk with other swingers or playmates.

I am telling this because it seemed to me you were pretty close to this approach, or that at least something like this worked so far for the vanilla context, but when facing the lifestyle, it is colliding with your safety requirements, and perhaps revealing some hidden issue leading to a lack of trust.

In any case, it seems to me you two have a good communication. Don't freak out, just talk about this with your husband and adjust the rules. Just beware that you both may find other scary things along the path, and if you let them hurt you or your marriage, this swinging idea could become a nightmare, since to success you need to pay attention and learn to deal with these scary things as they come, when possible, as to set the rules required to avoid them in the future or adjust your attitude on how to take them.