[sereneiders]

Darkblue,

It may worth to talk to your wife about WHY she's asking for friendship first, because the whole "friendship" thing is a blurry bag of cats hidding fears and needs (even when genuine and valid ones).

There are people that currently use the word "frienship" in the same way they would in a vanilla context. But I believe a lot of swingers, moreover the new ones, require the chance to meet people and have enough time granted as to be able to tell if they can meet their confort level without being pushed or talked into doing something they may regret later. Its an emotional safety measure.

The problem here is, since swinging is a whole new context, they use the word "friendship" because that's the only sort of relationship they know from their previous experience in the vanilla world that resembles what they require as this safety measure.

IMO, what often happens is they take some time to find that confort level, and since the desire for sex is there, it doesn't mean 6 months, but more likely a couple of dates, and once safe enough, that's it about the "friendship first".

So, what I believe is important for you two here is to forget for a moment about the whole friendhip concept, and ask your wife to make it explicit the features she requires from the other people and their attitudes in order to feel safe. After making this explicit, she still may want to devlop friendship or not, but in any case this would be e great clue to tell appart this wish for friendship from the real requirements for swinging.

After all, the friendship is something that isn't just up to you two to develop with other people: those other's feelings are involved as well and even when they may ask for "friends first", they may not want to be friends of you as the relationship evolves.

So, even if you give up, going after such a friendship, you two may end up alone again, without those supposed friends that you had sex with. And this is an important distinction for your wife's expectations (you're afraid of she being hurt, and the damages correlates directly with her expectations about the experience).

By making explicit her emptional safety requirements, you two should be able to find a place where both of you may feel confortable: your wife as to have sex with other people, and even for you to develop a friendhip if all the involved people finds up there are enough shared interests beyond sex as to make them suitable for becoming the regular vanilla friends you may have today.