[frisson]

First, you have somewhat widened the scope of the question.

In your original message, you talked specifically about couples who swing solely with other women because the husband can't handle the idea of his wife having sex with other men.

Almost by definition, these are newcomers to swinging. That's because we know few women who can be coerced into such situation for an indefinite period of time, especially when they see that other women around them have the freedom to pick and choose their own partners according to their own tastes and desires.

For that reason, we're skeptical of the the "women only" requirement in newcomers. And we both feel a certain amount of sympathy for the wife.

The wording of your second message seems to open things up quite a bit to include almost any MFF swinging situation.

That's a different story. If a couple has been in the lifestyle for a while, we assume that everybody involved is getting what they want. How they get it is really their own business.

Now on to the parts of your message that deal with the question of what swinging is all about:

Isn't swinging slanted quite a bit to the woman's advantage in terms of equal distribution of sex already?

if everyone gets sex from the third party involved and everyone has all the orgasms they can handle for the night, everyone should be happy.

Why should happiness in swinging be described in terms of orgasms? There is more to pleasure than the climax, and what makes people happy in swinging is usually not so much having an orgasm as participating in a scene where everyone involved gets a chance to pursue pleasure in a way that suits him/her.

Orgasms are easy. It is possible to have an orgasm while you are disgruntled, angry, jealous, or just plain feeling shitty. So using orgasms as a measure of happiness is futile.

Unfortunately, not all swingers are wholehearted about what they're doing, even when they're doing what ought to make them happy. We've seen a husband drag his wife out of a party house five minutes after he had his own orgasm, because he didn't like the way she was carrying on with another guy. We've known couples to party much of the night and then regret it the next morning "because we didn't really want to do what we ended up doing."

Don't assume that because people are panting and moaning that they're really happy about what's going on.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but a threesome with an extra guy, ends up with two guys pleasuring one woman. Where-as, a threesome with an extra woman usually ends up with one guy pleasuring two women and two women pleasuring each other. Again, pleasure and orgasms equally distributed, how can that possibly be unfair just because there isn't an extra penis for the woman to play with? In fact, in terms of equal distribution of sex, isn't a foursome with two bi females completely slanted towards the women? The men get two women each. The women get two men AND (usually)each other.

This is a totally new perspective for us. We have never approached sex or swinging with a scorecard in hand, calculating who gets how many body parts to play with.

Frankly, if this mattered to us or to the people with whom we play, most of the impromptu group arrangements that we enjoy so much would never happen. Our playmates would have to fill out questionnaires listing all their sexual do's and don'ts, and we'd need an Excel spreadsheet to keep it all balanced.

"We thought we had everything worked out just right, when Jane said that she didn't mind giving head to 37-year-old female schoolteachers, because that meant Claire had four bi women to play with instead of three. But then we found out that Sarah won't do anal with red-headed plumbers on the second Saturday of the month, which means that Harry only has five holes to play with instead of six, so we have to start all over."

I understand that this doesn't fit if you are not bi or, at least, tri (try anything). But, we are talking specifically about bi women here.

That's another pitfall. Because this depends on how you define bi. In our experience, most swinging women can be found giving or getting head with another woman at some time.

If you are talking about women who will have sex with other women under certain conditions, that takes in at least 90 p.c. of swinging females. Therefore, most likely, the hypothetical wife in your example falls into this category. If that's the case, then she's unlikely to get a great deal of fulfillment from the situation.

If you're talking about women whose taste for other women eclipses their desire for men, then that's a way smaller number.

And that really should be your working defiinition, since the situation you're referring to requires that the woman forego sex with other men in favor of women...not just once in a while, but every time she swings.

In fact, in the example you used, we can pretty much assume that the woman in question really does have an unsatisfied taste for men. Why else would her husband even be worrying about it, if he didn't know that it was in her?

I think the difference is in ideology. You both are looking at this from the standpoint of potential desire and the freedom to satisfy those desires by whatever means...well...desired.

I'm talking, pure and simple, about fair and even distribution of sex.

You have defined our differences here. As far as we're concerned, the numerical distribution of sex is irrelevant. What matters is not how many orifices and appendages each participant has available, but how everybody feels about the encounter--before, during, and after. A good swinging encounter leaves everybody happy and fulfilled, feeling that (paraphrasing you) they've had the opportunity to freely pursue their desires.

That's why we talk about expectations, limits and boundaries. Not to achieve an equality in body parts, but to make sure that what you'd really like to do doesn't fall outside the limits of my boundaries (and vice versa). If everybody's cool on that score, then there's a good chance that we'll all end up feeling happy when it's all over. Otherwise, the scene is probably going end up being a bummer for somebody, regardless of how many orgasms we have.

[ 07-06-2002, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: frisson ]