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Originally Posted by good times Most of us, as long time married couples, are in an extremely low risk group for having STD's. |
The researchers who mentioned longtime married couples as a low-risk demographic surely were
not including swingers among this group. That stat would have been for the garden variety monogamous vanilla marriage.
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Originally Posted by good times The only reason I think it would be less is because we are in a low risk demographic group, that being couples in a long term relationship. |
I truly don't understand your rationale at all in believing that swingers are in a low risk demographic group. First, you seem to be assuming that swinger couples are by-and-large coming from longterm relationships. Perhaps you're picturing most swinger couples as having been each other's one-and-only for decades, having little-to-no sex with others prior to marriage, being faithful, and then entering into the lifestyle much later, pristine and pure. In swinging, the couple mixes only with other pristine, very longterm couples who'd been monogamous all of those years. This picture seems 100% unrealistic to me.
In reality, many swinger couples are just dating each other, engaged, "SO's", or haven't been married that many years. Virtually all of these people had sexual histories long before they became Mr. and Mrs. Swing Couple. Many people experienced serial monogamy with different people before settling down. Many couples who swing got together after coming out of past divorces (my husband and I are one of these couples.) It's normal and typical in our culture, as well as for those of us in swinging, to have had sex with various and sundry people (each with our individual, varied sexual histories) - and I mean as Vanillas. We were "out there" when we were young and single before marriage, and in between marriages (single-again). A lot of swinger couples have threesomes from time to time, meaning that we're currently playing with singles who are still "out there" having sex with whomever. Some swingers were cheaters in marriage(s) at some point. How do any of us really know much of
anything about our play partner's
longterm sexual history? We don't. If we each could calculate how many sex partners we've had
plus all of the people our lovers had before we were with them, that would be
quite a number! When you factor in the nature of herpes and the fact that it lays dormant (outbreak-free) in so many people - possibly for decades without them realizing they have it - all the while potentially shedding the virus at unknown times, I think it's extremely easy to see just how much risk there is for
anybody.
Swingers don't exist in their own special, unique demographic of society, and we aren't in a special group that's somehow safer than the rest of society. We
are society - we really are just like everybody else. We come from all walks of life and have all
sorts of backgrounds. We are just as "dirty" and exposed as everybody else in our culture. Personally, I believe we're exposed much moreso. After just
one swinger convention/hotel takeover weekend, an average 30-something newbie couple could have more sex partners in two nights than the sum total of their lifetime before that weekend.
Perhaps there does exist among swingers those special couples who hooked up at Prom at age 16, stayed together and 100% monogomous ever since, right until that moment 20 years later when they set foot in their first swing club, as pure as the driven snow (
they are that special low risk demographic). In that
moment they're virtually guaranteed to be 100% clear of having anything. But, if they take to the lifestyle like a pair of ducks to water as the rest of us swingers have, *
poof*, the moment is gone.
No more guarantee.
The vast majority of we who swing, know little-to-nothing about the sexual pasts of any of our play partners. We see Mr. and Mrs. Hottie right before us, they're attractive, nice, sexually selective, "clean"-looking and willing, and that's all we're thinking about, it's all that matters. Married and faithful for 20 years, Mrs. Hottie may have picked up herpes 22 years ago from her college boyfriend. She's never had an "outbreak" or anything like that, nothing to cause alarm or make her wonder (a couple of times thought she had a bug bite down there, and occasionally she got that "mysterious female rash"). A few times over the years, Mr. Hottie was "chafed". Herpes never crossed their minds.
None of us
want to think about risk in the lifestyle, it's a real mood-killer. But it seems irresponsible and frankly dangerous to live in denial and pretend that being a longterm couple who swings with a variety of other longterm couples somehow improves the odds against something like herpes.