Was she Cheating or am I just over reacting?

[The_Poker]

Hi everyone. This is my first post here. I have been visiting this board for some time and the advice I have picked up has been great. Now I have my own situation that I would like your thoughts on. Forgive me if this post gets long I feel I need to explain a chain of events.

I am a 31 year old male in a relationship with a 35 year old woman. We met on a swingers website nearly a year ago. Therefore sex has always been something of an open topic for us. As far as actual swinging goes we have only had one threesome. However, my girlfriend has/had an aweful lot of (generally male) IM contacts and met a few of them before we met.

Back in May my girlfriend had a gangbang with another girl and seven guys behind my back. She told me about it a few months later. It was upsetting but despite that I forgave her and continued the relationship. It did cause some trust issues that still continue.

A few weeks ago one of her 'friends' (that she has never actually met) rang her at 3am whilst he was having sex. He thought it would be hot to talk to her whilst fucking the girl he was with. My GF told me about the phone call the next day thinking it would make me horny. However the opposite happened and after some thought I got very angry and told her how wrong I thought it was that some guy I've never met rang my girlfriend at 3am to have phone sex with her. If she didnt stop any and all contact with him immediately we would be finished. Which she says she did straight away. Consequently we removed all profiles from any swingers sites.

The latest event involved an old contact of hers that she had actually deleted from her IM list but he contacted her. After some general chat it turned to sex, generally it was discussed, what we do between us was discussed and a photo of myself in a compromising position tied to a bed was shown to him, which she says he masturbated over. I consider myself to be bi curious but it made my skin crawl when I heard that. I told her that it was totally unacceptable to show pictures to anyone else without my permission and that I didnt want her talking to any other man about sex...period. I know that she was still talking to one guy that she had been with about sex between them and her fantasies. She assures me that its all talk and that they arent doing anything.

Finally my questions are. Have I overreacted to any of these events? Does the fact that we came together as being sexually open change the impact of the events described? I still like to think that we could one day do a foursome as a couple but on my terms and not with someone she already knew before me. Is that selfish? I feel like she is cheating on me by chatting about sex online with guys. Is it really cheating or am I over reacting?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[nice_cpl_n_bama]

Sounds to me like you need to take a break from swinging, change your phone numbers and work on your relationship. Rebuild the trust between the two of you and a few month down the road you can set some VERY SPECIFIC ground rules about what's acceptable in your relationship. If you both fully understand the rules there will be less chance of hurt feelings.
It sounds like you haven't done a very good job of laying those ground rules so you are both "flying blind" about what would be sexy, or hurtful. Rebuild the trust, lay down clear rules then you'll be ready to return to the game.
Good Luck!

[wifes_sex_slave]

Hmm...
Gang banged without your knowlegde, permission or participation.
Sending nudes of YOU without your knowledge...
Having guys call in the middle of the night for phone sex...
Continually having sex chats online...



When you ask if she has cheated, which time do you mean? If it is not with you then IMO, she has cheated.

We got into swinging to enhance OUR sex life, not hers, not mine.

From what I understand, swinging should be considered a partnership decision (like any other joint-choice: finances, large purchases, child rearing) and considerations must be met for both sides.

If you have asked her not to continue but she still does - I don't think you have over reacted. I think you both need to take a serious look at your relationship and get some things straight before it becomes to damaged to repair.

I can see how this has caused some trust issues.

[flkeyscouple]

Originally Posted by wifes_sex_slave

We got into swinging to enhance OUR sex life, not hers, not mine.

Dito
In fact agree with most of what has been said! You really need to get the trust back into your relationship! Communication may be the best tool at this time.

An IM or conversation without first telling you about it is one thing - participating in a gangbang without your knowledge - that's going too far. That's something that should be accepted by both of you! Good luck.

Sarah

[good times]

I really couldn't say whether it is really cheating or not without hearing her side of the story. The reason I say that is that in the examples you cited it sounds to me that at the time she did these things she didn't believe you would dissapprove. I think this does have something to do with the fact that you met through swinging, and I suspect that the problem is that she thinks you have a more open relationship sexually than you do, which indicates to me more of a communication problem than a cheating problem. So, I would agree with the others in as far as you need to talk it out with her and set some boundries that you will both be comfortable with, but I am not sure if she really willfully cheated on you.

[JTcamp05]

I can read the writing on the wall here!

Unfortunatly for you.....your girlfriend is a swinger and however much you want to be you are not.

Thats ok....but your not ready for her type of swinging and trying to "change" her you might as well bang your head on the wall.

Good Luck!!

[ShellyM]

Well, I'll be honest. When you met her she was already involved in the lifestyle, correct? You met on a swingers site. So now that she is your girlfriend your expectations have changed. I'm not criticizing you, I'm trying to understand the situation. Now, I don't think what she is doing is okay. I think it is highly disrespectful, and if you are in a committed relationship it is cheating. However, you knew about her lifestyle when you met her. Thats like me liking chocolate milk, and you knew this. Then when we are together you expect me to just stop liking chocolate milk. It just doesn't work like that. I would say that you need to stop swinging for the time being if you wish to continue your relationship. ALOT of communication needs to happen with her. However, in all honesty it sounds like you have expressed your displeasure many times to no avail. If she cannot give you what you need in your relationship then you have to decide where to go from there.

[MoonLightKiss]

I agree with the others here, this sounds like more of a communication issue than anything. You met on a swingers site, and so I am assuming you were both very open minded sexually when you first met. This being said, UNLESS you SPECIFICALLY stated that you were not comfortable with certain things BEFORE they were done, then it might be safe to assume that she thought it was okay. That does not mean you do not have a right to your feelings. What it does mean is that you both need to sit down calmly and communicate over all of it. Taking a break from swinging is a good idea, as is deciding what you are both comfortable with. Then you can both decide is staying together or separating is best.

All the best
MLK

[Edison Carter]

You met a highly sexually charged, promiscuous, anything goes, woman and you're bothered by the fact she's behaving like a highly sexually charged, promiscuous, anything goes, woman. She doesn't need to adapt to you, you need to adapt to her.

[HappyPeople]

It sounds like you have two different interpretations of what it is to be a swinger. I suggest you sit down and discuss your expectations with her and ask her what her expectations are then decide if and how you wish to continue the relationship.

[Alura]

The first thing y'all need to do, in my opinion, is to define your relationship in the light of swinging. Just what is acceptable? Of course, there will always be unexpected situations; we can't forsee everything.

The following quote is from "Faithful Reader" in the "ask amy" column in the Tulsa World Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006:

"If you promise your spouse one kind of marriage and then help yourself to something different without telling her — that's cheating."

I considered changing our signature line but like Will Rogers better.

Amy added:

"...people who promise to have one kind of relationship and then cheat their way around their own promises aren't in a functional relationship."

Mr. Alura

[sereneiders]

I agree with the others here. This is a communication problem. Moreover, I'd say you're the one failing to communicate her your expectations... and I wonder if this isn't just the result of you failing to communicate with YOURSELF.

You two meet in a swingers environment, she's doing something she use to do before and, I guess, you were aware of. I'd like to know if you weren't here looking for an easy laid, just for fun, without the purpose to meet Mrs Right there... but you got hooked by this woman and, perhaps, the Mrs Right you have in your head shouldn't be this kind of woman. In any case, you're expecting something from her that she didn't expected. I guess if you were being upfront about this from the first day, it's very likely that she would have broken the 500 yards world's record while running away from you, and I wonder if you didn't chose to ease your expectations a little bit to avoid rejection, and once she start developing feelings you're starting to hardening them step by step.

You have to think what do you want for you, for your life, from a relationship, and once you get the answer, look for someone who's looking for the same, insthead of trying to change someone's else to make her fit your tastes. Ultimatelly, I believe if you were able to change someone to fit your tastes... you'd lose that someone who atracted you in the first place in exchange for an extension for your own hand.

As an aside, this is a perfect example of why singles aren't swingers by definition, and how unfit we, swingers, are to give an umbiased advice. You two meet in an environment where you were looking for unattached recreational sex in the first place.

Swinging, in the other hand, is recreational sex but have more to do with the attachments we already have, it is about being able to enjoy recreational sex while preserving and enhancing those attachments we ALREADY had from before swinging.

Whether if it is possible to develop those attachments AFTER or WHILE you have recreational sex involving others, and how to do it, is a question that we, swingers, cannot properly answer, because the only feature in common would be the "recreational sex", while the remaining ones cannot be correlated with our current experience.

For example, some swingers may advice to stop swinging and work on the relationship... as if you were comming from the same place they came, while you just did the opposite, what gethered you two togheter was "to swing" and it doesn't seem fair to ask your partner to stop swinging to work on a "relationship", by means of undermining what joined you two in the first place.

What I know for sure is, there's anithing in my experience able to give you a wise advice. The only I can talk about is about something unrelated with swinging, as the expectations stuff.

I wonder how many swingers in the board built a relationship on top of the recreational sex they shared before, leaving a track other people like you could follow, because those swingers are the only ones able to say smething suitable to your situation.