Emotional Bonding & the psychology of swinging

[socolais]

I think I finally found the Holy Grail - all the pieces seem fit in harmony. I still need to let this filter through my mind and discover any frustrated concepts.

"We have each other" - That's such an obvious given that it really doesn't get much exploration in my thoughts. We are soul-mates for life without thoughts of anything otherwise. No desire to "cheat" and I have enjoyed the exhilaration of the temptation.

Experiencing the temptation with the confidence that it'll never happen generated a rush, a vigor, a primitive and fundamental excitement. For so many years, I was embarrassed for "wrongfully" feeling enjoyment in the temptation. I felt so bad that I stifled the pleasure, but now I see it in a new light and I want to boldly explore the beneficial opportunities. That's the rush I imagine comes from swinging at its best.

The strength of our emotional bond is inversely proportional to our lists of rules, boundaries, and limitations we carry as a couple, explicit or assumed. When our emotional bond was young and inexperienced, mild flirting would have threatened it. Now, flirting is fun in a way we can both enjoy. I remember the fun when the flirting once got assertively sexual. Even though we didn't openly discuss it then, we both knew I was close to the line.

By strengthening our bond, we allow ourselves a smaller set of restrictions and open new opportunities for enhanced fun. The fun experiences we have together feedback positive energy into our emotional bond. A decrease in communication or conscious hard feelings toward each other would decrease the strength of the bond and oppose the feedback loop. Thorough and effective communication strengthens the bond, nips opportunities for hard feelings right in the bud, and channels the positive energy into the good places of the mind. Growth is clearly a noble goal.

So, what does this all mean?????? That's a nice little fairytale where good triumphs over evil. But how do we take those concepts and institutionalize them into our daily thoughts and actions??? How do we test the strength of our bond so that we can pursue new opportunities to redouble the magnitude our mutual enjoyment? I see two paths to the city of Oz - the short-cut appears unsafe.

The overwhelming majority of our life experiences reinforce the value of the conservative evolutionary progress toward a known goal - slow and steady wins the race. Ya don't tear up your ticket when your horse is leading by a nose coming 'round the second turn. Since we couldn't recognize a super strong bond if it punched us in the face, we'll need to set a more ephemeral type goal and narrow the focus as we approach. So where's a good starting point in that direction??? Perhaps joining some kind of flirting club and reevaluate our comfort with that activity.

When we evaluate our comfort with an activity and look for opportunities to push the envelope, we approach an "edge" or defining line between what excites us and what makes us feel uncomfortably vulnerable. Growth in confidence and in bond strength softens that discomfort and mutates it into an excitement. It would be tricky to manage each step along the path to eliminate discomfort. How we handle those uncomfortably large steps affects our assimilation pace. I'm anxious to move closer to the edge and she's cautious about getting too close. We'll find a starting point we can both have fun with and progress from there as a team working together for a shared goal.

For many years, I've seen a void in my innermost persona as it relates to our relationship - could this be what I've been seeking all along? I feel a connection there, I think it may be close, but I can't be certain.

Bruce

[TNT]

I gather from your post that you have discovered a new depth to your relationship.

That's good. Just remember to keep the lines of communication open and you'll find yourself discovering new things about each other every day.


Teresa

[socolais]

Thanks for the encouragement Teresa. We are getting closer and stronger together and it feels good. I'm exploring my thoughts and wondering why the lifestyle seems so appealing to me.

I guess it's ok for me to hijack a thread I started.......

I know there's a preponderance of Jungian rationals on this forum and I'm taking a clue from that about some of my thoughts being shared by some of the folks out there. I'm thinking they'll recognise my thought patterns and nudge me in the way of the next key.

My extrapolations are too far from my data cloud for me to have much confidence in their validity. I keep second-guessing myself and wondering if I've reached the core of the issue yet - I feel like I'm getting close.

Rationals are strong planners. I'm and INTJ so even my contingency plans have a three dimensional array of subordinate contingency plans (yeah, you know what I mean).

My current hypotheses is that folks are drawn to swinging by a strong need for serendipity in their lives. We rationals are such strong planners that it takes horny naked strangers to give us that serendiptious shot in the arm. The need for serendipity is of course not limited to the rationals.

Anyone have comments about the connection between the need for serendipity and swinging????

Bruce

[socolais]

I know I'm one of those annoying "lurker/ swinger wannabes" that over-thinks the issue at hand. I think I'm close to understanding this lifestyle attraction and I'd like to encourage some more feedback on this if bumping my thread is not in poor etiquette.

So, I'm thinking the serendipity and emotional connection combine through the element of caring deeply for each other. We each have a need for variety in our sex. Being married means we also have a personal need to provide variety for our spouses. At some point, variety reaches a level where it includes sexual activity with other people.

I think there may be a correlation between our set of boundaries on that interaction and our depth of caring (as measured by the strength of our emotional bond).

I'm not suggesting an exclusive or perfect correlation. We all know it's possible to love and care deeply and still maintain plenty of physical restrictions. And the lack of restrictions does not guarantee the greatest depth of caring.

I can't buy into the story about this being only a hobby, except for perhaps some Psych Majors.......

[Chicup]

Originally Posted by socolais

I can't buy into the story about this being only a hobby, except for perhaps some Psych Majors.......

Yes you are greatly over thinking so you won't get many responses because most of them would be telling you, you are over thinking.

But this last bit I feel I can comment on without telling you, you are over thinking.

Initially swinging is a real learning experience, and it did GREAT things for our marriage and bond as a couple. Quite amazing really.

That was initially. Being thinking beings we don't need to keep repeating the experience to learn what we learned we know it. As such any swinging is as much a hobby as anything else. Its fun for freetime, but if we could never do it again, we would still have the same relationship we have now. Its a hobby at this point.

[DBL D]

Chicup, I think some people may think that calling swinging a "hobby" is somehow trivializing it or making it mean less in some way. I have other hobby's but I do'nt take them lightly at all. The people you meet in the lifestyle are usually above the board and will make good friends for the future.

One more thing for the OP...You never really know how anyone else that you meet relates to swinging and the relationships they make, just for added complication.

Male D

[socolais]

When they were passin out the over-thinkin gene, I got in line twice,,,,,, and thought about goin back for more ;-)

The more I read, the better I understand my motivations for wanting to participate in the lifestyle. The responses to my posts all indicate I'm over thinking this by a mile. So, I back up and approach (over think) the situation from a different angle. I'm a believer in the value of successive approximation.

Over and over, I read about this being "just a hobby" to so many folks. My gut reaction is, "Sure, that's kool to say but how in the world can fucking each other's spouses be trivialized as a hobby like stamp collecting or model airplanes. The concept of rules and boundaries for sexual activities is inconsistent with any hobby paradigm I can think of. This use of "hobby" must be a metaphor that I don't fully understand."

There is so much attention placed on everyone's individual set of rules - what she is willing to do to me and what I'm allowed to do to her even to the specifics of where it gets done. The rules that support safety and security are fundamental to any reasonable activity and can be factored out of the cloud of rules. Most of the remainder is easily recognized as psychological and emotional barriers that appear to indicate something about the magnitude of the bond between the spouses or in some cases, an individual "hang-up". I'm not so sure that's a nice thing to say out loud.

Our bond with each other has been recently growing at a remarkable pace. Damn!!! This is FUN!!! Our comfort zone with each other allows us to talk openly about our feelings and desires. It makes me feel good to support her desires and preferences; she shows the same perception by willingly giving me all the pleasure she can. We thrive in the goodness of each other's giving and caring. I'm starting to detect a bubble of love capacity that appears to have room to include other friendly folks in our pursuit of sexual pleasures in higher and higher intensities. We stake a claim on a new height of compassion for each other by inviting others into our bedroom for a session of fun sexual pleasure. The avalanche effect on the growth in the bond strength allows many couples to progressively shed rules that no longer reflect the limits of their enhanced comfort zone.

Activities - are a product of motivations which are a product of needs. Anyone who swings can't deny "a need to swing". But having a "need to swing" sounds repulsive. Why? I think it's because swinging is not the true need. The core need is for "a stronger bond" - swinging is simply a good method to strengthen and freshen that bond.

That sheds new light on the subject for me. It's obvious now that we will intuitively know if and when the time is right for us to include others in our sexual activities. We'll seek new partners based on how the experience with them is likely to strengthen our mutual bond through giving our spouse a "good time". And my own "good time" feeds back to her as a reward.

Even the events filled with drama feed back to strengthen our bond by the way we support each other through the unwelcomed feelings. A diet rich in drama would not be a healthy balance, but sometimes ya gotta eat your peas before ya get dessert.

If my understanding of the need for rules is correct, to Hell with rules (with the obvious exception of safety and security). No stamp collector would say you could lick their stamp but you can't stick it. Rules evaporate and condense to - Let's give each partner all the pleasure we can while receiving all the pleasure we can stand. Take each encounter to the serendipitous limits of our comfort zone at that time.

And the part about never really knowing the motivations and objectives of potential playmates is perhaps an important factor in the excitement of the unpredictable. I think they are welcome to enjoy whatever motivations they choose - I just need a filter to have confidence that their motivations and activities wont cause us any negative concern during playtime. I think the trick here is to recognise the early stages of an uncomfortable interaction pattern.

This perception exposes new opportunities for over thinkin.......

I do appreciate your responses.

[sexcupid]

Ok sunshine, you really are reading too much into things.

Yes, there are times that I am an over-thinker as well. I like to mull something over, come at it from various angles, ect.

If the primary bond is not strong to begin with, IMO, this will not make it stronger. For me the thinking/over thinking issue comes up with our boundaries.

Does fucking someone else's spouse/SO, deep down make me feel at harmony with the universe or my sweetie? Um, no.

Can I equate our activites as being a hobby? Sure, a hobby is something you do because you like it, enjoy it, like the people, ect. And if you deny the seriousness of stamp collecting....well, watch out....we may be ready to have a stamp collecting uprising on our hands....lmao

My emotional bond with my sweetie is fairly strong. We've had good experiences, and bad with this. As he likes to put it (and others here have to), it's just the icing on the cake....if we were to stop, I would be ok with just us. THAT is what makes me happy. If he came at the topic with some of the language you are presenting here, I'm not sure I would be receptive. I'll try to clarify that by saying, to me, it seems to be wordy and a bit circular in logic...that is just the way it seems to me...but my SO is very direct in his approach to things, so if this is the way she is used to communicating with you, then it may not have the same reaction with her?

I mean variety is the spice of life, but your equating keeping things fresh and exciting inevitably leading to sex with partners outside the marriage does not hold water with me. I'm sure that in any given country/state/county/ect. on this planet that there are people who have been married for years and years, that have never and would never consider adding other people to the mix.

Enjoy the discovery process,

Maria

[SouthBond]

Inside of you is a fire of passion that you have never known. As you seek the deeper feelings of relationships and emotions, try swinging. Instead of tearing you apart, it will unleash a craving for each other that you have only dreamed about. My wife and I had been married several years and had gotten into a boring routine of sex. We talked about ways to spice up the bedroom activities and swapping spouses came up. We knew several couples about our age and decided to test the waters. We found a couple that was just like us. Ready to try something new. We made arrangements for a meeting and everything went as planned. The most amazing thing is what the swing session did for our sex life. We could not get enough of each other. If thinking about your inner feelings makes you happy, then seek the bonding that you need. But if you want to release the true animal that lies within you and your mate, try swinging.

[BCinIN]

When they were passin out the over-thinkin gene, I got in line twice,,,,,, and thought about goin back for more ;-)

Ah, but did you OVERthink going back for more? Did you question the reason for your motivation to have gone back the first time, or the various psychological satisfactions derived thereof that may have produced the desire to repeat the experience yet again?

Seriously, though, I do think you're overthinking things a bit. That may not be a bad thing at all! Knowing exactly why you want to swing, and why your spouse wants to do it, are both, in my opinion, absolutely essential to maintaining a strong bond throughout the experience.

One thing struck me, and maybe there's something else I missed that further explains it...but it is this quote:

Experiencing the temptation with the confidence that it'll never happen generated a rush, a vigor, a primitive and fundamental excitement. For so many years, I was embarrassed for "wrongfully" feeling enjoyment in the temptation. I felt so bad that I stifled the pleasure, but now I see it in a new light and I want to boldly explore the beneficial opportunities. That's the rush I imagine comes from swinging at its best.

Dangerous. If you're entering the swinging scene based on your own desire for temptation, you're playing with fire. Couples who swing must BOTH be involved, and both interested, in order for swinging to "work." But more than that--and I know some people will disagree with me, but that's okay: couples who swing should be doing it with a primary focus on pleasing their spouses, not themselves. I swing because I want to see my wife happy. She does it because she wants to see me happy. But we both do it because we want to experience it together. And the happiness we get from it doesn't come from other people at all really--it comes from us enjoying our time together doing fun and wild things. Enjoying the sexual act with another person, but not the person (beyond enjoying their social company, which is a must in order for anything sexual to begin with), is our thing, and we wouldn't have it any other way. If we want to enjoy a person sexually, we have each other. Wanting other people, however, is what in our books constitutes cheating--it really doesn't mean squat whether you're with your spouse at the time. Cheating is in the heart and mind.

I can't begin to count the number of posts I've seen on this forum from people who got into swinging and ended up miserable because it wasn't something that was clearly understood with their spouses, and/or mutually sought-after by both of them, AND for the right reasons. The worst-of-all recipe for disaster seems to be Partner A allowing Partner B to sleep around one-on-one with others. As far as I can tell, the disaster probability on that one is about 99.99%.

And those last two paragraphs, long-winded as they were, are basically my way of saying that you should communicate with your SO first and foremost. You've never even mentioned her directly here unless I missed it...and that's usually an indication of someone who's going off on their own, at least mentally/emotionally. And that is the first step on the road to joining the other 99.99%, regardless of how it may seem to you now. Be careful. And wow--sexcupid and SouthBond made a couple very insightful posts above that I would advise you to take to heart as well.

[socolais]

I like the way your comments on this thread and scattered across the forum help me clarify and rearrange my thoughts.

My wife and I discuss the possibility of swinging both in detail and in abstraction. It's no surprize that I'm the one that initiated the discussion. We both know that this activity can't be right for either of us individually - we work it TOGETHER or it doesn't happen at all - no regrets, no hard feelings. She reads this forum and we discuss her perceptions and compare them with mine. There remains a possibility that swinging is just not quite right for us - that's OK because just discussing it lights a fun fire in the waterbed.

She's more pragmatic than I, and I've learned to value that caution over the years. The promise of unleashing an overwhelming craving for each other has me wanting to jump in with both feet. She wants to wade in and progressively test the waters with each step - I'm looking forward to some fun wading. Neither of us are early adopters of emerging technologies and that patience carries over to significant lifestyle changes too. I'm more than willing to explore the lifestyle at whatever pace she and I find comfortable.

I find it amusingly ironic that I'm drawn to swinging by a sincere desire for the fullest and richest relationship with my wife and that sex with other folks takes a back seat to that interest. Talk about circular logic.....

My associating the exhilaration of the temptation with the rush from swinging is very likely to be flawed. I just needed an internal reference point for me to get a handle on how this stuff might feel when it happens. Perhaps the common denominator is the ego boost that comes from the realization that someone out there sees me as sexually desirable.

Twice in this thread the hobby aspect was mentioned as a later effect. I think I am beginning to see how that might be, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it. I'm not really sure I ever want to go quite that far.

Originally Posted by SouthBond

Inside of you is a fire of passion that you have never known.... if you want to release the true animal that lies within you and your mate, try swinging.

This is an impressive example of the comments that has me pestering the nice folks on this forum with my philosophical ramblings.