feel like he's breaking a boundary

[nav&onyx]

Okay, so Nav and I have decided to take babysteps into the world of swinging. I don't really know if it's 100% swinging we want to do or not. All things swinging that I've read on these threads (I've been reading non stop just about all day about everything ever posted, it seems) we're interested in, but also the whole 'seeing other people' as well.

I'm the one that brought up this whole lifestyle and expressed me wanting to do it. Nav is on board, but still a little iffy. All day long he's been doing the whole, "I'm not sure if it's a good idea because I don't want you to be mad or jealous." Okay, not a problem, we talked it out and have officially established that if I was going to get mad or jealous, I wouldn't have suggested it, right? Right. We set out some basic groud rules to start off (I know more will be added). I thought they were pretty reasonable rules to start off with.

1. I want us to be included in everything. If you go find some girl and want to sleep with her, fine, just keep me included. I don't necessarily have to be in the room/house/hotel/whatever, just keep me informed. I want to know everything and vice versa.

2. No one we know personally/work with/go to school with.

3. If you're doing it with someone one on one, not in my house.

4. Never when the kids are around, no exceptions.

All of these rules go for both of us, no exceptions.

Okay, so I'm not mad/jealous, just a little miffed that he's breaking a rule. Here's the deal:

He met a female online and has been chatting with her for about three hours now. Fine, more power to him. I'm excited for him, know what I mean? The issue is, he's blatantly ignoring me. I can talk right to him (we're in the same room, he's on one computer, I'm on the other, just sitting so we can't exactly see the other's screen) and he ignores me. Is this not "keeping me in communication with what's going on"? Is this going to be a long running issue?

And honestly, it probably wouldn't even be something I'd bring up except for the fact that I'm over here, reading threads on this website, and every so often he's over here wanting to know what I'm looking at and why I'm looking at it (and not in an interesting 'whatcha doin?' kind of way) and I'm just letting him do his thing.

Does this mean we're doomed and should give up on this whole lifestyle? Or do I speak up now and nip it in the bud?

I'm so sorry if this seems like a petty thing. We're very secure in our marriage and communicative. I just want to be 'in the know' and I don't feel like I am. I want to start off with this on the right foot. I want it to be a fun thing for us that we enjoy, not something that I'm going to be opened about with my experiences and he's going to be secretive...

[DBL D]

The same thing happens to me and my wife sometimes. I walk in and she's having a chat. She's deep into it. I am a distraction to her train of thought and she has to either delay her answer or change her answer because of my presense.

All chats on Yahoo or MSN can be saved. Try to use a service that allows that. Swing Lifestyle doesn't last time I checked. You should retain the right to read them later and he should be nice enough to allow that without question.

Let them chat and talk about it later...actually sooner than later.

Fem D and I chat on Swing Lifestyle...but trust each other. Maybe you need to develop more trust before you decide to swing. Maybe since you mentioned this it is like a new toy and he's just having fun learning how to do things. You may need to help him with his education but he is your hub so be nice. It's a fun future if you keep the craziness out of it.

Male D

[meandher2go]

happens to both of us at times. we get so focused when we do find a person we want to chat with we find it hard to talk to the other and have a conversation at the same time.

its not his fault, hang in there and see what happens.

[Additude]

When I've been watching something on TV or reading some book or article that I am interested in and someone asks me to recite what the TV show is about or explain to them why someone did whatever or if they need me to tell them what the article or book is about, I consider it an interruption and it disturbes my train of thought.

Same thing happens when I am chatting with friends.

When your hubby has completed the chatting with his friend, then ask him how it went. I'm sure he will be happy to tell you.

[sereneiders]

It seems to me you two still have to adjust your boundaries here.

In one hand, you're proposing something much like an open marriage, more than swinging. The only rule connecting both styles would be the one telling both of you have to be aware of what's going on. So far, everithing is ok.

Now, you still didn't deffined a couple of things about this rule: the WHEN and the HOW.

By WHEN I mean, if you encourage him to engage in sex with others, wheter you like it or not, there's some degree of intimacy he and his playmante would need to develop: From the way you understand this, the rule may mean to be enforced AFTERWARDS (which could explain his attitude) or RIGHT IN BETWEEN (which explains yours).

The HOW is related with this, because if you want it to happen RIGHT IN BETWEEN, then you're asking for the right to interfer and have control of the situation. This is ok and normal if you were thinking of swinging, where the two of you are necesarily involved in the "getting to know each other" process, but it seems a little odd if you're thinking of an open relationship.

From your words, my guts are telling me you have a problem of trust. Not necesatily that you don't trust him, but more about the way the situation could evolve. It seems to me you'd like to plan everithing in advance, and for everithing and everyone involved to stick to YOUR plan, but you're (reasonabily) not confident enough abouth this, so it reaches a point where you felt compelled to get in control of the situation (by interfering while he was chatting).

This may be seen as a double standard, since you arranged the computers in such a way that you made and accepted an statement about each other degree of privacy about what you're doing. But for this to be possible, you both need to trust on the way the other will use the privacy. The fact is, you interfered with his privacy and he ignored you, perhaps as a way to stick to this privacy related statement.

You tow have to define here how much privacy is acceptable, and which degree of detail of what you allow the other know about your privacy is required as to be honest.

As for us, we share the same computer but we keep separate profiles. We chat in several IRC channels, each one have a mIRC copy installed with separate logs that we could erase. Anyway, for me it's like my wife pursue, if she ask me something from it, I habdle her the pursue instead of taking a look inside. Besides the computer, if she have a conversation when someone, it's a private one and I have no right to ask about it, nor she about my private conversations. We both trust in each other honesty and in the understanding and good will on how to protect each other and take care of our marriage. Should something from her privacy concerns me, I KNOW she'll let me know, and even so she may chose to hide it from me (ad even lie to me) if she feels it's the better way to protect me.

I know, it's a more risky approach that require an almost blind trust on each other, and because of honoring that trust we do our best to keep each other posted about what's going on when we talk with other swingers or playmates.

I am telling this because it seemed to me you were pretty close to this approach, or that at least something like this worked so far for the vanilla context, but when facing the lifestyle, it is colliding with your safety requirements, and perhaps revealing some hidden issue leading to a lack of trust.

In any case, it seems to me you two have a good communication. Don't freak out, just talk about this with your husband and adjust the rules. Just beware that you both may find other scary things along the path, and if you let them hurt you or your marriage, this swinging idea could become a nightmare, since to success you need to pay attention and learn to deal with these scary things as they come, when possible, as to set the rules required to avoid them in the future or adjust your attitude on how to take them.

[NandTfromCA]

Just remember that it reasonable for you to feel miffed about anything…ANYTHING. How you handle it is what really matters. You can flip out (obviously you are not doing that), you can ignore it, or you can kindly tell him what you’re feeling/thinking.

Although I completely understand the issue of being sucked into an IM conversation, it doesn’t mean he has a license to ignore you. It’s understandable that he will be in his own little world when he is IM’ing someone he thinks he will be intimate with, but you two need to establish when he can be in that world, and when he needs to be aware enough to hold a conversation with you. I would say that this is NOT a sign of a huge problem as long as you two find a place where you are both happy about the situation.

If either person is uncomfortable with something, that person needs to step back and assess what they are feeling, then articulate it to the other person, and establish how to avoid or deal with that discomfort in the future. If your verbal communication is as strong as your written (very objective and direct), you two will do well.

Mr.

[nav&onyx]

I thank everyone for their input, it's helped me see where I'm going wrong (and right) with this. We talked about it this morning and Nav thinks maybe we're trying to go about this too quickly for comfort. Maybe this lifestyle is for us and maybe it's not, that's why I'm here talking to you nice people, to get more information to make the decision to actually start swinging.

To be completely honest, I do have issues with trusting the outcome (I forget who mentioned it, sorry, not up with the names yet...). There's a small part of me (with a very loud voice, actually) that thinks maybe he could fall for someone else. I read some posts about not falling in love, but I think we're thinking of a much too complex situation to completely avoid that (the opened marriage thing). We're both fairly young (me 21, nav 23). We've been married since I was 17 and we have two children. I think between the kids and both of us going to med school, I'm not sure how it would work out in the ideal way. Both of us have 3 years of school and four year residencies ahead of us (he has an extra three for surgery fellowship, I have an extra 7 for Neonatology fellowship). I'm still terrified about the way our friends view us and what if we got 'found out'? Plus, with the minimal time we'll have with all of the school we're looking at, how do we divide that between 'us' time and 'swinging' time?

As you can tell, we're still working out the kinks and talking, which I think, is a reason I was so thrown off about the trance he was in while talking to this girl. I didn't really think it'd go so fast from talking about it to doing it. And here I thought I was the one 100% comfortable with it and he was iffy. Turns out the tables have turned. We have more talking to do about this and I have more reading and learning here.

Thank you all!

[Chicup]

My thought is open marriages are doomed to failure since no matter what he tells you its not the same as being there. He will have new friends, new options (as would you) and at best you would grow appart as your lives take different paths.

Most long time swingers do not have open marriages. It doesn't mean they never play alone, but its all in the context of mutual friends.

Also you are starting out pretty young unless you both started med school late. Having two kids, going to med school, and then doing residencies is hard enough without figuring out when you will have time to be doing other people, finding time to do each other will be challanging as it is.

My advice, graduate, do your residencies(though your residency plans may change) and come back to swinging after you have a real income and real time to devote to each other, your family, and THEN your playmates.

[Couple_N_Ark]

First off, as Chicup mentions, this sounds more like an open marriage, and not a swinging relationship.

This is just my opinion, but I don't agree with an open marriage relationship at all. There is just too much room for misunderstanding and trouble.

Secondly, you sound like you're the one who is pushing for this, but yet, you also sound like you are really not sure about this.

I think you need to just slow down or even stop, and think about what you want.

If it's an open marriage, then so be it, but be prepared for the hurt and problems that will probably happen.

Maybe you should reconsider and discuss with him a swinging relationship where you are both always present, even if you don't both participate.

[MoonLightKiss]

I can completely understand where you are coming from Onyx. We are only a few steps ahead of you. The chatting online did bother us both for a time. I would not intentionally ignore him, nor he ignore me intentionally, but sometimes we felt that we were ignored by the other. We sat down, talked it out. For me just hearing him say he loved me and would never ignore me on purpose made me feel better. Of course we only have one computer so our biggest problem sometimes is who gets on it

But we did deal with it and got over it. I noticed that I now just walk by him at the computer and glance at the screen just to see who he is chatting with. Not because I don't trust him, but because, well I am nosy But I glance and keep walking by to do what it is I was on my way to do and vice versa for him. I try not to interrupt unless I need to and so does he. In return, when we are interrupted, we immediately type BRB to the person we are chatting with and turn from the computer to give each other the attention they need.

All conversations are saved when we chat. We also have an unspoken rule, and I hate to use the word rule because its more of a respect for privacy issue, that if we want to look in the others files, we simply say "hey gonna go check your files." sometimes we add jokes to it about "hope you cleaned up your nasty chats you don't want me seeing" but it truly is just a joke. We trust that the other one isn't gonna delete any. And checking them isn't about trust for us, just being nosy most of the time, and it gives us insight to the people that we do chat with. Him being a guy he can pick up what a guy means where I may think it meant something else and vice versa.

I do hope all works well for you both.

[DBL D]

Excellent way of putting it, MoonLightKiss.

Male D

[sereneiders]

Folks, everyone of us knows what works for us and what wouldn't work, and this correlates with each one confort level about the way we deal with privacy and honesty. But from there to deem something that wouldn't work for us as something that WONT work for anyone else, there is a huge step that, IMO, we should avoid.

For example, I strongly disagree with the ones saying an open marriage are doomed to failure, just because (I agree) it's more prone to lead to problems than swinging. Following this line, someone may say swinging is doomed to failure because it's more prone to lead to problems than a vanilla relationship, and this is an argument most of us would be up to challenge.

The fact is, in both cases to be succesfull you need a lot of communication and a strong relationship. You'd require more of this as for you to play on your own with a playmate, and even more for an open marriage.

However, I agree in this scenario an open marriage would be much like wanting to learn to swim in the deepest part of the swimming pool.

Back to the OP: In this particular scenario, where you both haven't enough time to devote to your current relationship, an open marriage would lead to finding even less time, and it may happen that one of you end up having more time to devote to a playmate than the time required to devote to your marriage, and THIS is something too risky unless you two have a very well settled relationship.

In the other hand, if you were wanting to play togheter with playmates (i.e., to "properly" swing), you'd be devoting this time to your relationship as well, at least until gathering enough experience as to be able to tell for sure the relationship is stong enough as to be an open one.

[Chicup]

Knowing the stresses involved with med school and the apparent failure rate of open relationships, I stick by my prediction of 'doomed to fail', maybe not all open marriages fail, but the magic 8 ball tells me the outlook isn't so good for most of them.

Add two young kids to the mix, and frankly its just playing with fire, but I think we agree there

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by Chicup

Knowing the stresses involved with med school and the apparent failure rate of open relationships, I stick by my prediction of 'doomed to fail', maybe not all open marriages fail, but the magic 8 ball tells me the outlook isn't so good for most of them.

Add two young kids to the mix, and frankly its just playing with fire, but I think we agree there

In THIS particular scenario I agree, it's like playing with fire.

[nav&onyx]

The complete idea has been squashed, that's why I haven't beeen around to answer your replies. It actually caused so much trouble between us in one weekend alone that we realized it was a horrible idea for us.