Why I am so discrete about my swinging...

[curiousagain]

I have had some ask why I am so discrete about my swinging. After all they reason, I am a single male who cares?

Well, my two straight laced Daughters would care. The organization I work for would care. My clients would care (or at least enough to cause me problems). My Son would probably give a thumbs up, but that's him. Some possible future ex girlfriends might care.

But also, if everyone knows you're a swinger then anyone seen out with you or that you are friends with is "under suspicion" by those who like to stick their nose in other people's business. And, yeah we really don't care what those people think but they can cause problems. So, I am not discrete just for my sake but my friends (vanilla and swinging) also.

I am not asking a question, just making a statement and wondering what others think of it.

[curiousduo30]

We feel EXACTLY the same way! We are a couple with no children and family all over the country. Only some family members are close by (about an hour away), but this is a very small world and you never know who knows who.. .. We would not wish our family or friends any of the backlash that we might receive if we were "found out"... So, no, we do not think discretion should be taken lightly and if we had no family or friends (God Forbid) then we would probably not worry about it so much. Neither of us could really give a "rats a**" what others think, but most of our family does...that is enough for us to say, I don't think so, when talking about being more mainstream... Surrender

[good times]

We feel the same as you. I've had a non-swinger friend come up to me after seeing us with another couple who are swingers and tell me that we had better watch out with those people because they are swingers. I just said something like "huh, no kidding" and went on to another subject. But we are realists enough to notice that since some of our friends have found out we are swingers others have started avoiding being seen with us. Do we really care what others think? Not overly so, but we also don't want people to experiance guilt by association when seen with us either, so we try to be as discrete as possible. As our closest family is several hundred miles away that isn't a problem but we both work in very conservitive industries so if we weren't discrete our livelyhood might suffer.

[intuition897]

Originally Posted by curiousduo30

We feel EXACTLY the same way! We are a couple with no children and family all over the country. Only some family members are close by (about an hour away), but this is a very small world and you never know who knows who.. .. We would not wish our family or friends any of the backlash that we might receive if we were "found out"... So, no, we do not think discretion should be taken lightly and if we had no family or friends (God Forbid) then we would probably not worry about it so much. Neither of us could really give a "rats a**" what others think, but most of our family does...that is enough for us to say, I don't think so, when talking about being more mainstream... Surrender

This is E X A C T L Y the way we feel about it. Some construe this concern for others' feelings as shame in disguise. :rollseyes Hey! if people out there could handle it, we'd be out in a flash. We thoroughly dislike this need to hide our true selves. But while we might be willing to take the social flogging we'd get, our kids and extended family will receive it too. It's unfair, but true. We don't believe in making decisions on someone's behalf when those decisions could make their life a living hell.

[HappyPeople]

Oddly enough, several of our close friends are in open/swinging relationships, but we'd rather not disclose our activities to them because we'd just rather keep it separate (but if they found out, no biggy really, they'd probably laugh and hand us the secret decoder ring). Mostly, no one that we work with would have issue with it - even if our direct supervisors saw us out with others, they would probably give us a high five. We've got no kids, so no worries there. I guess that we're kind of lucky in this sense.

Basically, we've got little reason to be discrete and as I type that, I wonder what discrete actually means... Does that mean no fooling around in public places close to home?

What is discrete and what are the expected discrete behaviors?

[EternallySingle]

Putting aside the moral problems some people have with openly having sex with more than one person, how many people do you think will understand why you will let Billy that you only met last month, have sex with your wife, but not Bob, who was the best man at your wedding? Why should Charley be able to have sex with the Smiths, but the Smiths won't give the Chavez's the time of day? Susy is having sex with the Johnsons, but she won't go out on a date with my brother Ken? He makes way more money than all three of them. He looks better than Mr. Johnson, and he's AVAILABLE!

Rumors, more than reputation, are the reason to be discrete when swinging. I was just told an old friend (BTW, she already told me she swings, and verified that another friend of mine swings. She's now trying to get her to talk to me again) swings five hours ago. The person that told me just happened to mention it because her daughter is friends with this person's daughter. It took so much for me not to say "So what?" Instead, I said, "well, she's never been really discreet, and she's always been extremely sexual, and vocal about it. It doesn't surprise me at all. She's not going behind anyone's back, so she doesn't see it as wrong."

Oddly enough, my friend, who says she can't stand when married men try to hit on her, didn't dispute her right to swing. She said she'd never do it, but didn't say noone else should. then again, I remember the days when she would have sex with four or five different men inthe course of a day. Sure, one was the guy fixing her car, one was the plumber, one her boyfriend, one her ex-boyfriend, and one was they guy that paid her rent, but she was no sexual prude. She just didn't believe in more than one guy...wait, I remember a time in high school she did that too. LOL I wonder how she found out? )

[BiloxiCouple]

If I don't make much sense here it is because I just worked a ten hour shift and it is 5 in the morning when I got home.

We are personally open about our swinging. That doesn't mean we "flaunt" it either.

We were both in the Casino business until recently, because Katrina came along and blew our casino up!!! Being that the Casino business is more adult oriented it didn't bother us that people knew.

In fact we used to invite our fellow employees out to the local lifestyles club once a year for a birthday party. Don't panic. The owners would have it on a weekday night and advise everyone that was in the lifestyle what was going on ahead of time. Every year we would have between 40-50 people from my work at the club. Needless to say I got asked alot of serious questions by a few of my fellow employees and a few silly questions

All in all it hasn't been a problem at all for us. Working in the public's eye I have even had people say that they have seen us on certain adult websites. The few times that this has happened they were discrete about it. I made it a point not to discuss certain things while I was actually working. Professionalism and all that sort of stuff.

We would also never "out" another lifestyle couple or someone who was interested in the lifestyle. Of course over the years we have run into friends at the lifestyle club and they of course are checking it out for the first time. They come to realize that we will never say anything about this to others.

Once in a while I wear one of Julie's SwingersBoard Shirts or some other swingers shirt around town. In fact my 17 year old son wore one of my Ms. No Swimsuit shirts from Hedo the other day. I think he likes that one So he knows what we do. We don't try to hide it from our family, but some things we do is between us and doesn't involve family. My business is my business.

Did I ramble enough or miss something?

Billy
Billy & Elaine

[MV325]

Being in a very conservative small smal town environment we are very discreet and prefer not to swing anywhere nearby. The world is small and getting smaller. Not sure people will understand where we are. Funny thing is that there are a number of people that often refer to swinging with some laughter. It is likely there are more couples from the area swinging, but not close to home. We prefer to keep it that way.

[hilltop]

I agree curious,

I keep my swinging activities discreet from my close friends. Very few of them are single. Most are couples who I've known for 20 - 30 years and most of them as individuals before they got together.

Hey, maybe they're all swingers too and I just don't know but I'd not want to risk the shift in attitude towards me if they found out about my activities.

From the husband's "is he eyeballing my wife? to the wife's "is he thinking of ME that way?" kind of discomfort, I'd prefer not to push those boundries with them.

It's always a dance.

[wiscpl]

When we started out in this lifestyle we had an area that could be described as a ring in which we would swing. Basically anything inside a 30 mile radius was as well as outside of a 100 mile radius, anything in there was ok. We did this to lessen the possibility of being outed. We figured it would keep things discrete and lower the chances of it hurting our livelihood. What we've learned is this, those that we wanted to keep this lifestyle from have actually had some type of experience with it but may not be fully aware of it as a lifetstyle. This has opened up one opportunity in which we are very excited about.
We have shared with very select few of our closest friends who wonder how our relationship could be so wonderful about our extracuriclar activites. We would never share information about who we swing with and ask those we swing with to keep it confidental as well.

[JnCC]

Originally Posted by curiousagain

I have had some ask why I am so discrete about my swinging. After all they reason, I am a single male who cares?

I am not asking a question, just making a statement and wondering what others think of it.

I think it makes a lot of sense. The military often grants access to sensitive information only on a "need to know" basis, and I don't see why this would be any different. Why should people with whom I have no intention of sleeping with know anything about my bedroom activities?

If my kids mom, the recently-minted, holier-than-thou bible thumper, knew the gory details of my personal life, she'd do everything in her power to keep me from my kids. (not that she doesn't anyway...) Then she'd make sure my employer and all my neighbors and friends knew about it as well. Why risk virtually everything I have, for something that takes up less than 1-2% of my social life?

What IS a problem, and I wonder how other single/dovorced people in here deal with it, is what to do when you're at a point in a new relationship where "it's time to come clean" about some of the experiences of your past life. Most of my experience in swinging was with my ex-, a woman who still lives nearby and in the public eye to a large extent. In this situation, it's very difficult to be candid about what you've done, without being obvious about who you were doing it with. Because her right to privacy is as important to me as my own, I generally find myself avoiding women from this immediate area and from her profession altogether. When the subject does come up, I usually make oblique references to a "previous girlfriend." But women DO talk among themselves, and I always worry it's a matter of time before some reference to our private past gets back to her via the grapevine.

Maybe our story will turn out like that my great-aunt who was the Madame of a whorehouse during the depression. Her occupation, and the source of her significant income, was only whispered about when she was alive, but made for some great stories after she passed on.

[clit pro poet]

A really good thread, CA et al.
All or most of what's been said fits here.
Nevertheless, privacy and discretion, besides the obvious considerations of livelihood, family, and vanilla friends and colleagues, can accompany enjoyment of, and comfort with, others, adding to the experience.
Sure, philosophy, politics, freedom, morals, responsibilities, etc. - all get pulled into what one does with who (whom?) Too bad. This is mostly about sex in good company, with appreciation of ourselves and others. Too bad that that matters to anyone who wouldn’t care to share such an occasion. But it does, and that complicates things.
As WIScpl show, there’s almost certainly a good deal of sexual excursion (and thoughts about it) among couples and singles, but furtive, opportunistic, inconvenient, even disruptive. Too bad that things can be just a bit more out, but they aren’t, and we too hang back, and act with reserve.

[EternallySingle]

Originally Posted by JnCC

What IS a problem, and I wonder how other single/dovorced people in here deal with it, is what to do when you're at a point in a new relationship where "it's time to come clean" about some of the experiences of your past life. Most of my experience in swinging was with my ex-, a woman who still lives nearby and in the public eye to a large extent. In this situation, it's very difficult to be candid about what you've done, without being obvious about who you were doing it with. Because her right to privacy is as important to me as my own, I generally find myself avoiding women from this immediate area and from her profession altogether. When the subject does come up, I usually make oblique references to a "previous girlfriend." But women DO talk among themselves, and I always worry it's a matter of time before some reference to our private past gets back to her via the grapevine.

Yes, women do talk to one another. What I've found amazing is that women that start off behaving as if they are attracted to you suddenly start asking you if you are gay when they can't find anyone that lives close to you that has slept with you. Living in a small town and having a BIG family means that half the people in town are related to me. The rest I didn't find physically or emotionally attractive. So I dated out of town exclusively. Since there were no places to hang out in town except the beach, I always spent my time in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo once I got my driver's license. Thats 50-60 miles to find the closest woman I've had sex with as a teenager and young adult. Now, that has bitten me in the ass, so to speak. Strange but true.

Its also worked out well as far as swinging. Most of my first swing partner's swing friends were from Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, so having those exploits get back to my small little community with a limited amount of available romantic partners is slim to none. That, also, has worked to my disadvantage, because the only person I know locally that has admitted to me that she and her husband swing is not someone I would swing with. Since she doesn't personally know anyone I've slept with, she's reluctant to introduce me to single women, let alone couples. Don't know why that is, but it is. I'm thinking about doing the town slut just to give people something to talk about. Just Kidding.

How do I bring swinging up when I'm dating someone and it starts getting serious? Well, I never use the words "Swinging" or "Lifestyle". I will tell them that I've been involved in threesomes with old gilfriends, that I've been involved in threesomes with married couples, and that I've attended orgies in the past, but that is not that unusual for most of the women I know. As I said in another post, one woman I know hosts orgies at a local hotel two or three times a year. She has no intention of swinging or going to a swing club, but has no reservations about getting a group of ten or twelve people together for the sole purpose of making a hotel room smell funky for three or four days. Telling women I date anything short of "Yes, I swing" doesn't surprise them. They just figure its something I did in my young wild days in college or the army, or that its something a kinky ex-girlfriend put me up to. They never think itssomething I still try to pursue.

Last year, one woman got the biggest smile on her face when I told her I always seem to pick bisexual women as girlfriends. Her voice got a little lilt to it when I told her my last girlfreind set me up with a threesome with two of her friends after she got married. She looked very disappointed, however, when I said I wouldn't consider doing those things with someone I didn't trust completely. After that, she wouldn't even broach the topic of sex, or let me bring it up. Stranger still, since she was the one asking me to look at her butt everytime her kids weren't around and wouldn't back away from any physical contact if her kids weren't in the house. Too bad this all happened during summer vacation. Her kids were in and out of the house every half hour or so, and I could never get her to go somewhere I couldn't take them. If only that had happened during the school year. I think she might have been the Golden Unicorn single men are always looking for. I hear a rumor she's spending a lot of time with a married couple.

[montresor]

Ms P and I had a playmate who was overly extreme in the other way, in that he was afraid to be seen with us in a venue where he might encounter someone he knew! We didn't particularly care one way or another about this, our in-bed interactions were superlative, but it did strike us as odd. "I don't want anyone to know I swing," was his reasoning. Well heck, it's not as if people might just get together with a couple that you're, oh, I dunno... just friends with! And I don't think that there's some kind of flashing sign that appears above the get-together that says "MEETING FOR MMF SEX!" Oh well, to each his own, and it's just a little anecdote related to the thread that I thought might amuse you all. And anyway, he was great in bed and we didn't let it stop us from 11 years of swinging with him!

[DBL D]

We look at it as a private thing we do. We are very open about sex when it comes to meeting others who are interested in us for sexual reasons, but aside from a couple close friends, the topic is not mentioned. Now saying that, we will make comments or be free in our touching with one another when with vanilla friends, because that's the way married people act too. I think they may see us as a bit oversexed or maybe even naughty. That doesn't bother us, but those friends we have who aren't swingers are important to us too, as are our immediate families and we would not wish anyone to be bothered by our activities... facelick

(Having said all that...I wish we could live in a more tolerant world)

Male D