Vanilla friends asking questions about our swinging friends

[duluthians]

So we have met a few couples via the internet for swinging times. However when we tell our non-swinging friends that we are meeting with others, they question where we know them from. They are not work friends, and we don't have other social avenues so they begin to really wonder.

One even went so far as to suggest that we are swinging with others. I don't know why he suspected that but thats what he said.

So to protect our privacy, anyone have any ideas?

Help for newbies...

T&L

[mrs good times]

I too have this problem and would like suggestions. I hate to lie to my friends but we went to the club one night and met with non-swinging friends the next. They wanted to know what we did and we said "stayed home and played Scrabble". We ran into the same problem with NYE because we wanted to go to the club and our friends wanted us to spend the holiday with them. What do you say?

[Vjklander]

We tell them we met on the net or whatever. Most of our friends know we are a bit kinky, so we meet swingers, nudists, BDSMers, belly dancers, rocket scientists, LARPers, SCA, Ren faires, you name it. If they want to ask more we'll tell them more, its their choice
I'll include this snippet from muy friend Jack Rinella's newsletter. It is actually aimed at the Gay aand Leather communities, but i think applies to swingers as well:


The real value of coming out is very personal but that doesn’t mean there isn’t
a social value as well. Each and every outing makes it easier for the next
person to come out. Each and every time homosexuality or BDSM is spoken freely,
it becomes easier for it to be spoken of more freely. Every time someone learns
that someone they know is Gay or kinky is a time when that person begins to
learn that neither tendency is necessarily evil.

You see, freedom is contagious. The more free each of us is as an individual,
the more free we become as a society. I’m talking big results here. Freedom
brings acceptance, tolerance, security, and respect. Even more importantly it
brings self-acceptance, self-tolerance, self-security, and self-respect.

Contrary to common opinion on the matter, what we need is more out, not less. As
long as what we do as individuals remains hidden, our detractors, who are often
as closeted as we, will use the darkness against us, creating false scenarios of
incest, abuse, and injury because the truth is not present to defeat them.

The closet allows our deeds to be tainted with the lies of others, since we fear
showing our deeds in the light of truth. What we need are hundreds of more
articles like the one that appeared in Time Magazine. What we need are thousands
of us (and that’s only some of us) to be open about our lives.
What we need is to live true lives. Therein lies true freedom. Now isn’t that a
kinky idea?

[lovers]

We do a bunch of things:

1. We try to avoid places that we would run into our "straight" friends.

2. We basically lie to our straight friends about what we do on our weekends. We end up coming across as really boring people.



In the end, they don't suspect a thing.

[VegasLee]

If people ask us we tell them the truth. We do not and will not lie about our Lifestyle.

We respect others right not to be part of the lifestyle but if they ask, they will be told.

No, they do not get the details of "who" I did last night. It is none of their business and we do not "out" others.

We have never lost a "friend" because of who we are or our chosen Lifestyle.

[Brit_Pair]

Seems to me that people can employ three basic strategies:

1. Take Jamie's line, and be open and honest about what you do. The principle is sound, idealistic even. Unfortunately, being open about your off-duty activities has the potential to be both massive and destructive, depending on who you are, what you do, where you live and who you tell. If you're going to tell a friend, be damn sure you don't mind who knows what you do out of hours. Once the cork's out of the bottle . . .

2. Lie about what you do when you're out playing. Yes, lying to friends might not feel particularly good, but ask yourself this: are you compromising these people? Is your 'deceit' somehow threatening them, or reducing their quality of life? If the answer is "no", then you should drop the guilt. Do your friends tell you about every single aspect of their lives? Doubtful. So why should you feel the need to do the same?

3. Avoid the subject altogether if possible. Don't advertise the fact that you're meeting new people.

As to what you tell friends if you plump for option 2 . . . well, some people are natural liars, some can get by, and others couldn't lie if their lives depended on it. If you list yourself in the latter category . . .

(i) Remember, being a convincing liar requires a good memory. So keep your story as uncomplicated as you can, to avoid tripping yourself up at some later date.

(ii) Conceal your lies within elements of the truth.

(iii) Be vague, but give enough detail to make your meetings sound reasonable, run of the mill and fairly mundane. Your friends will soon lose their interest.

(iv) If you're confronted by a friend who 'suggests' that you're swinging, say, "I wish!" or "The chance would be a fine thing!" Strenuous denials will likely attract more curiosity. Turn it around on them. Say: "What makes you ask? Is that one of your secret pastimes?"

(BTW we choose option 2 everytime, and we feel neither guilty nor compromised)

[Miss_Piggy]

this is a good question and quite applicable to my curent situation. I had been feeling like I was keeping up too much deceit at once and so decided to tell a select few people about what we have been up to on the weekends. I learned a couple of things. First of all that for me, telling turned out to be not only easy but a real relief (please note that I am only talking abotu telling a select few people). Secondly, our cover ups seemed to have been working quite well. I think that in the vanilla world people just don't acutally believe that things like swinging take place. And they certainly don't think that their friends are engaging in such activity.

So my advice here is you can either just be straight up with those friends who want to know what's going on.

OR

You can tell a little white lie about having met these friends through a family member or some other friend and that you had just found you have a lot in common and like their company.

To the other comment about a friend actually suggesting that you are swinging. It's funny, we have had the same experience. We told a friend that we would be going out with our new *friends* and his immediate response was, "Are you gonna have a great big orgy?" We had given no reason whatsoever for him to have suspected something like that.. so we just laughed at the joke and moved on... It didn't phase him one bit!

I don't know if that helps.. Good luck

~Piggy

[bill&sabrina]

I wouldn't lie. I have heard this saying all my life and it has proven true time and again; "Two people can keep a secret if one of them are dead". I would rather be thought of as kinky than be found out a liar.
Bill

[BiloxiCouple]

Tell some elements of the truth. Don't lie. You will get caught sooner or later. Easier to remember the truth than a lie.

(iii) Be vague, but give enough detail to make your meetings sound reasonable, run of the mill and fairly mundane. Your friends will soon lose their interest.

(iv) If you're confronted by a friend who 'suggests' that you're swinging, say, "I wish!" or "The chance would be a fine thing!" Strenuous denials will likely attract more curiosity. Turn it around on them. Say: "What makes you ask? Is that one of your secret pastimes?"

I think the person who said the above quotes was right on, if you can't be completely open.

Bottom line it is your life, you need to deal with it in your own particular way that will be comfortable for you.

[frenzb4sex]

I understand while it may not feel "particularly good" to lie to your friends, but the thing that we have concerned ourselves with is that with society's "deeming" of what we do, we risk that our vanilla friends finding out something will risk the friendship altogether. Therefore, we take the low road and discuss situations that are realistic but vague when asked. That's usually all it takes.

For you to say that you are meeting other people should be it. If they are your friends, they won't push or make you feel uneasy. I realize that many people who we call friends are close to us and know certain things that go on in our lives, but your choice to not extrapolate on this is not anything wrong, and is your prerogative. Perhaps the pushing is due to jealousy where you aren't spending time with them. Either way, if they continue to ask and ask, just bring it to them in this fashion:

"Wow, you are really interested in what we are doing! Why are you so curious? We don't do that to you guys!!! Don't worry, we aren't replacing you as friends! We have just decided that we want to get out more and that's it!"

That puts the person in "your shoes". They wouldn't want to be pressed for answers like a news conference. If they persist, I would really question their motives and friendship to you. This is your life, they have to respect your privacy.


Tim

[shoreguy]

We usually say it's one of my coworkers. The people asking are usually her family, or friends. My coworkers are about 100 miles away so nobody would know any of them. It sort of works, and it's easy to say. Her mother and brother are the nosiest, but it's definitely not a negative thing, they're just very interested. Luckily our friends are used to the fact that we've always had about 3-4 partitions of friends who rarely mix. Now, it's just one more.

Now that we've been at it about a year, we're starting to get pretty comfortable with some others knowing. It started with a friend here, a coworker there. Then she told 3 of her college friends. They have a grapevine you wouldn't believe. This weekend will be the first time we've really seen any of them since then. Should be interesting and full of questions.

We now have a policy of telling the truth if it's a direct question. Not "what are you doing tonight?", but "do you like girls?" (to her) or "do you guys have sex with other people?". We haven't had the direct question yet, but other people we've told either didn't say much or were very curious and interested.

At an event last Friday night in AC, we were in a dance club and all the swingers had wrist bands to help identify ourselves. Two curious strangers walked up and wanted to know what the bands were for. They were pretty insistent. When she told them there was about 20 minutes of questions about the lifestyle. People around our age (late 20s, early 30s) don't seem too freaked out about it even if they don't think they could do it themselves.

[EternallySingle]

Being single, my non-swinger friends knew not to pry too deeply when I said I had other plans or I'm going to see other people. If I say I'm going to a club and they want to tag along, I simply say its private.

I really feel thats all that needs to be said. I have other plans, meeting with other friends from out of town, going to an invitation only party, or seeing some friends I haven't seen for a while. No great explainations needed, and no reason to make up a story. Just don't tell them the details.

[J&T Indiana]

Makes me kinda happy that most of our friends live about an hour away. We moved about 6 years ago and don't have much time to find new "local" friends.

So we don't hang out THAT often, and when we do there's at least several days of planning, or an email saying, "hey are you guys busy this weekend" so we can take some time to either make up a reasonable excuse (usually "can't find a babysitter") or say "yep".

The main problem we have IS babysitters... our club is 2 hours away and allows overnight stays, so we usually sleep there and get home around 11am the next morning. Our parents watch the kids but always wonder why we aren't home at 3am after the bars close or something.

One time they called our cell at 3:30am, no emergency but we had to make an excuse on why we weren't at home yet.

I guess if it came down to it, all of our friends wouldn't have a problem with our swinging, but we'd prefer they don't know. Our parents, on the other hand MUST NOT find out.

[fun_pairTX]

We have friends in and out of the lifestyle, they hardly ever "cross over". When they do, we just tell our swing friends that we don't disclose our lifestyle and they have always been more than discreet with the information. When people ask questions we do what Eternally Single does. We don't lie, and we don't offer fake excuses, we just don't disclose.

[Avantgarden38]

We commonly feel a bit paranoid that people know we are swinging. We feel it mostly in public with our swinger friends.

But you know what? Nobody knows. If you have friends why would you need to explain how or why you know them. Friends are friends and we offer no explaination for how we met or for what purpose.

Our rule is we never tell non-swingers that we swing. Period.