Downsides of Swinging (from the vets)

[sereneiders]

I agree with everyone, specially with Intuition (not to surprise).

We were talking somethig related to this the other night. We went to this aniversary party at some close friends bar and restaurant, one of these cool, fashion places. It was crowded of people, famous people invited, gossip TV show's crews after these famous, you know. We were there at the bar (after fighting for taking the place) and this gal lean on my back, pressing her boobs. I turn around, she was pretty and with her boyfriend standing one step away. The first crossing my mind was "damn, I envy those guys swingdar!" but the gal only wanted me to make her a place on the bar for their drinks. We laugh at what happend and started looking around, it was a seductive athmosphere to hook for many of the people in there, we was watching the seductive games, the body language from the people around us, and suddenly we look at each other and, at the same time, we both say "what are we doing here?". These people seemed too silly in their seduction games, and at the same time, shwoing off themselves, as if this were the ultimate place and way to meet people. We suddenly had this sad feeling of watching a flat, two dimensional world from a third dimension perspective, a place were we could perfectly fit some years ago, but that we didn't anymore. We leave the place.

We have this couple, close vanilla friends of us, we used to hang with almost every weekend before we started swinging. After that, we avoid meeting them on weekends because this interfer with our lifestyle, but they were feeling rejected without knowing why. Until a copule of months ago the male part of this couple and me were sitting in a cofee table, that he ask me if everithing is ok between my wife and myself, saying "You two are avoiding us, either you're having a problem with us that you don't want to tell, or you have a problem inside your marriage you don't want us to find out. But is doesn't seem to be a problem with us, because you avoid us some day and the next day everithing seems to be fine, so I suppose you two are in troubles". I try to avoid it saying, dont worry, everything is ok, then he said: "Ok, then I have to suppose the problem is with us, we two were friends for years and I tought you'd appreciate the friendship and had the balls to tell me what is anyoing you, so I gess we're not longer friends". I had to tell him about our lifestyle. It was ok for him (he knows his wife won't be so keen with the idea), asked a couple of questions, and we ended up laughing at our evasives attitudes and certain episodes, like when we were in a polyamoral relationship with this gal, that the three of us were at a party and a friend of him asked if our lover was our daughter , something that in the other had wasn't too nice, because we were not up to show this loving affair to our friends (should the three of us were having the loving attitude we used to have when being alone, no one would be doing that question, wich BTW exposed this guy realized there was an special bond among the three of us that he was able to explain by means of her place inside our family).

So, yes, there are odd in the swinging lifestyle. I can tell myself.

[DBL D]

Originally Posted by intuition897

3) Walking on eggshells around family and other people who would be offended. It just makes me so frustrated that people can't just say, "Oh...well, that's...different. Huh. Good luck with that!" And it's equally frustrating to see so many people who could be happier with their lives/marriages (I mean, you can just SEE it!) if they'd just expand their minds a tiny bit. But nooooo...sex is baaaad!

I see your point there intuition. Or for us to say, "That's ok...That's normal at my club."

I see this problem with couples who are starting in the lifestyle too.

Male D

[intuition897]

Originally Posted by sereneiders

These people seemed too silly in their seduction games, and at the same time, shwoing off themselves, as if this were the ultimate place and way to meet people. We suddenly had this sad feeling of watching a flat, two dimensional world from a third dimension perspective, a place were we could perfectly fit some years ago, but that we didn't anymore. We leave the place.

This is exactly what I was talking about. We're separated from the rest of the world by our ability to see this extra dimension, to see all the possibilities that it opens up to us...and the possibilities that it could open up to these other people, too, if they would only just open up their eyes and see it. Sereneiders' friend illustrates this limited dimensionality perfectly:

Originally Posted by sereneiders

"You two are avoiding us, either you're having a problem with us that you don't want to tell, or you have a problem inside your marriage you don't want us to find out. But is doesn't seem to be a problem with us, because you avoid us some day and the next day everithing seems to be fine, so I suppose you two are in troubles". I try to avoid it saying, dont worry, everything is ok, then he said: "Ok, then I have to suppose the problem is with us, we two were friends for years and I tought you'd appreciate the friendship and had the balls to tell me what is anyoing you, so I gess we're not longer friends".

He never even considers that there might be something more to it than this black and white assumption. The world (at least the western world) so takes for granted the notion of monogamy and sexually exclusive relationships being the standard that life is just escaping them!

[NandTfromCA]

Originally Posted by intuition897

The world (at least the western world) so takes for granted the notion of monogamy and sexually exclusive relationships being the standard...

That's the crux of what kept us from swinging for a while. The usual assumptions running through our heads- "If it really could work, everyone would do it." "In fantasy it's fine but it can only destroy a relationship...that movie we watched told us so." “You are edgy if you even think about it, but only sexual freaks actually do it.”

There was something I heard, I’m not sure where (maybe here???) but it goes something like- Our mind is like a big museum, full of paintings that shape our perception. Did you hang your own paintings, or did you let someone else go in there and hang there’s?

I think that’s a pretty cool analogy. Hopefully I didn’t butcher it too badly.

Mr.

[intuition897]

Originally Posted by NandTfromCA

That's the crux of what kept us from swinging for a while. The usual assumptions running through our heads- "If it really could work, everyone would do it." "In fantasy it's fine but it can only destroy a relationship...that movie we watched told us so." “You are edgy if you even think about it, but only sexual freaks actually do it.”

There was something I heard, I’m not sure where (maybe here???) but it goes something like- Our mind is like a big museum, full of paintings that shape our perception. Did you hang your own paintings, or did you let someone else go in there and hang there’s?

I think that’s a pretty cool analogy. Hopefully I didn’t butcher it too badly.

Mr.

I like that! I used to hang a lot of stuff on the walls that weren't even numbered or signed prints...just the mass produced cheap scenery you buy on special at Sears for $29.95. No one knows who painted it, but it's a pretty scene and very recognizable (although non-descript) because every Tom, Dick and Harry has one over his sofa at home. People EXPECT you to have this piece of crap hanging on your wall! No decent home would be without it! :rollseyes
For the longest time, I really thought it was art. But after seeing that they don't sell "art" at Walmart, I realized that if you want art, you either have to create it yourself, or actively seek it out off the beaten path...from real life experienced first hand. It needs to be genuine and real and unique. Even limited edition prints are not actually "art"; they're just like photocopies or flyers that get the word out that this piece of art exists. The only real piece of art is the original, that still smells like canvas and oil, that was the physical product of the enormity of the human mind.

I don't know much about specific artists. I couldn't tell roccocco from renaissance. But I know what I like, and I know what speaks to me. I'm starting to trust my own sense of what is worth hanging on my mental museum walls. I don't mind hanging other's original works there...if they're good. That's why I like this board, for example. Lots of really good original stuff here! But I no longer have any $29.95 specials on the walls. Even if 99% of the people who might walk through my "museum" think that the stuff on the walls is grotesque and disturbing, and in no way art (because the yard stick they use is whether or not the majority of the population would agree that it's art), I still say they're wrong. It only takes one person who really, truly "sees" what the artist was trying to accomplish, what he was trying to communicate, and if that person's life was touched by it...that makes it art.

Thanks for this analogy, Mr. NandT. I definitely agree with it.

[sereneiders]

I also liked NandTfromCA analogy, however it talks about what you like to hang up versus what other peoples like to hang up there, not a word about what's "art".

But here I disagree, to some extent, to Intuition (well, since finally I find out something I disagree with her, let me hihack the thread ).

We carry on a concept for "art" that came from other times, where very few people had the chance to express themselves and being financed by sponsors. To some extent, these sponsors where buying talent (if I owe the artist, I owe his/her talent) with money, some of these work pieces managed to survive the pass of the time and we recognize them as art because they tell us something about these times, the culture where the authors were inmersed, the way people trend to pervceive the world around them.

As for today, a lot of people have time to express themselves with "artwork", so many that such artwork is able to tell us the same we found in the old art, but about our times, our culture, reflecting the way we see the world. From this perspective, the $29.99 picture people hang in their livingroom deserve to be called "art", however, at $29.99 per piece there wouldn't be an "art" business.

Museums (art galleries), sponsors, art dealers require something as unique as these old pieces are, made today, able to be set appart from the $29.99 pieces fitting the old art definition. Thus, they need a new definition for art, and today it isn't the "what it is" that defines something as art, insthead the "when it is" what does so.

Yoko Ono piles up stones inside a museum, in a way that wouldn't differ from the way you may find stones piled up in a desert, nor from the way a 4 years old kid would be able to pile them up, and that is "art" under the current definition, just becasue that pile is being shown in a museum.

A freezers brand asked Dalí to make a design from a new "Dalí" designed freezer, in exchange for a huge amount of money, and Dali gave them back the freezer model painted in white, with his signature at the bottom. He said "what other color a freezer deserve to be painted with but white?", and no one could argue that, so the Dalí "art" concept for a freezer was the same than the previous model, a white freezer, but Dalí one was "art".

Some artists use older, or more clasical mediums to express themselves, like oils, or collages, and for our perception that woud be "more art" than a pile of stones, but the fact is, you may face a canvas with a mess on top, something that you'd recognize a scholl kid could do, and that's art because it is in the museum wall inthead of in your living room wall (unless the one you have came with a certificate made by an art dealer, and even if it were having the signature of a known artist, it would be worthless unles you were having the certificate). The picture is art "when" it have such a certificate.

With very few exceptions from people developing original new techniques to work with certain materials, having talent doing so (but always by means of an art dealer canvalidating that work as art), the concept applied for current art is the result of a production process, even when being exclusive enough as to be sold at a high price, it doesn't differ from any other production process for any consumer good today.

The art dealer is the one defining the features something should have to be able to hang in a museum and to be sold at the wanted prices, the art dealer looks for someone that, coincidentaly, is doing a work having these features, or either talk someone with certain degree of talent into doing pieces with the required features, sponsoring the artist as the factory for this production, and finally have a product to sell, a product that is "art" because the art dealer is an art dealer and he/she claims it to be art by means of an advertisin process where these pieces will be hung in a museum.

Notice the serialization of artwork doesn't deprive it from being "art pieces". As I understand, Rodin's "The Thinker" is a clasical sculpture that no one will argue it's "art", however, there are almost one hundred of these sculptures coming from Rodin workshoop with his signature all around the world, and all of them are "original art".

So, in this case, if you believe that by hanging up a $30,000 picture in your living room wall you're not being "lead by your nose" as these folks hanging up the $29.99 picture are, then I'd say NandTfromCA analogy still remains valid. Hang up there the picture that you like the most, because all of them, disregarding the price, are just products being sold to a customer.

[Chicup]

Ok so to add based on what others have posted.

6. Money. It can get expensive if you 'live the lifestyle' aspect of swinging. Clubs, parties, sitters, vacations, slut wear, hotelrooms, all add up.

7. Not being able to tell anyone. I forgot about this one myself, but it really drove Mrs. Chicup nuts after our first time. She had this amazing, unexpectedly great thing happen and couldn't tell ANYONE about it. " So what did you do for the weekend?"" Oh nothing, just got together with friends".

Keep'em comming

[intuition897]

Originally Posted by sereneiders

The art dealer is the one defining the features something should have to be able to hang in a museum and to be sold at the wanted prices, the art dealer looks for someone that, coincidentaly, is doing a work having these features, or either talk someone with certain degree of talent into doing pieces with the required features, sponsoring the artist as the factory for this production, and finally have a product to sell, a product that is "art" because the art dealer is an art dealer and he/she claims it to be art by means of an advertisin process where these pieces will be hung in a museum.

Notice the serialization of artwork doesn't deprive it from being "art pieces". As I understand, Rodin's "The Thinker" is a clasical sculpture that no one will argue it's "art", however, there are almost one hundred of these sculptures coming from Rodin workshoop with his signature all around the world, and all of them are "original art".

So, in this case, if you believe that by hanging up a $30,000 picture in your living room wall you're not being "lead by your nose" as these folks hanging up the $29.99 picture are, then I'd say NandTfromCA analogy still remains valid. Hang up there the picture that you like the most, because all of them, disregarding the price, are just products being sold to a customer.

I don't think we disagree at all, sereneiders. $29.95 or $30,000...if you're being told it's art and hanging it on your wall for that reason alone - even if you think it's pretty - you're still letting someone lead you around by the nose. The original 'The Thinker' by Rodin is the actual art. Art for art's sake. Any copies manufactured thereafter - even by the artist himself - are merely copies. His bread and butter. The conception had already happened...the copies just spread the word. That's the artistic process, I think. There is no second 'first time'. An idea can only be given birth to once; after that, it exists.

Did Dali's fabulous freezer qualify as art? Yes, I think it did. Would I put it in my living room? Uh...probably not. But I think it deserves a place in SOMEbody's museum. Why? Well, if I am right...

Dali had a sense of humour and sarcasm. He was mocking the sheer stupidity of hiring an artist to 'redesign' - of all things! - a frikkin freezer! So he did just what they wanted him to do...slap a coat of paint on it and sign his name at the bottom. There ya go...it's art. :rollseyes This artistic statement is definitely 'alive'; it interacts with it's viewers and makes them a part of what it is trying to say. Who gets the joke? Who's smart enough to realize that he's making fun of human vanity and ego? It's an IQ test or sorts. Like in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, there will always be those brown-nosing fakers fawning over this fabulous piece of art while not really understanding it. Then there will be the child who says, "But...it looks exactly the same!" ...and then there will inevitibly be the laughter from the crowd at the general foolishness of it all.

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by intuition897

Dali had a sense of humour and sarcasm. He was mocking the sheer stupidity of hiring an artist to 'redesign' - of all things! - a frikkin freezer! So he did just what they wanted him to do...slap a coat of paint on it and sign his name at the bottom. There ya go...it's art. :rollseyes This artistic statement is definitely 'alive'; it interacts with it's viewers and makes them a part of what it is trying to say. Who gets the joke? Who's smart enough to realize that he's making fun of human vanity and ego? It's an IQ test or sorts...

I agree about Dalí humor sense and sarcasm, and that for the effect produced that freezer deserve to be called art. I was pointing out how the art concept changed with time.

Someone defined culture as the sum of the information required to survive, passed from generation to generation beyond the genetic medium, because this medium wasn't able to carry on the amount of information nor to change fast enough, thus calling it exogenetic information (in opposition to the endogenetic one). Within genetics, what makes the changes possible is the noise altering the original information being transmited, if there were no noise, we would be just a bunch of ameba. I like to think art is to the culture the same than noise for the genetics. The art challenge people's mindset, or reflects different perspectives (sometimes unintendedly) in such a way that contributed to the cultural changes.

As for today, I believe the culture mainstream is absorbing the art and shaping the concept in a way that may prevent it to become "noisy" enough as to produce or reflect major cultural changes.

[Chicup]

This has got to be the most unexpected type of threadjack ever

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by Chicup

This has got to be the most unexpected type of threadjack ever

Yep, sorry for that.

[intuition897]

Originally Posted by Chicup

This has got to be the most unexpected type of threadjack ever

Guilty as charged! Sorry folks, everybody return to your homes, show's over...nothing to see here!

I'm afraid I'm not quite educated enough about art and art history to argue the subject as intelligently as I'd like, so maybe I'll just let this go. But its been fun.

[Swingercast]

What an excellent thread...thanks chicup and all who shared their insight! Gosh I love being in the lifestyle and it is because of all of you wonderful minds, souls and wild @ heart spirits !!! I guess the biggest pitfall for me would have to be not being able to share all these wonderful experiences with our vanilla friends and co-workers. Our podcast has helped me cope with this and it is not so much of a downside now that I am sharing the experiences with world..but still, it is a downfall....and I have to come up with something else to say as an excuse...so tired of saying we went to a party with our other friends who live out of town. Even though that is the truth, I really want to tell them EVERYTHING! But, that is just a very minor downside that is far outweighed by the positives!! The money hasn't been a problem and doesn't seem excessive compared to our vanilla friends who go to vanilla clubs paying a fortune at the door"to be seen", buying drinks, dinner, valet, outfits to get them into these snotty clubs etc.(I bet they spend $$ on porn too) - I think we get off a little lighter on the pocketbook by going to on premise clubs...with buffet&byob, less of a cover charge than the popular vanilla clubs in our area, we do rent a hotel., but I don't stress much on clothes b/c they are not on for that long and I don't buy porn anymore...just see it and experience it live.

We did have our first really NEG experience at a club this weekend and normally we come back from the clubs and record our hot experiences but sat. night we came home and recorded a rant to get it off of our chests. It was one of our favorite couples clubs "made some improvements"lol.. and now caters to single guys and now hides the couples in the upstairs attic area 5% of the club...and if couples want to come downstairs to dance or jacuzzi or get some air ...I was told beware the guys will jump you if you go down there. That is all I want to say about it...not really a downside of swinging but the downside of non swinging males trying to use swingers to increase their revenue by enticing the single horny men by saying it is a swingers club....it is a brothel ..plain and simple.

Allie

[MulderNScully]

If there are any annoyances Scully and I tend to face are money, kids, and the lack of "vanilla" choices of going out. Money is tight for us, but we love hanging out and meeting up with new friends and old friends. Kids, well trying to keep it from the kids because they are still young and we don't think they'd understand too well why in the world mommy and daddy always dress up and bring their drinks with them. Lack of vanilla choices when we go out well, this is just because it's been a while since we have been to a movie or dinner. I'd like to do this with her again so I am hoping we can do that to get in touch with our vanilla stuff.

Great topic!!

Mulder
(MulderNScully)

[neoparadigm]

I find it interesting how everyone here is bent on honesty with your partner and the true virtues of open communication yet in an act of total hippocracy you all lie through your teeth to other loved ones, family and friends.

Why not just live in the truth and accept the consequences regardless?