How do you deal with inappropriate emotional attachment?

[WeMayTryIt]

I believe I may have been the one to make the reference post about cross-couple contact being limited to the bedroom, etc. To clarify, we've been in situations where we've swapped partners (all four of us together) for a night out on the town. Went to dinner, played some darts, drinks, etc. before heading back to the bedroom. It was all just a bit weird for us, being a "couple" with another partner throughout the night. Now we tend to keep our swapping strictly to active play times, and it's worked out well. Does that make sense?

[JustAskJulie]

Originally Posted by WeMayTryIt

I believe I may have been the one to make the reference post about cross-couple contact being limited to the bedroom, etc. To clarify, we've been in situations where we've swapped partners (all four of us together) for a night out on the town. Went to dinner, played some darts, drinks, etc. before heading back to the bedroom. It was all just a bit weird for us, being a "couple" with another partner throughout the night. Now we tend to keep our swapping strictly to active play times, and it's worked out well. Does that make sense?

I can definately understand where you are coming from there. That whole idea would be very weird to me. At that point it becomes one on one dating, which isn't what we are in this for... we're all about 2 couples going on a date together (so to speak), where it's all 4 of us, but in that case I'm really just on a double date with my husband and another couple.

Originally Posted by SnowwwWhite

Great advice. What this tells me is that I need to make sure that the other couple is really in it for the right reasons, has a very high maturity level, and has an airtight relationship... that's the safest scenario for letting things turn into friendship.

I think that's a lot of it. I think you also have to understand that there are degrees of friendship. There are people we hang out with, and then there are people we feel comfortable enough with and close enough to that we can enjoy hanging out with them in any situation, including with their or our families. The latter is very rare indeed. Those situations tend to lend themselves to being very comfortable to the point that if something sexual happens, great, if not that's cool too. No one is pushing for anything more than just friendship with the possibility that we can all get wild and crazy in bed. I've had a few couples that I have developed this type of friendship with over the years, in each case we met as open swingers, although not necessarily with the intention of swinging with each other. If that makes sense.

I was just looking for something else and ran across this thread that I thought was appropriate for this current thread as well:
Am I really seeing this or am I getting cynical?

[2inVT]

Originally Posted by WeMayTryIt

Now we tend to keep our swapping strictly to active play times, and it's worked out well. Does that make sense?

The other thing with us is that we're not so much into "swapping" as we are into sharing. We prefer to play interactively, all four of us (or three of us, or five... however many) on the same bed, where we can all touch and enjoy our spouses as well as the other people. (The women are usually bi or at least bi-friendly, and the men do not cross gender lines, though there may be incidental contact. Their preference.)

If we go out on the town with another couple, each "set" of us may intermingle, but there's never any blurred lines about who is married to whom. I'm just as apt to flirt with the other wife as I am with the other husband LOL.

[RDfnd]

Totally agree with 2inVT. How well said. Sharing is the ultimate pursuit for us. We have found some couples just don't understand the concept. Groups and labels seem inevitable; same room, different room, swapping, sharing? I'd love to hear if there are more couples that prefer "sharing".

[slevin]

Originally Posted by 2inVT

The other thing with us is that we're not so much into "swapping" as we are into sharing. We prefer to play interactively, all four of us (or three of us, or five... however many) on the same bed, where we can all touch and enjoy our spouses as well as the other people. (The women are usually bi or at least bi-friendly, and the men do not cross gender lines, though there may be incidental contact. Their preference.)

If we go out on the town with another couple, each "set" of us may intermingle, but there's never any blurred lines about who is married to whom. I'm just as apt to flirt with the other wife as I am with the other husband LOL.

Fantastic way to describe your situation. We are absolutely the same; while we may do full-swap we prefer to be sharing where all 4 of us are involved and having fun. Neither of us is into the idea of just swapping, that situation where we're all on the same bed and doing whatever we feel like in the moment (with the guys not crossing that gender line, love that phrase lol) is very exciting. Absolutely why we started swinging and it's what turns us on about the whole thing.

I will say that we don't have a problem with email, txt, IM conversations between any of the 4 of us. In fact that is something that I really enjoy, it lets me build up a certain level of intimacy with both people in the other couple. So far this has worked for us, but we don't have a lot of experience with this yet. It is an aspect of it that I do enjoy and Katrina feels she needs to be comfortable with the other couple. Perhaps a remnant of our newbieness though since most of the more experienced couples here seem to shy away from it.

One thing that we do ensure is that all our communication is totally open. If I'm ever talking to either member of another couple I tell Katrina all about the conversation and she does the same. Complete honesty there is what makes it ok for me, if there was secret communication going on that would be a big sign that we need to take a step back from swinging in general and that couple in particular.