Swinging and Poly-words

[appleblossoms20]

Hi..We are 25 years married and had one exclusive/polyamory relationship a few years ago that has since ended unpleasantly.
We are presently in another exculsive relationship and I find myself oscillating on certain issues and I would love to have a form/friend to bounce things off of..thanks-r

[JP51]

Dito Having just got off the phone with my "second wife"...she is driving the boys back from a visit to grand parents house. Called me because she knew I would be able to talk and she could vent about her "mother" lol. And she needed me to tell her how to set up voice and hands free dialing on her cell phone. So life goes on...we are lucky in finding this relationship...going to be of great intrest when we all go to Desire in Oct... to see what the "rules" are going to be amoung the 4 of us... we have established one rule already (the ladies came up with it) depend on who you are with at the time, the other person must agree that it is ok, or no play... and we are going to go see Caludia for the couples massage...funny how we paired up...me and my second, them, then the girls...lol....I have to love my life.

[janaandjames]

It may be a man's dream, but do women really want it? In general, I mean. Wouldn't they feel too threatened, too disposable, like used kleenex.
>>
we are experimenting in this area, but in our case, i now have two men
Hubby is the primary, but i also have another, that has come to mean a lot to me.
for a long time he was a regular threesome partner ... but since then ive started seeing him one on one - with hubby's permission of course.
he even sleeps over at times
hubby is primary because he is my legal husband, but my lover is almost equal in terms of how the relationship really works. i really love them both.
we are kind of learning as we go, so to us, a forum or topic on this would be great.

jana

[JP51]

"It may be a man's dream, but do women really want it? In general, I mean. Wouldn't they feel too threatened, too disposable, like used kleenex."



Yea, just what I wanted...two honey do lists, etc. Really it like a game of bridge a lot...you have to know all the players and know what they mean when they speak...I am glad the other man and I are always on the same sheet of music...even of the ladies think we are "nuts" at times. The idea of two women in a bed wears off real fast after the third night in a row with no sleep... Surrender

had to put some humor into this....it is new for us, but loving two women, it a good thing we all seemed to fall out this way on the same night...when she told me she loved me...my mind went "oh shit", then my wife on the same night said she had feeling for him (love but not the same more than the sexual stuff), I had two "oh, shits" that night. The next morning he and I took off early, before the ladies got up, and went out to scout for dove and have some coffee. He and I talked and confessed to each other that we had deeper feeling for each other spouce (neither of us had acknowledged it to the ladies)...etc...since we had all been married many years, we felt we could give it a try and see where it goes. So we went home, ladies were still in bed, so we had moring coffee in bed with a new mate. So far so good...it does take the some of the daily grind off having others to count on.

But looking for it...NOT!

[mick2150]

Well now, having been 'lurking' here for quite a while I think it is time for me to walk out of the closet. This poly/swinger thread has me intrigued, enough to break the lurking 'thing'. BTW, I voted for the inclusion of a poly thread - good idea!

I am sure that my closet door has a label - is it swing or poly? I am not sure. What I do believe though, is that other than at the extreme left or right of the lifestyle spectrum, there does seem to be a good sized overlap in the middle, and rather than get into a discussion about all that is different, I thought I would suggest an area where there is a great deal of agreement.

Consider the following ..... Communiucation, openness, honesty, thruthfulness ...... respect, ..... most on both sides of the spectrum would agree that if there is to be any non-monagomous activity, then these are the key terms of reference. And I think above all, both poly & swinger are pretty much agreed that the 'don't ask don't tell' group are well in the minority - that is exactly where we don't want to be!

Right now I am in the process of trying to heal myself from the effect of my partner/wife ending our marriage of almost 30 yrs. Although an affair wasn't the actual cause of the break-up, I thought the marriage was, and played it to be, monogamous. I shoulder some responsibility - I learnt to spell 'open marriage' more than 30 yrs ago - maybe I should have learnt to 'communicate better'.)

I don't want to make another mistake.

BTW .... there are 2 members from Ontario on here, Mississauga & Kingston .... both of your extensive posts I find very intersting ....

M.

[avid]

Originally Posted by mick2150

BTW .... there are 2 members from Ontario on here, Mississauga & Kingston .... both of your extensive posts I find very intersting .... M.

There are more than just those two here, M. I split the difference, in Oshawa.

There is a tremendous overlap in the two communities, I agree.

I'm all for being on the same page with openness and honesty. Interestingly, it is the man who we are in a poly relationship with who first introduced us to swinging. I'd love to see more discussion on the topic, because I've found both the swing and polyamory communities to be a little judgemental.

[Spika]

I think having a poly related forum would be a good addition to this board.... I actually FOUND this board due to this thread because I was looking for information as to if/where the poly community and the swinging community overlapped any.

[sereneiders]

I believe the topic deserves a section in the forum. However, I'd avoid the word "polyamoral" in the section title.

And I believe it deserve a place inside the "Swingers Topics" area: the lenght of the discussions developed so far seems to prove it. In any case, I would ask the ones who voted "no", why not? What we're afraid of?

I'll give ground for this taking this paragraph from LM post to follow up.

Originally Posted by LikeMinds321

New members, and we have hundreds each week who never post, likely come here not knowing a thing about swinging or have many misconceptions, as I did when I arrived searching for information on swinging. If I had arrived and found a forum specific for polyamory I would have wondered if this is what swinging often leads to. Or at the least, if it is a 'risk' of swinging. People have always brought up their concerns of becoming too close to a swing partner, or their fear of falling in love. I wonder if the inclusion of a Poly forum would magnify those fears.

I wonder if the opposite isn't freaking as well.

I told this before, it's in my intorduction to the forum. When we started thinking about swinging, what scared us the most wasn't the effect third people may have inside our marriage, we was sure enough about our love and that there was no chance from an outside to damage our relationship. What scared us the most was the prejudice we had about swingers being careless people, folks doing whatever it takes to fulfill their lust without matter of the damage this could produce to themselves and third people.

Ans what we found out was the prejudice was totally off grounds: we found out most swingers were responsible people with way higher moral standards than the average folk you'd meet in the vanilla world. For us, this meant we've up to meet caring people, people who actually love their peers, whether they like to describe what they do this way or not.

By then, we also were fantasizing of poly relationships, and at local chatrooms and websites we found out a broad range, from strict swingers to poly friendly people. And by them, we were scared by the strict swingers, those who claimed they don't want any drama and avoid long coffee table conversations (here they have this term "cafetero", "coffee-people"), because the message we got from them was: "if you have a problem while in the bed with us, it is YOUR problem, deal with it on your own, don't count on us", and "we know what WE want, and we don't care if you do know what you want or if you're skilled enough to clarify your limits, you better keep up at our beace and deal with it, or fuck off".

Luckily, we found out mercyfull couples who said "hey, we've been there, we knoe it isn't easy, let's talk for as long as you need to talk before even trying to have sex". We count on one of those couples as dear friends by now, they run a chat server for swingers to discuss swingers issues in Spanish. Otherwise we wouldn't be swinging.

So, as for us, the word love was welcomed, what scared us was the impression of a complete lack of love among people, and there was swingers who gave us that impression... even when it was a mistaken one (we understood and re interpreted later the "no drama" meaning).

I believe it's a prejudice to believe there would be curious couples scared because of a polyamoral discussion. I may even wonder if we didn't scared couples because of the lack of such a discussion, and if this is true, once scared they wouldn't be part of the forum population, so the only ones we'd be attracting are the ones following the "no feelings" paradigm.

However, I agree with you about something: the word "polyamoral" may have negative connotations, it calls for some prejudices from informed swingers (as we can see in the discussions about this) so we may reasonabily suppose it may call for even worst prejudices from uninformed people.

So, I would avoid the word "polyamoral" as the forum section title, I'd ease it a couple of notchs with something like "Allowing feelings when swinging" (or just one notch in a way that makes it clear the difference, like "Poly-friendly swinging discussions").

[avid]

Your comments are helpful, sereneiders, as I too was filled with pre-judgements about swingers when I first started looking into the lifestyle.

I just want to clarify that the word "polyamoral" is not a good one to use, because the word "amoral" means without morals. Probably the most commonly used term in this community is "polyamorous".

There is a publication called "Loving More" that seems to express the philosophy quite nicely. Perhaps we can find a phrase along those lines to head a new forum.

[ohash01]

Mr. and I are new swingers...we recently had a disagreement (see "Friends Debate Revisited" post) on whether or not LIKING the people you swing with is okay (and I don't mean being IN LOVE with them...I mean just an general all around "hey...I like them".) We fell in love with each other VERY quickly. Like...within a month of meeting. We've been together 3 years now and are so happy. We are also SO happy about the prospect of swinging. We think we've met "our" couple...but we're taking it slow and are still just chatting online and on the phone and myself and the other F are talking about going shopping soon. Anyway - before I get off topic...

I have to admit, that I have a little fear of developing romantic feelings for someone we swing with. Which in itself is confusing because I'm not really AFRAID of it - I just am kind of hoping it doesn't happen. What is a good way to "steel yourself" against that (for lack of a better term)? What do you do if it happens anyway? And a slightly off topic question - I tend to say a lot of "oh baby's" when I'm in the moment...Baby is kind of an endearing term - what do I say instead? Haha. OK - that one may have been dumb.

I am one of those people who have A LOT of love to give...physical and emotionally. Am I doomed to failure and heartbreak if we aren't going to be polyamourous?

[WesternSwing]

You are not doomed to failure and heartbreak if you are not polyamorous. And you are right, you should not be afraid of feelings that develop for swing partners. It may with some, it simply won't ever be a possibility with others. We can not predict this. The real test is how we deal with it if and when it arises. If you are not scared of it then it will have little effect on the rest of your life and will be a pleasant addition to your present life. If you are predisposed to more emotions then a one-night stand could incure, then you will choke all the fun out of your swinging experiences.

My advice. Go out and have fun. Don't worry about what might never happen. And if it does, it sounds like you are grounded enough to not just deal with it, but enjoy it for what it is.

Mr. WS

[sereneiders]

Originally Posted by avid

Your comments are helpful, sereneiders, as I too was filled with pre-judgements about swingers when I first started looking into the lifestyle.

I just want to clarify that the word "polyamoral" is not a good one to use, because the word "amoral" means without morals. Probably the most commonly used term in this community is "polyamorous".

There is a publication called "Loving More" that seems to express the philosophy quite nicely. Perhaps we can find a phrase along those lines to head a new forum.

Right, it was a tranaslation (or lack of translation) from Spanish. Here we'd say "poliamoral" (even when here, too "amoral" means the same), because in Spanish that's the way most greek terms were adopted, it's a syntax rule for greek words with this ending.

[Pioneer Swinger]

Besides myself, Angie (my wife) has been sexually sharing herself with Al (a college classmate for both of us) since September 1978 when we were in college. This includes a four-year period when Al and Angie lived together between my graduation and when she finished grad school and my job required my moving to where Angie and I could get together only a couple of times a year. Now, Al and Angie still get together several times a year... almost 28 years after it all began! Sometimes he visits here, while other times either she'll visit him, or they'll vacation together.

[JustAskJulie]

It's official. We now have a forum dedicated to Polyamory and how it does (or doesn't) interesect with swinging. Please populate it with topics. This topic has alreayd been moved to the new forum and we are working on moving other existing topics there as well (so if you know of one or see one please report it to the mods so we can get it moved).