nillagrrrl

Okay, hold everything. Thanks for the advice, everyone, I appreciate it very much. They are swingers, but there's also some other stuff afoot, and it turns out that I don't know the whole story. (Do we ever really?) Thanks everyone.

Her feelings are the same. In fact, the male was friends with her first. She doesn't feel as strongly as I do about the perception of being slighted, but she agrees with me, to be sure. She generally feels less strongly about friendships than I do. I understand they were trying something new. I get that we should feel honored we were invited to the party. I have e-mailed him and asked to chat. We'll see if he answers me. The insights here have been good ones. I want to support them in their foray into swinging, and I want to be their friends. I'd prefer not to be "dissed" in favor of new "friends" just because the new friends are having sex with them. I think that's probably easy to do, and I hope they don't do it. But I need to have this conversation with him. Let's see if he accepts my invitation to chat.

No there aren't. And professional lives aside, there are literally hundreds (about 300, I think) rights and privileges that you as primarily or solely heterosexuals (regardless of your swinging status) enjoy. You can share insurance (health, auto, home). We can't automatically. Many extra things have to be put in place. And if a company offers domestic partner benefits (most do not), the IRS counts that as additional income and taxes the employee on it. Stuff is, at least in Texas, automatically split when you divorce. My ex and I (we had a ceremony and lived as spouses for nearly 9 years) got the house and most of its contents, and I got... $900. You don't lose out on your community property just because you have multiple sex partners. In 1995, a Florida judge awarded custody to the father, who was a convicted murderer, rather than the mother, because the mother was a lesbian, and Judge Joseph Tarbuck believed that the girl should not be brought up in a lesbian household. The judge did not address the father's murder conviction in his ruling and apparently did not consider allegations that he had molested the daughter of the wife that he killed. (Sorry, but just not the kind of thing that happens to parents who swing. And if it does, I'd venture to say that a significant percentage of the time, I'll bet same-gender sex is a factor.) My friend with brain cancer died without her partner, a nurse, who had cared for her for the last two years during the worst part of the cancer, because my friend's parents wouldn't let her see her own partner. WTF?!?!?! I could go on, I have dozens of examples. I think it's flat wrong for anyone to suffer for their sexual politics, but please do not compare your situation to that of the LGBT community. Yes, there are lots of similarities and there is a bit of overlap. But at the root, the overwhelming majority of you are hetero (or bi, which means you can identify as hetero if you are put in a situation where you feel forced to). You can share your partner's life and feel safe that you will automatically receive all the rights and benefits--income tax breaks, getting to write of the interest on the mortgage... hell, I get penalized on my auto insurance because I'm "not married." And in many states, you don't even have to get married for these benefits. So long as you're hetero and co-habitate. It's your primary relationship that counts, not your additional ones, in the eyes of the law. You get lots and lots and lots of protection/safety/security under the law for being hetero. Yeah, you might get looked down on for being "perverts," and you might even lose a job over it, but shit, that double-standard exists for a women having an affair versus a man having one. We're called the predatory term "cougars" for going after a younger man. Men are revered for this same behavior, or they are said to be "having a mid-life crisis." Though you may not be able to tell your co-workers that you plan to have multiple sex partners over the weekend (though single men do it all the time), at least you don't ever feel like you have to watch your pronouns when you talk about mundane occurrences, like going to the doctor or visiting the in-laws or a cancer scare. You probably even say your spouse's or S.O.'s name at work--maybe your co-workers have even met him/her. You think gay people are out like that? A few are. Most aren't. Are swingers targets for hate crimes? When was the last time one swinger was ganged-up on and beaten to death for being a swinger? Who is your Matthew Shepherd? I am not trying to come across as a militant gay person, but it deeply offends me that you're trying to liken your sexual activities to a real oppressed minority. Bad luck or unfortunate sexual repression by a boss isn't the same as systematic oppression. People still get killed just for being gay, and many states don't even have laws making it hate crime.

Oh, if only... I so wish you were right about that, but homophobia is still alive, well, and too common and too acceptable in this country. If you need a little visual proof or real-life proof, gather up a few bi swingers. How many are men? My state just passed a constitutional amendment against gay marriage--the first amendment that actually denies rights to people--in AMERICA! That's not even the start of the oppression, but it's a huge sign of it. Yes, being gay is becoming more socially acceptable (especially if you don't look super fag-ish or super dyke-ish), but it is certainly not politically incorrect just yet to lampoon or oppress them. It's not even illegal to do so in many states. (Oppress them, that is. Lampooning them falls under free speech.)

It does, good point. I think the stages of feelings I am going through are completely normal, and as I feel the feelings and they pass, which I find incredibly healthy, then I can approach the friendship cleanly, without all the emotions that are mine and mine alone to deal with. Thank you for sharing, it helps.

I can see that. And I'm not angry. Hurt and confused about the concealment, maybe, because the guy hadn't kept anything else from me of this nature, but not angry. I am good at telling myself I shouldn't feel a certain way about things. No help needed there. I came here for some insight from their perspective.

One more thing (which may draw ire from many members of this board)... You all choose your lifestyle and enjoy it. Good for you. Anyone should be able to do whatever they want among consenting adults without repercussions (socially, economically, professionally). I COMPLETELY support sexual freedom among consenting adults. However, being gay (for me and many others) involves little or no choice. And we can get fired for it legally in most states, including good ol' Texas. So while I can sympathize with being harassed or fired for being swingers, you can stop being swingers and just be with your partner (even though you shouldn't have to and may not want to). From what I've read on these posts, many swingers do stop for a while at some point in their lives. I can't ever stop being gay.

And I guess where I differ from those here (and the population at large), is that I don't "choose" to come out to some people and not to others. Everyone who knows anything about me knows I'm a homo. Even the cable and the phone companies know! As Popeye says, "I just yam who I yam." And I respect less those who are not the same with their lives. And the male of this couple feels just the same way and is vocal about his feelings, too. These people are my friends. They knew that I cheated on my ex-spouse with my now-S.O. during the last week of that marriage. I knew one of them cheated on the other years ago. It's not like we kept things from one another. Sheesh, one time I saw their bank account balance because they felt so safe with us. So, if they were afraid to tell us, I honestly can't see why. I don't agree that not sharing such a significant part of your life with your friends is just "not sharing the details of a couple's sex life." I take exception to that. If I happen to enjoy occasional strap-on sex with my hot g/f and don't tell them, that's totally understandable. But if I had all these friends who liked to strap it on, and if I went to strap-on parties, and if I grew a social circle and spent time with strap-on enthusiasts whilst neglecting other relationships in my life, all the while not mentioning anything to these friends, just avoiding them, and then all of a sudden invited the strap-on friends and these friends to a party without telling anyone anything, then that's just awkward. I mean, I think it's just disrespectful to do that to people whom you call your friends.

I know I'm posting a lot (just trying to earn custom avatar priveleges, hee hee), but I just wanted to thank everyone for letting me process this here so that I can learn, vent, and understand our friends' position better and hopefully be able to remain friends with them.

And I do appreciate the perspective of others, so please keep the posts coming!

I appreciate all the feedback and info. Another thing that I am realizing that I am feeling is jealousy--not sexual jealousy, but friendship jealousy. They are apparently the type who stay friends with their FBs (what do you call friends you have swung with?), and they have all this affection for them, which I am happy for them in that respect, truly I am. But those friends share an intimacy with them that my partner and I never will (i.e., the sex), and I feel that the friendship will slip away slowly, as they hang out with the sex partners more. As for them being scared to come out to us, the male (especially) knows me. He and I always joke that we're the same person--we finish each other's sentences, etc. He KNOWS (and I KNOW he KNOWS) that I couldn't give a rat's patootie if he and his wife were swinging--with others or from the chandelier. As long as innocent people (or animals) weren't being hurt, he knows I could not care less. It's kinda like being in a foreign land, when you find out these people you know (or thought you knew) have this whole secret life and all of these other "friends" and have been spending their time and money in these ways. I could see if we were sexually-repressed, Christian right-wingers, but we're liberal, open-minded, atheist lesbians. We've kept his confidences about sexual things he has shared related to his marriage. To those who never come out to your vanilla friends: Give us a chance. If you lose friends over something you do in the bedroom, then I say they're not real friends. Don't risk losing them because they feel like they don't even know you because you managed to compartmentalize your life so very well. I feel hurt that they didn't tell us, and when I went to that party, I felt like a complete jackass because we were suddenly not part of the group of friends and close to the b-day boy, but more like party-crashers who were now outsiders.

My girlfriend and I (not swingers) have a couple who are dear friends of ours. (They are a hetero couple; we are lesbians.) Over the years, we have skied with them, dined with them, opened up to them, they to us.... We love these people. Over the last six or eight months, they have been distant, and we started to think they were mad at us. (We used to get together at least once per month, and we've seen them twice in the last eight months.) Well, last weekend, the male had a milestone birthday party. At this party were a bunch of new faces (we've known the couple's other friends for years as well, and none of these people was familiar to us). We ended up talking to one het. couple who seemed cool, but the female bungled the answer to our innocent question, "So, how do you meet [our friends]?" Long story short, our friends ended up coming out to us at the crowded, loud bar where we were celebrating. I was quite surprised, because the female of the couple seems especially WASP-ish. But ya know, good for them. Hell, I'm gay. What the hell am I gonna do? Judge their sexuality? We were a little surprised, but we really don't care if that's their scene. Good for them. It sorta makes one think about what one's friends are doing in the bedroom, but I got over that pretty quickly. (Not only am I completely satiated with my, as you say, "vanilla" lifestyle, but I don't particularly find either of them attractive. Moreover, the male has always seemed like a brother to me.) What is bothering me about this whole thing, though, is two-fold. First, I hate that anything about this bothers me, and I've been analyzing the fact that it does ad nauseam since (blame it on nearly a decade of therapy and 12-step work). I don't want to be a hypocrite, and I can't stand it when gay people come out to their friends/family and the response is, "Oh, I don't care that you're gay; I just care that you lied to me." Bull$hit! That's utter crap. That being said, there is a part of me that feels this way. Here is why I think, though, that it bothers me that they didn't come out to us. First, the male has always told me and my partner about deeply personal things (how he made a big mistake in his marriage long ago, etc., etc.). So how does he keep this a secret for 18 months? We're lesbians for god's sake. We don't have a problem with alternative sexual lifestyles. This male and I have always prided ourselves on being out and proud about who we are, and we were intolerant of hypocrites. In fact, he just shared a story with me about a friend of his who might be gay but is suppressing it. He said he didn't understand that. The other thing that really hurt my feelings is that we have felt like they were blowing us off for months. Now we know why. They just wanted to get laid instead of nurturing a friendship. They blew us off so they could get off! It seems so friggin' high-school-boy like. "I know I could have a meaningful relationship with you two, but I gotta go screw instead." By their own admission, nothing has changed between us that would have altered the friendship. Apparently, they just had something more interesting to do. For 6 or 8 months. It feels like they picked fu**ing over friendship, and that really hurts. Especially because I truly thought they were good people. (And maybe they are, but this situation has made me think otherwise.) I welcome your comments. I have no interest in the "lifestyle," as the incredibly erotic sex I have with my very sexy girlfriend is all that I need.