The difference between swingers' and vanillas' relationships

I was looking around our archives and found an old thread - Whoring around in virtual Babylon - by our friend Spoomonkey. He was contrasting the differences between swingers' and vanillas' relationships, and it was not good. Not good at all.

For the sake of one, single, simple - and IMHO - ridiculous rule, they allow fear and jealousy to creep in and corrode their emotional intimacy, and to add insult to injury, they think jealousy is actually a good thing! They use sex as the yardstick by which they measure the health of their relationship.

Begging your pardon, y'all, but I refuse to cheapen something as unspeakably beautiful and sacred as my marriage by measuring its worth with a body function. Sex is the medium, not the message. It's a tool to be used, not put on a velvet pillow, up and away to collect dust with the rest of the fine china. So pardon us for using it as such. Pardon us for defining our relationship as we see fit. Never again will we let fear of The Other Man/Woman hang over our heads. We dragged that bogeyman out from under our bed, clawing at the floorboards, we slapped a saddle on him, and put the spurs to him. You work for us now, bitch!

We had gone out with our neighbours in the boat some time ago. I was sitting up on bow in front of the window and the gentleman half of the couple came up to sit with me and have some conversation. I was sensitive to the fact that his body language was very...engaged-seeming, sitting forward, not worried too much about the fact that his feet were touching mine. It's not a big deal to me, but to a vanilla? I just have to be so much more careful about how such things are perceived. The conversation was, of course, completely benign, but Mr. intuition told me just this evening that the Mrs. was quite unsettled as he sat with her behind the windshield. "She was really scared." he told me. "Her eyes were really big and she said, 'I can't even hear what they're saying!'"

I can barely remember what that kind of fear felt like. I really don't care to remember it anyway. A chapter in our life to which we have gladly said goodbye.

When I think about it, I would have to say this is one of the greatest benefits we have experienced in swinging, that freedom to look at and talk to other members of the opposite sex without it being some big damn deal that you hit it off with someone and laughed at his/her jokes, gave them an appreciative look, etc. All of those things that cause big issues to some/most vanilla couples, they are not an issue. We still both recognize that we have boundaries of course, and we totally respect those because we respect each other, but the whole walking on eggshells things every time you are around someone of the opposite sex, to not have to worry about that is pretty damn liberating.

freedom to look at and talk to other members of the opposite sex without it being some big damn deal

For us, swinging has made "people watching" more fun.

When out in public my wife points out hot women for me to check out, asking me if I would "do her" or rate her 1-10. She also has a habit of checking out men she finds attractive, and telling me how big she guesses their package is. Even separating at a crowded bar and having a competition to see who can get the most numbers ( she always wins ). Lots of other stupid stuff like that, we doubt many vanilla couples do.

We (especially me) have to remember to be careful what we say and do around vanilla friends. It's very liberating being around other swingers and being able to talk about...well anything. Sex, attraction, whatever. That's not acceptable with vanilla friends...'me and the Ms. were having sex the other day when she did this thing to me...' usually ends up with them looking back with HUGE eyes and shock on their face(s). Trying to 'fix' the situation by saying 'oh, she was just showing me what her boyfriend and girlfriend taught her last weekend' doesn't help at all either. We also find all those clothes that we have to wear rather confining at times with our vanilla friends. Telling a female friend that she looks really hot, especially in front of the Ms. can get some strange reactions as well. All of these are reasons that we have spent so much time trying to find swingers that are friends...with benefits. It's very liberating not to have to worry about what you say...in fact being able to say what you want and be able to openly talk about sex. If only we could be so 'open' with our close vanilla friends...

Agree 100% with GoldCoCouple. You can't do this when having a casual talk with a vanilla friend....