Search the Community

We did it...A 3 some and have had nothing but flash backs and bad memories...We found out the hard way...That all we ever needed was each other. If you love the one you're with..Don't ruin it by inviting someone into your love life.....We made a big mistake and wish it hadn't ever happened now. Seriously before you do think about it and realize it's only lust and only lasts for a few minutes the bad memoried last forever!

This last weekend we experienced our first ‘soft swap’. We thought we were ready, turns out we were not. K has always had some reservations but we went ahead because (our reasoning was), there is no real way to be sure until you’re in that situation. The couple we were with was great. They were very understanding when we told them that we would like to stop after the first round was finished. I’m trying to not get too emotional, I don’t want to digress too far off what I want to ask. The bottom line is that K (for a lot of reasons I understand and a few that I don’t) wants to stop swinging. The question I have is how to go about dismantling our profile on SLS (where we met this couple and another couple we met yesterday but did not play with) without offending either one. I don’t just want to go **poof** and disappear and maybe leave these couples wondering if it was something they did. I’m thinking to just leave it as is for a few weeks but answer with an “We’re taking a pause at this time from meeting new couples due to other concerns” message to anyone new who might email in the meantime. After 2-3 weeks I’ll just unsubscribe from SLS and that will be that. K and I have both enjoyed meeting new people who are open-minded and have similar interests from these sites. However, we both feel it’s dishonest to continue to meet other couples (even though we may like them and would pursue a friendship) knowing that we aren’t going to play. We know that there shouldn’t be the presumption of play upon meeting (or ever) but considering the context it still raises issues. We’re not going to stop talking with the LS couples that we already know; we just won’t be taking it off a social plain. So the question is, does this sound like the appropriate approach or is there something additional that I should do?

Mr. Hrnycpl here. I had to tell someone, so i figured this was the right place. We had our first "encounter" over this past weekend, and to be totally honest, I don't think this lifestyle is for us, mostly me. My sister offered to take our son overnight, so with that in mind, we figured we would visit wifeys sister and go out and have some fun. She lives a couple of hours away, and we usually take our son with us to see his auntie, but with the sitter already arranged, we figured we would go out and have some fun (and be able to sleep in the following morning). This is a bit of a long read. Ok, cut to how we ended up with our encounter. We went to a local bar that sister-in-law frequents. We had been there once before and were very comfortable there because of the nice people there. Well, one couple we had become friendly with on the last visit, knew that there was a possibility of some sort of swapping. Needless to say we hit it off with them after the first visit (nothing happened then), so with this second meeting we were even more comfortable. So we are at a bar, so obviously we are drinking and shooting pool (looser buys a round of Cuervo shots for the 4 of us), and we all get to that friendly feel good part of drinking....really nice buzz, borderlining on flat out drunk, which is not really a problem since we don't drink all that often. But we were cutting loose for an evening, so we figured that we owed it to ourselves to have some fun. Well the night goes on and we continue to have a really great time with sis-in-law and our new friends up until the bar closes. Soon before the bar closes, sis-in-law leaves to go home and we are pretty much right behind her. Wifey is pretty drunk, but very coherent. She's your typical fun drinker who loves everyone the more she drinks. So all night, she's flashing her boobs at people and just having a fun time. So I go to check on sis-in-law (she was waiting for us in the car talking on cell phone) and let her know that we would be home later (she knows of our curiosity with the lifestyle). So wifey rides with the guy in the couple. He is "D" and she is "T". Anyway, as I was leaving the bar to go check on sis-in-law, i tell wifey, that she can kiss D if she wants to (they had already invited us back to their place). When I come back into the bar, she's making out with D. No problem, except for T is saying to wifey, that its not fair, and that if she keeps kissing her husband, that she will have to kiss me. T goes ahead and kiss me (it was ok, nothing to write home about though). This goes on for a few minutes and then we decide to leave the bar. I go and ride with T and we are talking, you know, general conversation. We get to their house and T pays their sitter and the sitter leaves. No sooner had the door closed behind the babysitter, and wifey was behind T, kissing her neck and rubbing her boobs. The rest just seemed to happen really fast. We make our way back to their bedroom and wifey sits on the bed. D starts kissing wifey again and has his hand down the front of her pants. I start kissing T and she quickly gets my pants down and goes into giving me a blowjob. I look up and D has moved down to remove wifeys pants and underwear and is giving her oral. T stops blowing me and goes to help D with the oral on wifey. That goes on for a few minutes, while at the same time, T is stroking my cock. Then she goes back to blowing me and D gets into a 69 with wifey. I get T's pants and underwear off and go to give her oral. She suggests going into another room. I agree. Well she sits on follows me out, and puts in a "movie." Well she turns around so I can have her from behind and i get a few strokes into it and then I go limp.....damn brain. I start thinking. I can hear wifey getting the crap pounded out of her and she's moaning. So I figure that hell, at least one of us can get some action. T keeps trying to get me hard again, but by now, I am freaked out and even more nervous than I originally was. So she walks me back to wifey and tells D to let us have some time alone....well, the damage was already done for me. I couldn't get it back up. So now i am sitting there and wifey's face is buried in the bed. I am saying that she needs to get up so we can leave (silently freaking the hell out now!). I can hear D and T going at it in their living room. D comes back to see if he can get another run at wifey, and I tell him not just yet, so he goes back out to T and finishes with her. The entire time I am just trying to get wifey up so we can get dressed and leave. But she was pretty drunk still and wouldn't move. Well, after what seemed like forever, she finally moved and slowly got dressed and we said our goodbyes and left. She asked me was I mad, and I wasn't, I was just freaked out that I got nervous, and that she was soo drunk that she wouldn't move for a while. We got lost driving home and when we finally did get back to sis-in-laws house, it was close to 5am. Wifey goes to pee and I go in the bathroom to wash my face. Well, now I have no problem getting it up, so I banged wifey against the sink for what seemed like forever. Then we moved to the spare bedroom where we kept going at it. But eventually wifey was sooo tired that she just had me stop, because she could barely keep her eyes open. She left the room to go sleep on the couch (it was a twin bed in the spare room) and I slept on the spare bed. Well tried to sleep. I woke up at about 9:30 am and realized that my cell phone and wallet had fallen out of my pockets at D and T's house. So now I am back to freaking out again and I go wake wifey to tell her. She can see that I am freaked out, and asks me whats wrong. Turns out that she was sooo drunk, she doesn't remember getting it on with D. So I gave her the rundown of the past evening's events. Now she's not freaked out, just surprised at what went down. We realized that if we have to get that drunk to actually do anything, then we probably shouldn't be doing anything to begin with. My penis won't let me do anything that I am not ready for, therefore he goes limp when I think too much. And thats what happened. If we had all stayed in the same room, i probably wouldn't have had a chance to think, but I got up and went into another room, which gave me a chance to think, and therefore couldn't keep an erection. I was really embarassed and freaked out all at the same time. I can't stop thinking about what happened though. Like it was a turn on, and a turn off all at the same time. Wifey knows me very very well, and could tell i was bothered by something, so I explained to her what was going on with me. Thats when we decided that it was probably a good idea for us to just have that one experience and keep it at that. Lots of things just didn't go as planned. We had agreed that since she's curious about being with another woman, that I would just watch. Well other than some kissing, thats the extent of her interaction with another woman. We also had agreed (when we were sober) that she and the other woman would experience each other and that the men would watch until invited to join. Well with us being drunk, none of that happened, and all the rules we thought we had in place, kind of went out the window. I just feel a bit guilty because if I hadn't given her the green light to kiss D, that none of this would have happened. I mean, it was fun at first, but now I am not so sure if it was a good idea. Am I having normal thoughts and feelings? Because it was fun in the beginning, but in the end, it wasn't. I mean, wifey was supposed to finally see what its like to be with another woman, and she really didn't get that opportunity. Fortunately, D and T are a cool couple and we could probably still hang out with them without any sexual interaction. At least thats the vibe I got the next day when we had to get my wallet and cell phone back. I think what freaks me out the most is the lack of control that we used in that situation. Sorry for the long read....but I just had to get it off of my chest. Any comments or insight is completely welcome. I would love to hear what anyone here has to say about our experience.

Hi folks... The Husband and I haven't been on a while, sorting things out and deciding where we needed to go next. We were swinging up until December and pretty active when complications evolved and we both stepped back to take a good look at things... and have since decided this is not the permanent road for us. Me probably more surely than the mister... he recently thought "Maybe we could do it again in a few years" as recently as mid-February... Grrrrr... so we are STILL having complications from this lifestyle, though working hard to get past some things and integrate its lessons. My biological clock is tickin' and my little one's turning three soon, and I've really wanted to expand our family but unfortunately, that's another thing on hold as we try and move out of the aftershocks of our experiences last Fall. Take heart, newbies! I have been so wanting to forget things that I wasn't going to come back... unfortunately I keep getting chased in my dreams so I think there's something I needed to come back and do. Closure, I suppose? I might reflect what some other woman is thinking, and I might be able to give a man insight into their wife's heart. Who knows. I do know that even though people experience very painful things with this lifestyle, they often just keep on going, turned on and probably not thinking right. So while there are many couples who apparently make swinging work for them, the advice here is great, the people here are supportive, and communication is an absolute MUST.... sometimes you can talk all damn day and you're just speaking Greek while they're in Chinese. You can translate all day... but something gets lost along the way. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, right? What I've Learned: 1) Follow your gut. No negotiating. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the most important factor. My first and second reaction to Husband's prodding to look at this lifestyle were very negative, and came straight from my instincts, which, if you believe in the subconscious, indicates what are our deepest, truest feelings. By his third shot... I negotiated the idea. Yes, You Who Want To Swing have the right to nicely ask, and to gently suggest, and timidly quote... blah, blah, blah... we've all read the advice. But pressure is pressure by any other name. It was obviously boring at home for him, and I felt threatened, and more open to suggestion. It has also been accurately said here that feelings cannot be rationalized, and I'm in that camp. I have never been a shrinking violet, was always the "aggressor" in getting a date... even when swinging I was the lead. I speak up in meetings at work... that's the mask I wear to the world. I am fearless. And yes, the first two times he brought it up I gave him a predictably negative, emotional response. I guess he just thought I was so "tough" that I could handle it. But where there is a hard shell there is a soft bodied interior. I suppose he was just trying to wear me down or de-sensitize me or something, but I don't think Husband accurately determined how sensitive the ego is, and how much I'd be willing to sacrifice or do for my marriage when I felt truly threatened, emotionally threatened, however primitive or insecure that makes me. I love my husband. And I don't think he anticipated the changes that came with that, because as we went on, I got more comfortable with it while he was having a more and more difficult time with it--specifically, watching me. So guys, if you are the guy trying to convince your wife... you are best advised that there is something to be given up for every pleasure you attain. And you cannot anticipate them, neither one of you... I mean we are talking about sex, love and spouses--it's a veritable minefield. 2) As we got into things, even different situations... it began to lose its "shine." It really began to be like a drug. An addiction. We keep upping the ante, and looking for more. It was consuming our lives... it took over our hobbies. We were obsessed with sex! Tired and slacking at work. The positive is that we had a shared hobby that we were having fun with together.... well, you can accomplish that with racketball. We both agreed that you Are what you Do. And we both began asking ourselves, "What do I want to go to my grave saying I accomplished? That I f--ked a lot?" I guess one could say we could just slow it down and do it every once in a while... but we both found it takes a certain mindset that is hard to take on and off at will and that's why it becomes a "lifestyle." 3) We both found ourselves asking; When the door of possibility is open to sleep with other people, and suddenly the whole world becomes a playground... what makes me so special? The kids? The house? The laundry? Yes, the person who will clean up your puke and bring you soup when you're sick is priceless... but are they sexy? Is that whose pants you can't wait to get into, that you're working so hard to get into, on Saturday night? Shouldn't it be? I began to think about all the time and work and effort we were putting into swinging, time we were spending together, but ultimately I couldn't get away from the fact that it was so he could wet his willy somewhere else... how ironic is that? I felt like I was living in Bizarro world. As much as you are in it together, there is still the goal of at some point getting it on with OTHERS (and yes sometimes I was as excited about the other people, too), and I just really wondered how great our relationship would be if we spent that effort on each other, exclusively, instead. 4) This lifestyle is very much connected to earthly pleasures... the ego. It is very much about power... shared power, relented control, taking control-- how you share it in a partnership... and of course I have always been fascinated by the subject of power, and what it means to really have it truly, personally. I gained a lot of satisfaction from putting on the Venus role for a while. What woman doesn't want to be Venus, even for a while? And guys too... come on, who doesn't want to be Eros, or Mars? (sorry, I'm an archetypist!) Becoming a swinger is like big ole bottle of Insta-Sex Star... as others have surmised even here, it's like being yours or your spouse's personal porn star. It was a potent elixir... it made me feel powerful. But when I really looked at things, it wasn't where I wanted to be powerful. Again, going back to archetypes and my goddess shit... at the end of the day, I want to be Penelope, not Circe; Demeter, not Aphrodite (though husband insists she is part of my make-up . Venus is, after all, the Pantheon representative of infidelity, and venereal disease. In my heart, there is something to Virtue and Value and being the Only One that appeals to me. In guy language... I'd rather be a proudly owned Mercedes than a Beamer rental any day of the week. You can take the girl out of the South... but you can't take the Southern Belle outta the girl. My pussy is regal and you're lucky to get past the front door. 5) As far as the moral in sharing... I share a lot of things. I share my time with people I like, I watch my friends' kids, I give my hands in donation to a local environmental cause, and when there's a smoking circle going down, I'm happy to share my stash. But sharing my husband? How much are we really asking, here? I remember hearing a quote once that went, "You can go one place with a hundred people, or a hundred places with one person." And you make a choice about that. Well, I didn't have any delusions the day I married about making this person the One. In a very base way, it broke my heart for him to ask to be with others... just the suggestion. Just the truly desired thought on his part. The act for me, then, could never really be destroyed until I went to meet it. And generally... my preferences in life, something I conveniently thought I could change or rationalize, has always, always been depth of experience, not breadth. On a trip through Europe with friends five years ago, I was the person (and Husband) who chose to spend nine days in Amsterdam soaking up the city, seeing the Van Gogh and the Anne Frank house and sailing the canals, while my friends hopped through four different cities, losing luggage, getting kicked out of cabs and generally having an otherwise shitty time. Quality over quantity, I will choose it every time. The moral being, please look at the overall fabric of your life before going down this path. We both kept finding that the best sex was *always* with each other... so what were we looking for? 6) There are things in this lifestyle that hurt, pure and simple. One of the main problems is jealousy... hurt... pain... and those who struggle with it--it comes up over and over again. I did, my husband did with me. Yet, even as I pored over all the threads of this site last fall, I couldn't help but wonder.... why? Why keep on? And, as literary as she usually isn't... a lyric by Madonna popped into my head; "Pain is a warning that something's wrong." And I know that what I did, and maybe what other women *might* be inclined to do... is numb yourself. To talk yourself down out of that emotion. It may be right for some people, or maybe those two are more easily extricated for others... but separating love and sex to such an extent and degree that you just don't even care anymore... well, it bothered me. And look... pain is a warning to take your friggin' hand out of the fire. Without that feedback... you can really hurt yourself. And this lifestyle is, as many have said, "Purification by Fire." 7) Religion... well I am a pagan but I have a big thing for Mary Magdalene, having grown up as a child of the Christian Church (and I bring this up b/c there are threads here of how people see swinging spiritually) and finally coming back around to her story, being so popular in culture right now. Strong, intelligent, Christian women identify a lot with Mary M. these days because she adds the Sexual element to the Holy. I got away from the Holy part. While I don't see swinging or open marriage as something I would ever advocate, I am not going to stop anyone for whom it works. All I want is the room to live my archetype. And I have been trying so hard to re-claim both the archetypal "Whore" and "Mother" in one being, in my own home, in my life... that I forgot the core of a few things about Mary M.... she was never really a whore, and when she was, it was to one, very special man. 'Nuff said Sincerely, Tempest