Discussion: Swinging.

buartha · 2017-11-26T18:01:43+00:00

I've only answered the questions that don't seem to call for personal experience with swinging as I'm not sure about the logistics.

1: What do you guys think about swinging?

I get why other people do it but I'd rather drink poison personally.

2: Is swinging an elegant win/win solution in which you get to raise a family with your spouse and build economic wealth with your spouse while at the same time avoiding the sexual restrictions that are the downside of marriage?

If you're not naturally jealous and you don't bond emotionally through sex then it may be for you. Most people are one, the other or both though, so it's not going to work for the majority in my opinion.

3: How on Earth does the conversation go when a spouse tries to open up the marriage?

Judging from the reactions I've seen online it usually goes badly unless someone is secretly thinking the same or is so desperate not to lose their partner that they'll agree to anything.

4: Is the male or the female normally angrier about the prospect of opening up the marriage?

Whoever is more emotionally attached and /or thinks they'll struggle more on the dating scene is angriest. One of the funnier scenarios that crops up a lot on reddit is guys opening up the relationship to the horror of his wife/gf, only to have him desperately try to close it when he sees how easy she finds it to get laid. My sympathy for the man in such situations is nil.

5: How prevalent is swinging?

Typical wife swapping swinging is probably less common than open relationships, but I'd say that most peeps just cheat or trade up when they're bored.

6: What is your PERSONAL experience with swinging, either in your own marriage or in your friends'? How EXACTLY does it WORK? And does it work WELL?

I don't do it. My partner has slept around in previous relationships but doesn't with me and our relationship has lasted longer than his previous ones if that tells you anything.

7: What is the main PROBLEM with swinging?

Feelings developing and one party being more up for it than the other.

AlanHalworth · 2017-11-26T16:59:52+00:00

In my circle of friends it is called "poly" or "polyamory" rather than swinging. My sense is that it does not always make people happy. There is constant drama. The man is happy not to have to commit to Alice, but then he changes his mind, or he wants Eve to commit to him and she won't do it. But that may be my biased perspective as someone for whom poly would be a particularly bad fit.

I think people tell themselves that they are okay with poly, but humans are wired for jealousy and it is just hard to pull it off. I know some men who were poly and dating the same woman, and although outwardly they would have claimed they were not jealous, in practice it led to horrific jealousy, attempts at manipulating the woman, and backstabbing that destroyed their friendship and actually threatened my whole friend group.

So, before you embark on this, make sure you are one of the very few people who is capable of not getting jealous. You may feel you would not be jealous if your wife (or husband, if you are female) dated a man who is not as alpha as you (whatever that might mean) but now imagine your wife is dating a guy you perceive as being more charismatic than you, while for the moment you are not dating anyone else. How long could you put up with that before you started to try to push your wife into not dating this guy? And maybe you can't admit you are jealous of this guy for fear that that will make your wife think even more highly of him. So you have to resort to being a controlling jerk toward your wife. What is your plan for dealing with that scenario?

quotient_is · 2017-11-26T18:20:53+00:00

An honest open arrangement works for us. We were open from the very first day we dated and have kept it that way into our marriage. The honesty, freedom and trust are good for us, but I understand how most people wouldn't see it that way. I think that it's completely normal for humans to be sexually attracted to many people and that there's no reason to be jealous about it or restrict basic sexual expression. Provided proper protection and vetting are employed, anyway.

One quirk of our situation, I guess, is that my husband sees people more often than I do due to a lack of interest in other people on my part. I'm a hard introvert and I don't care to put in the work it takes to meet people.

It got awkward once when he assumed I would want to be in a poly relationship with a woman he was seeing. That was early on and I think he was just excited about the newness of the situation. The woman was cool about the misunderstanding and they are still FWB. I've not felt awkward about anything else so far and he's not expressed any awkwardness to me.

Generally speaking, people who are into this lifestyle are very sexually adventurous. I imagine that does away with lot of potential awkwardness. We talk openly about the people we're interested in, and sometimes meet each other's partners. We're spared the anxiety of wondering if the other is cheating and the jealousy of taking attraction to other people as a personal insult. I've never fully identified with that mindset and it's refreshing to have found someone who agrees with me. Plus we get to do a lot of exploring, which is just fun.

I find that people who are already coupled are typically more stable and less likely to drop drama bombs than single people. It's also much better to find one or two FWB, typically online, than to go club hopping.

Anyway, that's my experience.

miamishowband · 2017-11-26T20:19:13+00:00

The chance to improve your lives is remote. The chance to make them much worse is great.

ivegotsomequestions0 · 2017-11-26T20:22:31+00:00

Okey dokey. My husband and I do this.

He wanted to open up the relationship fairly early on, because he developed an intense hotwife fetish (seeing me with other men). It wasn't awkward as I had been in open relationships before and he knew I was down for all sorts of stuff. We later mixed in swinging. My reaction might have been a lot different if he had wanted to open it because he had a strong desire to sleep with other women, but that is kind of secondary for him. From what I've read online, it can be pretty hard to get either a male or a female spouse interested, particularly if they are sexually conservative.

It's like normal online dating, but with way lower standards because 1) there aren't that many people, particularly young attractive ones and 2) we're not planning any kind of deep relationship with them. We find a decent couple, or they find us. We all meet up. Usually, we proceed to having sex. A couple of times we have been in separate rooms with half of the other couple, but usually some type of foursome gets going. We've never stayed the night or anything. It is not awkward between us at all, we share all the details and laugh about stuff.

Main problem generally is lack of attractive people/people our age. My specific problem is not really enjoying the sex that much with these other guys. My holy grail would be finding a partner who I really click with, but the whole experience is usually too detached for that to happen. That also goes for my solo experiences, where I sleep with single men. It would be interesting to sleep with someone and have it be way better than with my husband, but I'm not sure it is possible for me to develop a good enough connection for that to happen.

Because it's never been that good, I'd be fine with dropping the whole thing, but my husband regularly gets into seeking out new men for me or couples for us, and he'd be really bummed if I took all of it off the table.

Swingers usually don't like the don't ask/don't tell method. It's not very practical either as most married people aren't going to be able to take off for four hours without their spouse asking where they went. But yeah, the "forbidden" part is very hot, and it's just not there in swinging.

Yes, I think that this is a great way of letting out some of the pressure in spending several decades together.

As for the stability of these relationships — I've seen some lasting, strong relationships and marriages involving swinging or multiple partners. I've seen some fail. I've seen some married people open up their dying relationship in an effort to save it, which tended to fail. I've seen some lasting, strong (ostensibly) monogamous relationships and marriages. I've seen some (ostensibly) monogamous relationships and marriages end.

Yangel · 2017-11-26T20:51:05+00:00

tbh the whole 'scene' seems to boil down to cuck fetishism.

Butt-Factory · 2017-11-26T19:40:31+00:00

In my experience, most couples can't can't survive this kind of arrangement unscathed. That said, there are exceptions and I personally know happy couples who have been in committed non monogamous relationships for decades. Like all kinks and kicks, I consider it none of my business and don't have a generalized opinion on it. Not a choice I would make, but you do you.

wtknight · 2017-11-26T17:39:41+00:00

If women are naturally hypergamous rather than polygamous like how men are, then she is going to choose one of the men she prefers sexually over the other. It's very likely that this other man will be the "other guy," which is going to make her husband very jealous and possibly bother the "other guy's" wife if he starts spending resources on her with gifts and whatnot. I have no experience with swinging or polyamory myself but just by reading about men's and women's "natures" here it seems like this would be an obvious problem caused by the lifestyle, although for a woman who continues to prefer her husband then the "other guy" is just a kink for her and the marriage could continue to work out fine.

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darla10 · 2017-11-26T18:42:01+00:00

Poly communities, like swinging communities, have very complex rules. It’s been shown that both run into trouble because people, for SOME reason, don’t always like to follow the rules. I’m too much of a romantic so swinging/poly would not work for me. If my h ever suggested it, I’d be wrecked.

washington_breadstix · 2017-11-26T21:01:03+00:00

1: What do you guys think about swinging?

I don't care what other people do but I could personally never handle it. The jealousy would be too much.

2: Is swinging an elegant win/win solution in which you get to raise a family with your spouse and build economic wealth with your spouse while at the same time avoiding the sexual restrictions that are the downside of marriage?

Not necessarily. If couples who swing see it that way, then more power to them. However, I don't think of sexual restrictions as the "downside" of marriage to be honest. I wouldn't marry someone unless we were both 100% okay with giving up all our other options or even eager to do so.

3: How on Earth does the conversation go when a spouse tries to open up the marriage?

My ex made a feeble attempt to have this conversation once. I got really offended and the relationship ended like a month later. Talking about this is really risky, because if your S.O. isn't into the idea, then you've effectively ended the relationship. Now your S.O. knows that you want sex with other people badly enough to actually ask them for permission to have it. I would think it only works in relationships that are open from the very beginning or are between two people who have had that sort of arrangement in the past. If you just randomly spring it on your monogamous S.O. of 5 years that you want to fuck other people... yeah, that relationship is doomed.

4: Is the male or the female normally angrier about the prospect of opening up the marriage, and WHY...what is the LOGIC behind this asymmetry?

If you're talking about opening up the marriage and not just swinging, then the man will probably be "angrier". Because on average it's going to be way easier for the woman to rack up a bunch of attractive casual partners on the side (see: Arrested Development). She can just say "wan sum fuk?" and a guy will fuck her. A man in an open marriage might get some side pussy, but he's more likely to have to jump through hoops to get it and end up feeling like he's juggling multiple relationships rather than 1 relationship + casual sex.

5: How prevalent is swinging?

I have no idea. I don't know anyone who has done it. I imagine that it was more common in the 60s and 70s during the free love revolution.

6: What is your PERSONAL experience with swinging, either regarding your own marriage or regarding your friends' marriages? How EXACTLY does it WORK? And does it work WELL?

As I said, I can't speak to that here. I have no personal experience with it.

7: What is the main PROBLEM with swinging?

The fact that it can never work for the vast majority of relationships due to jealousy issues.

8: Is swinging always a situation where one couple comes over to another couple's house and they "trade spouses" for a night? How the heck does that work? Is it always two couple switching or is it sometimes a bunch of couples all rotating spouses?

Can't say; never done it. I have heard of "swinging parties" though, so I imagine that there are times when several couples meet up in one place and trade partners. It probably curtails the jealousy because everyone is present and aware of what his/her spouse is doing and prevent them from doing something they are not okay with.

9: How EXACTLY does it work after they fuck each other's spouses? Is it not awkward af when they all say goodbye and report the deets to their spouse (DO they report the deets?) and then crawl back into bed with their spouse and...?

10: What about the ULTIMATE awkwardness that you might find that the person you swung with was WAY better in bed than your actually spouse?

I feel as though these two questions can all be answered the same way: When you and your S.O. opt for a relationship allowing you to have sex outside of the relationship, you are accepting the risk of feeling all of these awkward emotions and then some. That's why it will never work for most people. It involves rolling the dice with your relationship and your feelings for the other person. And the vast majority of people in committed situations feel too strongly about their partner to let something like that happen. The mere idea of their partner wanting to fuck other people is too much for most people's brains to handle, let alone the partner actually going through with it.

11: What about all of the different configurations of "opening up a marriage?"

What about them? It's for the couple to decide what they want.

Entropy-7 · 2017-11-27T05:26:57+00:00

I love my wife but I find the idea of fucking other, hotter, younger women rather appealing. I raised the idea of a threesome and she said she wasn't in for it but that I could two other women and she didn't want any more details.

Go to Black Dragon's Blog. I think he has a detailed post on the subject.
Guys are a bit hypocritical because they tend to be the ones who want to fuck around but the reality is that women have a much easier time finding a fuck buddy if they so choose, and that leaves the guys miffed.
My guess is high, single digit percentages.
Never actually swung. I had a GF who was open to the idea of a threesome but we were always at an impasse. We both looked online but all of her suggestions were girls who were less good looking than her and I vetoed them; all of my suggestions were hotter than my GF and she vetoed them.
Jealousy and self-confidence issues.
I have heard of both situations.

newName543456 · 2017-11-27T09:23:17+00:00

I think open relationships are inherently contradictory, unless you treat commitment loosely, at which point you might as well go full on casual. Otherwise it's waaay too easy to get burned.

Willow-girl · 2017-11-27T12:37:32+00:00

There was a guy on another Internet forum where I post who got into swinging along with his wife. It started when he had an itch for the strange and it seems she went along with the idea to please him. All good so far, right? They visited a swingers' club where he ended up clutching his drink at the bar while she went upstairs with some Chadly fellow ... but she and Chad kindly made a video of their encounter for him to enjoy later.

A cautionary tale for sure.

couldbemage · 2017-11-28T05:12:25+00:00

8 and 9

Most swinging I've experienced, we were all in the room together.

songofmelancholy · 2017-11-26T16:32:57+00:00

all this bold, jesus :/

Title	Discussion: Swinging.
Author	HopefulAboutADHD
Upvotes	2
Comments	80
Date	November 26, 2017 4:30 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/7fnwjx/discussion_swinging/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/discussion-swinging.264715 https://theredarchive.com/post/264715

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