Reader Question: Advice on How to Start Swinging?
There are a few ways to get into the lifestyle, but to us the one best way is through a club.
I received a question asking how a married couple who’s never swung can safely try out the swinging lifestyle. Here goes:
Hello. I recently told my husband I want to experiment with consensual nonmonogamy. We’ve been married for 5 years (no kids yet) and we’re in our early 30s. He’s actually been quite supportive and we’ve talked about lots of different options for experimenting. To make a long story short, we’ve decided to try out the swinging lifestyle, which scares us! We think we’d be open to swapping and small-group scenarios. Do you have recommendations for a couple like us? And how does a couple meet others with the same desires and get into this lifestyle?
Thank you for your question. You also shared the following during our exchange:
- You’re bisexual and your husband is aware of your sexual orientation.
- You had threesome sex before you met your husband, and you miss it.
- You feel you can’t stay in a monogamous marriage any longer. You said your love for your husband will never change, but one partner will not be able to satisfy your sexual needs.
How and why a couple chooses to get into and participate in the swinger lifestyle is deeply personal to them. It’s a set of decisions the couple and no one else should make. The couple should be entirely aligned on the how, the why and all of the particulars of their getting into the lifestyle.
A pervasive myth about swinging is that participating in the lifestyle invariably erodes marital trust and ends in divorce. We think that myth persists in part because so many people confuse swinging with open marriage. We are not fans of open marriage. We’ve known very few couples in the lifestyle who have gotten divorced. In fact, all of the couples we know well are deeply in love and happy.
Almost all humans in relationships, including marriages, fantasize at times about non-monogamous desires. The difference is that some of us have chosen to adopt a lifestyle — swinging (and polyamory)— that allows us to explore those desires.
For Lauren and me, boundaries with our swinging are critical. Swinging is a lifestyle we engage in, together, with other couples — but it doesn’t involve love or intimacy. Love and intimacy are what Lauren and I share together and with Piper — but with no one else.
That is to say, swinging is about sex, not love. It also can involve friendship; we are close friends with all of the couples we play with regularly. But ultimately it’s about sex. Rules that all parties agree to, though, are crucial. We all have to follow the established rules. You and your husband must be fully comfortable with whatever rules you play by (more on that below).
I have written about how Lauren and I got into swinging and a lot about some of our adventures. Lauren’s bisexuality and the resulting polyamory, which we’ve practiced since the late 1990s, paved the way for getting into swinging. Essentially, in 2009, a woman we were seeing (Katie), then a 32-year-old mom of two, asked if her husband could join us in bed. After a lot of discussion, Lauren and I agreed. It started with swapping and, over a period of a few months, morphed into other scenarios with Katie and her husband.
Our experiences with Katie and her husband left Lauren and me with a desire to explore this lifestyle with lots of other couples. We talked honestly about what we wanted and why:
- We wanted to swap with other couples like us.
- We wanted to experiment with various types of group sex, including orgy sex.
- To my surprise, Lauren shared her fantasy of being gangbanged.
- I shared my fantasy of having lots of women at once.
- Though cuckhold didn’t interest us, we each admitted how hot it would be to see each other fucking someone else.
We talked about how to prevent pregnancy and STDs, which we realized might be tough when we’d have so many sex partners.
Out of all of what we talked about came some ground rules. The rules have evolved over the years. For instance, we had a no-kissing rule and a no-anal rule that were kiboshed.
Ground rules have been important for us, and all couples we play with adhere to these as well.
The question you’ve posed is, how to get started?
The hard thing about swinging is that those of us who participate in the lifestyle don’t broadcast it. It’s private because our society harshly judges people like us, even though our marriage is probably a thousand times better than most (because we’re sexually fulfilled — most people cheat because they’re sexually unfilled).
Something to think about: You may be discovered and/or talked about behind your backs. Lauren and I know there are rumors about us in the neighborhood — we’ve been spotted a few times in our club attire, and we occasionally host private parties. You have to accept that at some point there may be rumors. We still have lots of friends in our neighborhood, but we know there’s talk about us engaging in “wild sex parties” (we know of at least one other couple in our neighborhood who swings but, due to boundaries, we don’t play with them)…. Because living a secret sucks, telling some friends and family members about our lifestyle has helped.
The secrecy of the lifestyle makes finding couples willing to play pretty hard, but there are some good avenues. We highly recommend you shop around for a swingers club that has privacy and security measures in place. I’ve written at length about the club scene.
Back to Katie and her husband for a quick second. As our relationship with them had started to run its course, Lauren and I were ready to get into the lifestyle more deeply. So I got online and found two clubs with physical locations, business operations and selective membership in our area. Both are high-end and cater to well-off couples but one in particular takes it to the next level.
We were scared shitless when we first went to one of the clubs — this was in 2009. Our biggest worry was that someone would recognize us. Didn’t happen that night. I remember that night like it was yesterday. Lauren had on a black silky dress with a low cut, black hose and red pumps and I had on a black suit and white shirt. We were at the time in our mid-30s and looked hot!
That first night, we met a lot of people — and had lots of opportunities — but we didn’t have sex with anyone. What we did do was have sex together in a room where other couples were doing the same. Turns out that was a smart decision — it helped us ease into the scene.
We loved it so much that we returned to the same club the next weekend and joined. That night, we swapped with another couple we’d just met in a semi-private room. It was a full swap and condoms were required, and it was so much fun.
Within six months of joining, we had a circle of friends at the club and our participation in the lifestyle had taken off. I just kind of followed Lauren’s lead — she was/still is super hot, and it’s smart for husbands of super hot wives to just follow their leads.
Early in our club days, what started as swapping morphed into basically everything you could imagine, including Lauren’s first gangbang and, yes, my first reverse gangbang. All along, we communicated our desires and interests and discussed them! Communication was and continues to be key.
From our circle of friends at the club, we got invited to lots of private parties at people’s houses. We also joined a second club. From all of that, we developed a lot of relationships in the lifestyle. Many of those relationships continue to this day, but we’re also meeting new couples all the time. It’s a lot of fun but we’re increasingly cognizant of our advancing age and how much longer we’ll stay in.
When you swing, you need to be OK seeing your spouse do lots of sexual things with others and enjoying it. You need to be OK with others wanting to fuck your spouse and your spouse wanting to fuck them. There is nothing I haven’t seen Lauren do or have done to her over the years. She’d say the same about me.
Final point: We need to talk about preventing pregnancy and STDs. That’s a hugely important topic, and the above-linked rules include some STD-prevention measures we take. Admittedly, we are fairly lax with couples we know very well but, with couples we don’t know super well, condoms are always required.
We also all get regularly STD-tested. Lauren and I see the same concierge physician and our doctor knows about our lifestyle and her office happily tests us a few times per month. We all have to test regularly and show our results.
In our 14 years in the lifestyle, Lauren’s had just over 500 sex partners and I’ve had about half that number and our tallies continue to go up. We’ve contracted no STDs and there’s never been an unwanted pregnancy.
Think through how you will safely and enjoyably swing while also preventing STD transmission and unwanted pregnancy.
We wouldn’t change anything about our lifestyle, but it’s not been without some setbacks and conflict we had to work through. Good luck!
