1.
My experience has been pretty fucking awesome, as long as you both have the right type of personality, are extremely comfortable in your relationship and set hard/soft limits on day 1, and be prepared for those limits to be pushed.
2.
We have rules that need to be followed. Safety is always key (both sex safety and MDK safety.) We trust each other but if one of us does not like the other’s partner we can veto it(it dosen’t happen often but it does happen.)
3.
My husband and I are open. We both expressed interest in incorporating others in the bedroom, early on. We eventually figured out that we were just fine not being around each other and having our own separate adventures.
It takes constant dialogue. I don’t think it should be something that should be tried just to save a relationship. If there isn’t a strong foundation, what you have is going to crack as soon as the first wave of jealousy hits it. It’s important to set the terms and keep them always, because even if you want more freedom than your partner allows, not following rules in the beginning will kill your chances for leniency in the future.It’s also crucial to never dismiss any feelings. Talk, talk, talk. Re-evaluate the situation periodically. And get tested regularly.
4.
It helps if you find it a turn-on to see your partner with someone else.
5.
I’m polyamorous.
I have a girlfriend and a boyfriend. I’ve never really experienced jealously.
I have been cheated on in past relationships where we had agreed to be monogamous. I wasn’t jealous then, either. It was the betrayal of trust that ended that relationship.
When I see my partners with their partners or lovers, it makes me happy. When we’re all hanging out together and one of them hugs or kisses their partner, I feel joy and excitement that they’re happy. They feel they same for me.
6.
I’ve been in a relationship with a woman for 5 years, exclusive for two years, threesomes only for a year after that, now we’re fully open. We always knew that monogamy wasnt for us, but we wanted to establish who “us” is before letting other people in.
It’s been pretty awesome with way more ups than downs. The biggest down being a brief adjustment period. I myself can have a sexual relationship with someone and just be friends. Literally friends with benefits. The woman I see now has been in my life on and off for ten years. We chill, play video games, smoke, eat dinner and have sex a few times a year. My gf likes to wine and dine, court women…date essentially. This was hard for me at first, as I thought we both would be doing more casual things. Now what I realize is that like me, she can date them, sleep with them, even love them and it changes nothing. I do love my fwb, but that has no bearing on my fiancée and my relationship. I am her future wife and she’s mine. We chose each other to go through the ups and downs of life and everyone else is secondary. Meaningful but not life changing. It’s also important that we convey this fact to new women. We let them know they’ll be treated well, they are “allowed” to have fun, enjoy this for as long as it lasts but if they’re looking for a traditional relationship, it won’t happen. This isn’t a foot out of the door experiment. We’re madly in love. A couple of women have had issue when they fall in love and they want to know what’s next (as in house, kids, marriage) when they say the three words, but most appreciate our honestly when we say nothing comes next. Some stick around, some move on but thus far none have felt bad about any of it.
7.
How do you handle your roommate eating your sandwich? Not very good if there’s yours and flatmate’s food separately. But if you agreed on sharing all the food and made clear rules from day one about who buys and when and who gets to eat what.. Then you also get to eat someone else’s sandwich if it happens to be there when you’re hungry.
Well, people are not sandwiches but what I’m trying to say is it’s about how you set the rules from beginning and make sure you are on the same page
8.
Not a swinger per se, but I have participated in quite a few threeways with my husband.
Honestly, as difficult as this might be for a lot of people to comprehend, it’s really brought us a whole lot closer than one might think, because since we’ve sorta disassociated love from sexual pleasure, it’s given us a much deeper appreciation of our relationship. You kinda really push out things like jealousy and possessiveness when you realize that absolutely nothing can break the bond that the two of you have made. The least of which something as fun, but ultimately contained as sex. What do I mean by that? While I might go and get them some iced tea while they’re busy, or he might be a doll and go and get some nachos for the three of us when we’re done, they’re just bodies doing what bodies do well. I mean, that’s nice and all, but one of the reasons that one night stands tend to leave us hungry for more: they’re mostly devoid of a real, emotional, and intimate connection. When we’re with a third, I know that he still loves me as I do him, he’s still loyal to me as I am to him, and his heart and soul are still mine as mine are us.
It’s a lot less “What do I get to do today” and a lot more “I love you, and I’m genuinely glad you were able to experience something so wonderful!” The real kicker is that I’m a jealous kinda gal, and all of the people who had gotten invites into our bedroom have been women.
And the communication. Oh the communication! Well before our first time, we talked it out for about half a year, once we’d realized that we weren’t just dicking around with drunk fantasy talk. This opened up other avenues as well, such as us just getting to learn and love a whole lot more about each other, which has really smoothed out some of the edges of our marriage (5 years), and I think made us a really happy couple, who are actually best friends, rather than just repeating some Oprah-esque buzzword that the most miserable couples seem to adore.
9.
We went into deciding to do group sex situations with a very solid understanding of what the other wants/needs and would like to try and experience. I had prior experience with such situations which made it easier for him, I think. I proposed the idea because I’m of the belief that humans just are not monogamous creatures, and limiting ones sexuality is what usually leads to infidelity. We are totally and completely devoted to each other and do not put the incorporation of others into our sex life before the actual intimacy of our monogamous sex lives. What has proven to be absolutely crucial is being open about how we feel about absolutely everything. If either of us are even remotely uncertain or uncomfortable with anything, it gets voiced. We ask the same of the people we sleep with, and it works out very well.
10.
I’m 28, been with my partner 4 years, we are cohabiting with a dog, a very happy little family, and we opened things up 6 months in. some main findings:
yes, there can be some jealousy and weird feelings at first. but once you try, you realize how fun and freeing it is, and you also realize that there is little basis for jealousy when you have a real strong bond with your SO.
it really does make things more interesting and spice them up! we’ve had couples over for play (the key is to allowing each other to call the shots.. if i’m uncomfortable, situation is over; same if he’s not comfortable. we make decisions together!), we’ve been to swingers clubs, and we’ve both been with people when we are away from each other. it’s all a different and uniquely exciting situation.sex clubs are the most entertaining to me, though as a somewhat different thinking young person, it can feel a little … cheesy at times. i have different solutions for this depending on my mood. sometimes there are no cute young couples and we play with each other at the club or just go home and play alone. other times i get drunk and apparently have gone around slapping people’s asses while they fool around, giving them pep talks, telling them they are doing a great job. sometimes you just feel like being silly and it doesn’t feel sexy. important for you both to understand your partner’s random whims and have flexible expectations.
we DO have rules, though. we have to be completely honest with each other. we only have separate partners when we are out of town and away from each other, and even then, we try to give each other heads-up about our sexy plans (esp. for safety reasons). we try to be as communicative about our needs and desires as possible. and we know that if either of us is not cool with something going down, we each have unconditional veto power to put a stop to it. there was only one situation where either of us used it, and it was totally cool.
i like girls and guys. my partner loves women, but he’s a straight guy. so sometimes i wanna go on a date with a girl, alone. sometimes i want a girlfriend on the side. luckily, my partner sees that as a cool thing, and doesn’t feel some sort of injustice about it. i imagine that other guys might not feel so accommodating about the whole thing. of course, my partner knows that any moment he could come home and be tied up by myself and some random hot girl, so i guess he feels like it evens out somehow.
11.
For me it’s very simple actually. My SO is amazing, caring, intelligent, kind and deep personality. She loves me and I love her. I don’t want to take anything away from her life by being in it. I can’t make anyone love me and I’m happy she does love me. I don’t want to be questioned and restraint in my life.
I know she would never want to hurt me and I sure as hell don’t want anything bad for her. I trust that I’m her number one priority. I’m not something to own and I have zero interest in owning someone.
From all this comes freedom in our relationship. We are not taking anything away from each others by having fun on the side. She knows I have crushes all the time and I like to get to know them deeper. I know she has high drive.
It also makes me extremely happy to see her flirting with other people. I think the thought behind that is:”Oh, look at her go! I’m glad I can make her feel so free! I’m glad she wants to be with me. Holy shit, I hope she has great time!”
For us it has worked very well. 4 years and it has just been getting better all the time.
12.
I’m (35, f) in an open relationship. My partner (m, together 6 years) and I have been doing it for the last 2 years. It was my partner’s idea. I was away at school, and we wouldn’t be able to see each other a lot of the time. I was hesitant at first, afraid of hurt feelings and jealousy. But it’s gone like gangbusters.
The trick is to keep everything above-board and to prioritize the primary relationship. I’ve slept with other people. I’ve dated other people. I even fell in love with a girl I dated. But my partner is always, always #1.
As far as handling other people sleeping with him…it’s not a big deal. Sex is sex. As long as he doesn’t hide things from me and practices safe sex, I’m fine.
As far as gender–I have a ton more sex than he does. It’s harder, I think, for a dude to find women to sleep with in an open relationship if he’s being honest about everything. It comes across as skeevy. Meanwhile, I have my partners over and we have dinner together (me, partner, boyfriend/girlfriend) and everything’s cool. It’s actually really awesome. I’ve never been in a relationship where I felt more stable, or more loved.
13.
We didn’t handle it well. My ex and I swang twice, and it started a deterioration of our relationship that ended in us breaking up a few weeks ago.
14.
There was some jealousy for me initially, but once we’d been at if for a while, it went away. You have to have a solid, secure relationship. It’s important (for us) to know that no matter what happens in the bedroom, we are in a loving and committed relationship. And honestly, its freeing to be able to experiment with sex without having to be single. We’ve been with another couple in a fourgy, and have had a M/F/M threesome. Hoping for a F/M/F eventually, to level the playing field a bit.
I love knowing that my boyfriend is head over heels for me and vice versa, but we are still able to enjoy fun and “out the ordinary” sex.
15.
1) Terrified of fucking disease.
2) See item #1.
3) there is no item 3.
4) Read over from beginning.
16.
I don’t know if this is a more “fresh” perspective in the sense that my personal relationship in younger than the ones I’ve seen mentioned here.
My boyfriend and I just celebrated our first year anniversary together. And he is my first real serious relationship. He’s been involved in the ‘swinging’ scene before and I hadn’t. He asked me after a couple of months if I’d be will to try threesome and swinging. I had not been with any other person but him and the idea was to- 1. Experience other people and see what I like 2. Have something is special that’s for us 3. I like sex, he likes sex- what’s wrong with more sex?
So I said yes, why not? I don’t know if I haven’t tried it and the worse thing that could happen was that someone could back out. And it was great. It’s casual sex, extra attention that sometimes you get lost on hands, its a bonding experience for me and my SO because we go in to each experience as a team.
We have not experienced any issues from it. We keep condoms for these special occasions, and we have boundaries for what we want and don’t want to happen. It’s honestly fun and my boyfriend is right there with me to share and be shared. And it’s only helped strengthen our relationship and love for each other.
17.
I actually work at a swinger’s club if anyone has any questions.
I have a boyfriend who’s not familiar so we’re not swingers (yet). I’m slowly introducing him to it though. We had out first 3 some over the summer and it was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever experienced. I guess I didn’t mind too much because seeing him with another woman just make him seem desirable.
18.
For some people it is a huge turn-on, myself and my wife included. We were in the scene for about five years, both before and after our marriage. But, and I can’t stress this enough, IT IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. You can very easily get into the lifestyle for the wrong reasons and end up detonating your relationship–and we have seen it happen (though it’s a strikingly narrow minority of the people we have met). Protection is a must, and communication is essential to ensuring that everyone is comfortable with what is going on.
Typically our rule of thumb was that everyone had to be in the same room (with some rare exceptions for couples we knew well and were very comfortable with), and if anything uncomfortable occurred, it stopped immediately. We also didn’t play with couples who didn’t reciprocate–that is, I don’t care how much you want to fuck my wife, if your girl isn’t willing to hook up with me then it’s a deal breaker and we all move on.
We still maintain a close friendship with one couple we met through the scene even though we don’t hook up with them any more. We attend each other’s bithday parties, we hang out regularly, and we dote on their kids (who are too cute for words).
We did go to a club one time and didn’t enjoy it as much as we thought we would (though we did hook up with a few folks that night and met a nice couple as a result).I also want to stress that we never viewed our swinging as being an “open relationship”. Our relationship is very much closed; we will never love other people as much as we love each other, which is one reason why we can make this work. Open relationships are not for us.
Equally irksome are the people–usually men, in my experience–who claim to be polyamorous as a front for trying to fuck your SO without any repercussions. There is one really skeezy guy who overlaps some of our (non-swinger) social circles and tries to come on to my wife every time we see the asshole. He is very open and vocal about being a polyamorist, but what he really wants is to fuck other people’s wives and girlfriends and talk them into it by acting like he is so much more evolved than their partners because he believes in polyamory and is “mature” enough to deal with it. These people are assholes and you should stay away from them if you decide to try swinging.
With that caveat put out there, we are actually currently in a polyamorous relationship with a third person (female). However, we all came to this conclusion on our own without outside pressure or influence, and just because the three of us can make things work does NOT mean that we love everyone else in the same way or expect them to become “enlightened” enough to fuck us. If you can’t respect other people’s boundaries, you need to stay the fuck out of the lifestyle… and pushing your sexuality onto others in an unwanted manner is a good way to get physically hurt by a jealous spouse or SO.
19.
My husband and I have been married for nearly 3 years, even when we were dating, we had an open relationship.
It started because we were dating online, living in different states, but still wanted to get laid. Sex is awesome, after all! So he continued to hook up with guys online (he is bisexual) and I continued to hook up with my FWB.
Now, years later, I have a boyfriend and he has a couple girlfriends. He and I jointly go out to gay bars and I titter and enjoy a few drinks while he gets to have guys tell him how cute he is and buy him shots. It winds my clock just as much as it does his when we go out together for him to get hit on. Riotous sex to follow when we get home, because we are both so excited.
For us, the key to keeping things ‘cool’ has been to be totally honest with each other about what is going on with our other partners. Everyone involved in our little group is clean, we always use protection just in case. There is a clear understanding that no matter how much we all enjoy rutting with each other, the romantic mushy lovey dovey part of our being together as husband and wife is exclusive. His girlfriends know that it is sex, release. It is fun and enjoyable, but he isn’t going to drop his wife and kid to marry them.
He is my best friend and my number one guy, and I am his best friend and number one gal. We can hang out as friends and talk about how exciting this partner was, or how he is winding some girl up, we honestly don’t get jealous because we each have our options and neither of us are being ‘left out’.
If I have a guy I want to hook up with, I talk to my husband about it to see if he is comfortable with that person. If he thinks I am missing something that could be a problem later on, or some other potential issue. I then talk to said guy, tell him about the rules, and we go from there if he agrees and understands. Usually my husband talks to him at some point as well to let him know that ‘yes you really can fuck my wife, no I am not going to get mad.’ Likewise with girls, I usually talk to the girl and let her know I am not going to go psycho just because she wants some hot dicking and he isn’t just feeding you a line about his ‘understanding wife’.
It isn’t for everyone, I have friends who are swingers who have really struggled or had their relationships fall apart. Honesty, honesty, honesty. That is what makes such arrangements work. You have to be honest with yourself and with your partner. It will not work if you are doing it ‘for them’.
The rules are hard set, you both stick to them. Do not break the rules, do not bend the rules, they are there to make both of you safe. They are there to keep your partners safe too.
20.
I should probably use a throw away, but I’ll risk it. I’ve been involved with threesomes, swinger couples and people that were polyamorous. The lifestyle can be fun, but for the most part, from my experiences, it doesn’t work out.
Someone usually gets jealous in the primary couple and drama insues. I would say it’s hard to find a couple that ACTUALLY knows how to trust, and to keep the drama out. Maybe I’ve just been hanging out with the wrong people, but even just watching what my friends go through the relationship shifts involved with being swingers, or just polyamorous, I’d say it takes a lot of trust and communication. Most couples can’t handle it (from my experience)
21.
Here’s some news for humans who haven’t been paying attention.
The taboos against multiple partners stem from not knowing paternity of children, and the lack of birth control methods.
Now we have paternity tests and birth control methods.
There are many logical reasons why you still shouldn’t fuck a large number of people, but there are also many logical reasons why you should.
The value of the reasons not to has diminished greatly with the BC pill for women, and DNA paternity testing.
