Gossip And Bullying In The Lifestyle – Important Things You Should Do!

they could take the story that you told, pass it to somebody else and say, “I can’t believe that so-and-so is actually spreading this kind of stuff around.” – Yeah.

(upbeat music) – Welcome to Swinger University. I’m Ed. – And I’m Phoebe. – Join us as we explore the exciting world of ethical non-monogamy, sexual health, and sex education with an intellectual and sexy twist. – Do you kiss and tell? What does it exactly mean? Is it different than gossip and how can that help in the lifestyle? We talk about the good, the bad, and when it turns to bullying. Plus, you will learn how to stop it. – Remember to subscribe to our podcast and YouTube channel. Be sure to join our Patreon community for the behind the scenes stories and extra sexy content. – If you like our show, do us a favor and tell a friend about it. We hear all the time how our podcast helps others. So in the spirit of swinging, please share. Karen wrote in and asked about our first experiences, our insecurities and pressure to play as well as her issues with aggressive women in lifestyle. – So when she wrote in, I sent her a very nice long email and kind of helped her through some of those challenges that she was having. And it also helped spawn this episode as well. – Yeah. – So we really do thank you for writing in and asking those questions. We appreciate it. – So if you have questions about the lifestyle, please contact us.

All right, who gossips? Apparently all of us. – Right? – Even when you don’t think that you are, you do. And the average person actually gossips 52 minutes a day. According to a 2019 study in the journal of social, psychological and personality science, learned that most gossip was neutral. The urge to discuss your family details can be very helpful and natural. So that is a form of gossip that we all perform everyday life. And a lot of the family members will share like job promotions, someone got married, bought a house, right? This is all considered gossip. So it’s, you’re talking about somebody else and what’s going on with them. In a sweeter family, it can be someone who’s talking about another person or a couple that breaks the rules all the time, or as maybe they’re too rough, or, oh gosh, maybe they lose a condom. And I’m laughing cause you have to check out that other episode. So what is gossip exactly, right? Normal, we all do it. And there is a bad version of gossip. Mostly that’s what gossip is known for. You hear the word gossip and it’s like, my God, it’s bad. This is what people think of when they hear the word gossip, yeah. It’s negative, it’s got a negative connotation to it. And the bad gossip is a person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others. The good gossip is casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true. So observations, things like that. It’s common informational type of sharing. Why do we do it? Right, if it has such a negative connotation to it, why do we do it? And I didn’t even know there was a good kind. So now I know there’s a good kind and here’s why it’s beneficial. Apparently we can’t help it. According to Dr. Frank McAndrew, a psychology professor at Knox College who researches the evolution and psychology of gossip. In earlier societies, we needed to know what people or groups were dependable, who had the power and who had powerful friends. This sharing of gossip was a way of also getting that information, right? And maintaining your family core as a strong unit, which was really necessary for informing other family members. We’re talking resources, safety, all of that. And then knowing who are those people outside of us that could potentially harm us, who are our friends, our allies, all that. So sharing of this information gossip, critical. When I was researching this, I started to think about when we were in Vegas and we went to the Mob Museum, right? The Mob family, they talk about that and how information spreads so quickly because they’re all connected and they’re all informing each other of what’s going on in the community with all the businesses, et cetera. Yes, so now you can kind of get a picture of that family unit, tribe, right? Trying to protect their own. Gossip will also show some vulnerability. It’s a way of building trust and bond with others. And it really is a social skill. So if you don’t have it, you’re kind of left behind. Right, you’re left out of that chain of communication. You’re not building that bond with coworkers or friends because you’re not really engaging with those personal details. You’re not engaging with letting people in on what’s going on in your life. Yes, yes. That makes sense. And early on, I had a difficult time doing this because I didn’t do the gossip thing. I kept my life very private. I kept other lives very private. I didn’t share other people’s information. It made me feel alienated. People couldn’t gauge me. They’re like, can I trust her? She doesn’t share anything. So I don’t know where I stand. And she doesn’t give me anything to grab onto. The tricky part is when we should do it, how we do it. So that negative gossip is that intentional spread of information to make people look bad and make themselves look good. Right, so this is that whole tearing people down in order to build yourself up and taking credit for other people’s work and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, it’s just bad. It’s bad, it’s ugly. And we see this a lot of time in Swinger Facebook chat groups and it’s not very pretty. You can also do unintentional damage by spreading gossip or at least talking about other people because you don’t necessarily know who’s listening and you could inadvertently hurt somebody else’s feelings by spreading this information. And in a sense, letting a secret out without somebody else knowing that you’re telling their secrets. Positive gossip would be more discreet. You’re not adding false details. It’s not mean spirited. And you hopefully are doing a gut check. Does it make you feel bad to say that information? Does it give you that cringy feeling? If it does, then you probably shouldn’t be saying it. Right. Assuming that your moral compass isn’t out of whack to be fair with. But yeah, so have a little bit of caution when you’re talking about other people. For example, be careful who you open up to. If they’re really close friends and you know that they will keep the confidence, then that’s probably pretty safe. And thinking about that, the converse would be someone who’s constantly gossiping and maybe spreading things around. Not such a good person to confide in. It could be risky because they might turn it around on you. Right. And it’s easy to get into that trap because they’re like sharing information. But then you realize, oh shit, you know, later. Oh, all my stuff got disclosed as well. Right. And if it’s a person who’s using gossip as a weapon in order to tear people down. Or gain attention. Or gain attention. They could take the story that you told, pass it to somebody else and say, I can’t believe that so-and-so is actually spreading this kind of stuff around. They look better because they’re talking about you as being the bad gossip. And now you’ve just become the bad guy. Sometimes I wonder, are we back in seventh grade? The internet makes me feel like that almost every day. How do you stop this? You want to be direct. You can say things like, I don’t wanna talk about this. Or you could say, I don’t have anything to say. And you just say it with a smile, just like that. It usually stops the conversation. If they don’t get it and they keep talking, you just repeat it. If you repeat something three times the same thing, they will get the hint. You can also change the subject. That also works. Right. It doesn’t work so well for them. Don’t worry about seeming rude. It doesn’t really matter. Just don’t worry about it. And another way of saying it too, which might come across a little bit easier or at least give you some deniability is, I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t heard. Yes. Because then you’re not part of the situation. You don’t have any information to contribute. And they’re certainly not gonna ask you for more because you’re like, oh, I’ve never even met that person. Or I didn’t know anything about it. Another phrase that someone told me that I use often is, I really can’t say. Which is vague enough where it could be interpreted a couple of different ways, which is nice. You really can’t say, cause you don’t want to say or you have nothing to say about it. It’s not offensive. And it just moves the conversation right along. It stops it. It really does. Someone would have to be a real jerk to try and tear into that and get more information. So they’ll probably avoid that. When you’re swinging, here are some things that you may encounter and things that we have encountered in Las Vegas when we were at the ASN Awards. We encountered how gossip works really well. One of the promoters had canceled an event and there was an incident that had happened at the same location where they usually hold their event. Wasn’t their event, it was somebody else’s. Within 24 hours, the city and the hotel and another hotel had already heard about that incident. Boom. That phone call the next day, they already knew. It was phenomenal. The good gossip in a swinger environment is sharing information with an organizer or promoter where an issue is occurring or has occurred. Right? Organizers don’t want troublemakers. If you have a valid issue, they really do wanna hear about it so that they can get firsthand knowledge, which is why it’s really, really important not to just go, ugh, whatever, and brush it off and then gossip about it to others about, hey, I had this bad experience at a party. Yes, that does happen. Does it happen all the time? No. But if you don’t tell the promoter, they can’t do anything about it. They can do a lot of things. They can ban them from coming to the event. They can file a police report if need be. They can bring in some counseling if that’s warranted. And one of the key things to know about promoters and event promoters is they all talk to each other. And so if something happened that was illegal or unethical or non-consensual, it’s important to talk to the promoter about it so that they’re aware and they can tell other promoters so that that person can’t continue to behave poorly at other events and create more trouble for other people. Like you’re helping your community by not letting it happen again. Correct, yes. So you’re helping preserve the community, that good, kindhearted nature of the community that likes to follow the rules and ask for consent. So if you’re not speaking up, you’re allowing those other individuals, the bad apples, kind of ruin it for everybody else. The other aspect of this to think about, the promoter going directly and talking to both parties is important and you should do the same thing if you ever hear gossip about people because assuming that someone isn’t making something up, assuming that the bad gossip is actually true is just as bad as spreading the gossip. So if you hear something about someone that you know personally, talk to them directly about it. You don’t have to say who told you, but getting that confirmation on your own allows you to cut the gossip chain off right there because you won’t continue to spread that information if for a fact you know that it’s not true. Yeah, I’ve done this with Good Friends of Wine and I’ve done it with other play partners as well. And usually what happens when we hear a piece of gossip is I catalog it in my brain and go, hmm, okay. I don’t have that direct experience with that person, but I will catalog that in my brain and keep that on file and make sure I note that if something were to come up. So it’s like kind of like a little yellow flag, right? Just a little. Right. And then through my own observations and interactions based on my own filters, if I encounter the same thing, then I make my own assessment and go, hmm, you know what? I can see there’s some truth to this. And then I can choose whatever I want to do with that gossip. The other good gossip at a Swinger event is what we call that kiss and tell. What is kissing and telling? It could be a good recommendation for a fun or respectful play couple. It could be a recommendation for a size queen. She really likes big, girthy things. And so someone can tell her, oh, you really need to go check out Joe. He’s a really nice guy. He’s respectful. He’s great with both parties. He shows up to events. They have a whole list of why he’s great. And I asked someone just last night at a party, why did they like this guy? I got information that was really helpful to me. He was respectful, courteous, gentle, showed up on time. It’s kind of like a job recommendation. It was. Yeah. It was like, it’s kind of like an elevator pitch for somebody else. In a slight twist to the good gossip, because you think of these things as all being positive things, almost like a lot of the Swinger sites, you can put in a reference on them. I can’t remember what SLS calls it, but you can give them some kudos on their profile and say, hey, they were the best couple. They were fun and attentive and they served great hors d’oeuvres. Yeah, well, certification, so to speak. Yeah. But the other one that doesn’t sound positive, but it is, and that is for that gentleman in the lifestyle that we’ve run across and we’d heard from several people that was losing their condom. And. On purpose. On purpose, yeah. They were basically slipping it off and. Pretending that it. Pretending that it had disappeared or trying to just get away with it. We’ve heard it’s more common lately. Yeah. Yeah, which is a little shocking. So that’s a different kind of good gossip. It’s not positive, but it’s beneficial to know because women don’t want to have that risk floating around in the lifestyle. And we hadn’t passed that along until we had heard it from, I think, two other women. And then it had. And then we had it happen. Yes. And at that point. I said. Third time’s the charm. (laughs) We were definitely sharing that tidbit when we talked about other people. Not all the time, but anytime we heard that particular person’s name mentioned, we say you should be careful and really watch because this has happened to us, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And usually what I say is, you know, very nice couple. He was fun to play with. If you choose to play with him, be aware of that condom at all times. I would not recommend being in a doggy position unless your husband or significant other is watching. Right. I, you know, would check frequently to see if, reach down and see if it’s still there. Right. You could still play, but check. It’s a safety awareness. Safety awareness. Yes. We’re here for safety awareness. (laughs) It’s your public service announcement. Yes. Bullying and negativity in the lifestyle is rare. We have seen it. We have heard it. And it’s, you know, the lifestyle is not perfect. That it is real people and there are some bad apples. We’ve just slightly dipped our toe into that arena of organizing and event and vacation. We’ve started to see more of that ugly side, so to speak. Right. Some of the bad behavior. Well, some of it goes directly into what we’ve been talking about, which is spreading rumors. So false information about you, as opposed to helpful information to keep you safe. So the condom guy, for example. So there are people who are spreading those nasty rumors about people. That’s bad. Sarcasm. So passive aggressive behaviors, like dropping hurtful or offensive comments. Most of the time we see that in forums and chat groups. Yes. Right. I won’t mention some of them. We have a love hate relationship with one of the groups on Reddit. And we see a lot of that, which kind of plays into this next one, which is cyber bullying. So creating multiple accounts for downvoting people, leaving nasty comments, and really kind of ganging up on people who aren’t promoting the thing that you promote or the thing that you say. Right. And that we were afraid of when we first came out last October, because we’ve seen this happen to other podcasters, and we’ve seen it happen to people in the lifestyle. And that’s outing them in the community. It’s pretty extreme, but not as common as you might think it is. But when it happens, it’s usually big. Really bad. One of the most extreme examples we ran across of this was in Colorado, when we were attending a house party, there was a local club that had a overly enthusiastic member who decided to take it upon themselves to out everybody who was going to house parties as a way of protecting this club. They printed up flyers. They went door to door in the neighborhood. They doxxed people. They made all kinds of crazy accusations about what these people were doing, including prostitution and human trafficking and drug trade, like crazy shit that they were making up, because they were basically trying to do a favor to the club by destroying this, quote, competing business environment. Really bad. The HOAs got involved in terms of getting people kicked out of communities kind of thing. That’s terrible. People are bad shit. Lost their homes or jobs, everything. It was horrible. Yeah, it was bad. Yeah, bad, bad. And one of the other things that comes out of this is sometimes this is a personality disorder. People are compelled to spread lies in order to feel important and gain attention. So they’re antisocial, or they have a narcissistic complex, or a histrionic complex, where that’s just kind of built into who they are. That’s how they feel good about themselves. Right. If you have conflict at an event or in the community, try to take a breath, think about it twice, act once and avoid using social media or text messages to solve it because it’s never going to work out well. It’s just not the best. I know it’s hard. It’s just not the best way to do it. You really want to deescalate it. You want to be wiser and smarter about it. And it’s safer to take this approach. You can ask for a private setting or meeting if you really want to address it with this individual. You can invite a third party as the mediator. If it’s at an event, you can ask the party organizer, event organizer to be that mediator in that three way. Share the feelings, focus on clear communication. Don’t use the word you. Provide specific examples. And ultimately, hopefully get to a shared resolution. You can even come up with shared resolution that you think might be good for both parties. It’s really trying to step out of those emotions and make that repair, even though it wasn’t your fault, which is really frustrating, right? Because you’re negotiating with someone who’s wronged you and destroyed you. Now you have to rise above all of that. Right, to try and do the right thing. It’s very difficult and challenging, but it is honestly the best way to do it. One of the biggest challenges with having this happen at an event is people are typically having fun, probably drunk, probably high on something, because they’re not necessarily in the correct state of mind to prevent themselves from doing it. In other words, their inhibitions are lowered, and so things are coming out of their mouth. So trying to have a conversation with them and resolve something in that state, I’ve been there, it’s not really possible. They’re not fully there to comprehend what’s going on, and they’re certainly not gonna be considerate of your feelings about the whole thing, because they’re kind of in their own little world at that time. Right, but that is also why getting to that event organizer is important because they can take that situation and diffuse it, and then bring all the parties back together so that you’re not banned from their event anymore, really, honestly, and hopefully everything gets resolved. In a sense, what it is is making the event organizer aware of the situation so that they can make a more informed decision about what they’re gonna do about it, it may not get resolved that night. Correct. But at least everybody’s on the same page in terms of what happened and why it probably happened. Yeah, because really three people are involved, the event organizer, because they don’t want bad promotion, they don’t want their community that they help and serve and provide a place to come and enjoy. They don’t want that compromise because- They want people to come back. They want people to come back because they really are providing a community. It’s not all possible, but if we can get there after one of these things occur, that would be ideal. So here’s a question for you listeners. Have you ever experienced good gossip in the lifestyle? How about bullying? We’d love to hear your experiences. So leave us a comment or write to us or leave us a voicemail. Some of the key takeaways are gossip is helpful to others, especially when it’s safety oriented. Don’t be a bully and don’t do it in a lifestyle. Be confident, nip it in the bud, and don’t worry about seeming to be rude. Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate you joining our community. Don’t forget your homework, tell a friend about our show and leave a review and comment. You can also leave us a voicemail at 916-538-0482. And you can contact us through our website at swingeryuniversity.com. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep it sexy. (upbeat music)