Swinger Lifestyle Exposed: 10 Things That Suck about the Lifestyle

The Swinger lifestyle isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it just sucks.

Here’s 10 reasons why the lifestyle sucks. Find out how things go wrong and how you can fix them.

Welcome to Swinger University. I’m Phoebe. And I’m Ed. Join us as we explore the exciting world of ethical non-monogamy, sexual health and sex education with an intellectual and sexy twist.

What we’re going to go through are some ways that things just get in the way or kind of beat you down when you’re in the lifestyle. Yeah. And these are things that every single Swinger goes through to one level or another. And we’re just going to help you smooth those things out. Or make you feel like you’re not the only one. Right. Right?

Vanilla life, let’s face it, it just gets in the way. Family, kids, pregnancy, child care, kids sports, groceries, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Making time for your fun is really important. If you want to meet another Swinger couple or do a date, set one weekend aside a month for that couple’s date or maybe a Swinger party. So just like with other vanilla items, hobbies can get in the way. So you’ve got a standing bowling match or a vanilla dinner that you do with who knows, business associates.

Think about trying to fit those things in with your schedule but still making time for you and your significant other to do other fun hobbies.

Also, career can get in the way, which is another one of those vanilla things that we all have to have a job, we have to pay our bills,

long hours, inconvenient work days, maybe work weekends. Find a different shift, maybe switch shifts for a specific event. Figure out ways to kind of work around that thing that we all have to do. And this particularly applies to, honestly, quite a few Swingers because most of them are in the profession of– Nurses, police, public service, firemen, teachers, those are all careers that can kind of get in the way of weekend activities. Exactly.

The other thing that really sucks is your hormones and your period.

One of the things that we found that worked for us was tracking your period on the phone so you can schedule around it. Most women do that and most women know how to do scheduling around it. But when you’re in perimenopause, as you know, stuff doesn’t go on schedule. And so you think you’re fine and then, whoops, hello, you’re on your period because that’s the nature of heading into menopause. Which you could do, and I have done, for Swinger vacations, like a Bliss Cruise where you spend thousands of dollars to be on a cruise where you hopefully want to fuck other people for a week.

When I was in perimenopause, I worked with my general practitioner to go on birth control pills so that it would delay or stave off any chance of me being on a period that week because I wanted to play. It interrupts that vacation. So that is an option, but be sure to work with your general practitioner on how you could best make that work for you. I think I’ve even heard that there is a new medication that you can take specifically for delaying your menstruation. So once again, talk to your general practitioner and see what options you had available. Or O-P-G-Y-N. The other option is to just play different. You could stick with oral. You could just be voyeurs. You could maybe just masturbate with each other, which is also a lot of fun. Yes.

The other thing that gets in the way is emotions, jealousy, envy, and emotions happen. Emotions like jealousy is an example. People are symptoms of something underneath, something underlying in the relationship. So talk about your feelings with your partner. Discuss what that underlying issue might be. For example, you don’t feel like you’re getting enough attention during playtime, and that’s what’s inspiring those feelings. So it’s not really that you’re jealous. It’s that you feel a little bit out of touch with what’s going on in the playtime. What if it’s not an “issue”? What if it’s just something you grew up with that’s part of your upbringing and you have a concept about that is “wrong” because you never really had to address that before?

Who grows up being OK with sharing their husband or their wife?

Not as many people. Not as many people. More so in Europe, less over here. And actually, it’s become more prevalent here, but generally, no. And so you’ve got this social programming that you may need to unprogram for yourself. One of the ways you can do that is work with a sex therapist or read some books about expanding your personal growth and figure out ways that you can cope with those things or work through those issues.

Another thing that can happen in the lifestyle is changing of your desires or your boundaries.

Because as you know, we change over time. We’re people. We’re not static. This could be solved with regular check-ins with one another. How are you doing? Do you still like this? Are you still into this?

Even now, I still check in with you. All the time. Even though we have an agreement on something, sometimes I get nervous about a particular situation or engagement that we’re going to enter into. And I always just– sometimes I need that additional reassurance, and I’ll check in with Ed. Work with each other to be comfortable discussing your feelings.

And work with your partner to understand what direction your lifestyle needs to move toward.

Maybe you started off with three sums, and you want to go to four sums. Maybe it’s vice versa.

Maybe you’re interested in BDSM. We’re starting to kind of cross over into that realm a little bit more. So now we are engaged in different types of conversations and more conversations along that path.

Maybe you decided you want to be a hot wife, or you want your wife to be a hot wife, right? That’s a completely different type of dynamic. Oh, yeah. And how you communicate that. That also means adjusting your profile and how you sell that to other people, right? Because what if they know you as the couple that they always fuck every time you’re at the party? And recently you decided, you know– Not so much into that. We’re not doing that anymore. Well, you have to have language on how to update people when you see them next. Right. And maybe you want to go poly. So all of these things are changes of desires and boundaries, which takes communication and checking in with your partner.

Endless hunting and chatting– Gets exhausting. Oh, my god. Spending too much time online browsing profiles and dealing with certain websites–

SLS, Cassidy, SDC. It gets so old after a while.

Get out in the real world. Talk to real people. Find real couples. Make those connections with them. And then make a date and go out. So don’t spend all your time online. Don’t spend so much time in the virtual chatting and sending pictures to people. Actually go and maybe give them a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Right. Could be a club. It could be a party. But get out. Like, go outside. You’ll feel better. And you get a change of scenery instead of staring at your screen the whole time. Right. Now, those websites, those sites, those adult sites, SLS, Cassidy, SDC, very valuable for finding those individuals making dates. But they’re also really great for finding those events and parties. So please use those sites to your best advantage. Right. Reach out and touch a friend. [LAUGHS] Reach out and touch someone.

Flanky people. Oh my gosh. Such a buzzkill.

We honestly, we haven’t run into too many of those. And so I think we’re fortunate. They’re hard to get a date set up.

You get frustrated because you have to start all over. They ghost you. They don’t– do I say they don’t show up? They don’t show up. Decide if they’re worth rescheduling or not. Right. Maybe not. Use events to go to as kind of a built-in fail safe. So if you want to meet them, say, hey, let’s meet up at this Halloween event. We’ll have a good time. We’ll give you our room number when we get there. That way, if they never show up– You’ve got a whole audience of other people who you can connect with and be social with. Same with meet and greets, any kinds of events like that. You can also have backup dates and times just in case something falls through. Everybody has conflicts. It’s not just people being flaky. Sometimes real things happen.

See item one, vanilla life, getting in the way. So having a second, third, fourth weekend that you can propose, you can kind of get that kick started again and everybody can show up and be. And your backup date doesn’t necessarily need to be another swinger. It could be your significant other. Now it’s turned into a vanilla date, which is equally as special for you both. And you go see a movie or you go do something else instead because that date didn’t show up. Right, the other form of backup date. Yeah.

And most importantly, network with other swingers. You can find your group of people, which will tend to weed out flaky people. Groups that get along well will tend to respect each other a little bit more and probably know each other’s schedule. Plus you have a built-in social network. So if one person’s not available, one couple’s not available, then there’s other couples in your immediate group and you can just have a different date. Right. The other sucky thing about the lifestyle is the expense. Holy cow. It is very expensive. It can be, yeah. Costumes, house party fees, alcohol, and then if you want to go to a resort, the resort cost itself, $3,000 or $4,000 on the cheap side, and then you add your airfarer depending on where you’re flying from, that could be another couple thousand.

Not to mention, a lot of people play outside of their community and so they have to drive, which means that there’s typically a hotel involved and the expenses go up. Yes, yes. You could do cheaper dates. You could invite somebody over if you feel comfortable having them over to your house for snacks and drinks.

You can also set aside a budgeted amount for your events and social engagement. So maybe you only get to do one party every other month. That’s okay.

You’re living within your means. You don’t feel like the lifestyle is going to drag you down. If you go all in and you’re at parties every weekend, A, you might burn out and B, you will burn through your cash.

So pick those events that you really want to go to so you don’t overspend. This is a fun one, not disrespectful behavior from others. You’ve run into people before at an event or a party and they’re just rude. There’s something about them that just sets you off and you don’t like it. You don’t like that behavior. One of the other downsides in the lifestyle is disrespectful behavior from other people, especially in the playroom.

One of the ways to prevent this is to have some kind of a preventative agreement, a consent agreement about stopping play and that that’s okay with both parties. If you hit a situation where you don’t like what’s going on, you can say, “Time out. We got to go.”

And just leave. And even if you don’t have an agreement, it’s still okay to say, “We’re out.” Yes. And if you’re not aware of that, you always have the right to say no. Yes. Always say something when boundaries are crossed. If you’ve agreed upon something and they cross that boundary, stop the play, correct the behavior, do it politely.

And if they can’t handle that, if they can’t be respectful, move on. Yeah. We had someone, I’m not sure exactly where this was, but we had a couple that we were playing with and his wife got uncomfortable and he called it. He said, “She’s not feeling it right now.

We need to take a break. We need to step out.” Right. He was gracious. He wasn’t rude at all. He was direct. And we were like, “Oh, sure. Yeah, no problem.” And they picked up their things, got dressed and they left. I didn’t feel offended at all. I just assumed maybe something came up during play, which it can. And they graciously left and went to go take care of their business somewhere else.

I applaud them for doing that because they needed to do what they needed to do to preserve their connection, right, their relationship. To be clear, we were not being disrespectful. This was just a situation where they started feeling uneasy about how the play was going or something triggered her in terms of her emotional feelings. Yes, that was what I picked up on.

The other example I have is when we first started playing.

We had met somebody over at their apartment and we told them upfront, “I get overwhelmed very easily. There’s a lot of stimulation for me to take in.” During this interaction, this interaction, first of all, is new and we’re very excited to do full swap, which we agreed to do that with them.

But during this engagement, I may need to stop and take a break. And I’m gonna let you know that by saying, “I need to take a beat. I need to be with Ed for a little bit.” They were very respectful and said, “Oh yeah, yeah, no problem.” And so when I did that, they were like, “Oh, sure.” We stopped, we took a break.

One time I needed to just be with you in your arms, in your embrace, with your kisses all over me. And then I was good. It was like this reassurance that I needed. And then we were all back at it, all four of us. But no one was offended if we were to call the night because it could have gone that way too. We could have just said, “Oh, we’re good. We’re out.” – Right, right. – And they were okay with that too. And you have to be open with that possibility that that could happen, especially in the beginning. Single males often get a bad rap. There are lots of respectful single males, but there are some that are having some issues.

First, find some clubs or parties that vet their singles. And this goes for the ladies too. Let’s not just pick on the men. There are single ladies, unicorns, who, as we’ve seen, can’t handle their alcohol and get a little in over their heads or get into some strange possessive behavior. So talk to your event coordinator, find out how they vet their singles, and look at the list. You may know them. And if you’re familiar with who they are and you’re comfortable with them, that will help a little bit with that. If you see inappropriate behavior, talk to the host, whether it’s a club, an event, a house party, even just a couple friends over that happen to have a single there, talk to the host and let them know because they want to know because they want to protect the rest of the guests that are there.

Correct. By the way, this is number 10, but we have a bonus. – There’s another downside, which is partners who are overly aggressive. So you’ve had your boundaries set aside. You’ve talked about them, but your partner decides that he’s just going to bang away. – Not you, my partner, but my partner. – The other partner. – First off, just like with the overly aggressive or the rude behavior, set your boundaries upfront and be clear with them. And until you play with a couple, play near your partner, have that backup and have the ability to tap out and have your partner be aware. If you’re in separate parts of the house, there’s no way they can see.

So if this is the first time playing with somebody, be near each other. And if your play partner does something that you don’t like, this is your new play partner, tell them that you don’t like it. And if they can’t follow directions, once again, move on. – We’re done. The bonus is it’s just not fun anymore. Occasionally, this can happen with a couple. They dive in too hot, they go all in, (imitates explosion) and they kind of burn out. They don’t have time to process their emotions. So you may want to occasionally reassess this with your partner, check in. Why are you doing it?

– Right, right. – What are you getting out of it? Take a break for a little while. It’s a lot to process. For some people, it’s different. For some people, they need a lot of time to work through things that might come up during this adventure together. Maybe it’s a matter of just finding which events you like the most. Maybe focus on those. Maybe you really like doing a vacation away every year to Jamaica or to Mexico, just the two of you, and that’s your thing. Local events are not your thing. And house parties are not your thing. And maybe these vacations are.

– One of the other things, if you consider this whole list of things, it’s quite possible that you have a lot of these things going on all at the same time, which could be absolutely overwhelming. It may just not be the right time to be into the lifestyle. – Correct. – Maybe you do need to take that break to let the vanilla stuff, all of this stuff that we’ve been talking about, simmer down a little bit, maybe get some stuff off your plate and then come back into it. It’s hard juggling two different lifestyles. – Yeah, I mean, and they are. They really are two different lifestyles. – Absolutely.

You’re not always going to have an amazing experience, but the key is learning how to recover from them and how to improve on your next experience together. Be sure to join our Patreon community for the behind the scenes stories and extra sexy content. – You can also leave us a voicemail at 916-538-0482, or contact us at swingertuniversity.com. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep it sexy. (upbeat music)