We are about to enter our third year into the lifestyle. And as much as we would love to say that it has been two years of smoothe sailing with tons of debaucherous fun, we are like most loving progressive swingers in that it is just as rocky as a monogamous relationship. Yes, I compared us to the breeders. All relationships have their ups and downs. Monogamous couples have issues, too.
I remember the dark ages when my lovely wife and I would fight over just about everything. It wasn't because we weren't compatible or didn't love each other. We are just two completely different people. I am very logical and can push "feelings" so far back that they can often be very hard to find. My wife is quite the opposisite. She is very emotional and constantly wears her heart on her sleeve. The biggest problem we had was that we truly did not know how to communicate with each other. Small things became big things which became almost life-changing things. Our sex life dwindled. Our understanding of each other was almost non-existent. For that reason we fought.
Believe it or not, though, I am glad we fought. It was the fighting that showed we had fight left. We never stopped loving each other, we stopped knowing each other. That was the piece of the puzzle that we needed to find.
I am happy to say that swinging was never an answer or even an option to help us find that puzzle piece. We happened into the lifestyle completely on accident. We had never considered finding someone new or cheating or even "swapping" partners. We just kept trudging along hoping that our relationship would just fix itself with time.
In January of 2010, I was coming up on my 40th birthday. At the time, we were room mates with an older, gay couple who were suprisingly conservative. Their room was directlty across for ours, which made us very uncomfortable to not only let go during sex, we were uncomfortable in having sex at all. That was the perfect set up to accidentally become ethically non-monogamous.
We both agreed that the living situation had really caused our sex life to dwindle and also cause additional issues with each other. In an attempt to bring the spark back to sexy time, I asked to go to a local swingers club for my birthday. I can honestly say it was completely innocent. I have always been a practical person, so I saw it as cheaper than getting a hotel room just to have sex. It was a rather inexpensive night to try the club($40, I believe) and it included a buffet. I justified it as a sexy date night where we could allow the atmosphere to turn us on and we could enjoy each other without restraint. We had not even discussed the posibility of playing with people other than possibly a single female for her enjoyment. Even that was beyond our comfort level.
I was surprised when she actually agreed to let me take her. And her reason was pretty much the same as mine. She missed being intimate with me and being able to let go enough to truly enjoy our experience. So the date was made. And we didn't fight about it. In fact, we started talking about it. We actually were communicating. We anxiously were awaiting that sexy date. The day our relationship would change.
We shared time together the week prior, going out shopping, looking for sexy outfits for our sexy date. We hadn't even gone to the club yet and we were already excited to do things together again. We were a little nervous as well, although we allowed ourselves to talk about that. We were re-discovering each other.
When the night arrived, we were even more nervous. We were so nervous that we got ready two hours early and had to go to the mall just to walk around to keep our minds busy. We almost backed out once or twice. We just kept talking and calming each other until the moment we finally walked through the door. At that instant, a switch that had been hidden so deep within our bodies, switched on. Both of us felt safe, comfortable and alive. We held hands like we meant it. We kissed like we just met. And that night, we had sex like the world was about to end.
We were not swingers. We were lovers re-defining the direction we wanted our relationship to go. We talked openly about our wants and desires and why we had been at each others throats for the last 10 years. Why those fights never meant we didn't love each other, just that we needed something different than what we had. That did not mean we wanted other people. We wanted to be who we were as individuals and finally found a way to express that. And believe it or not, we were on the same page.
Before we left the club that night, we found ourselves extending our membership to the club based soley on how we felt for each other at that very moment. We did not know what we wanted from the club. We didn't know how often we would go back. We still didn't even know if we would use it for anything more than a sexy night out with each other.
Skipping forward two years and a lot of "communication" later, we are just like monogamous couples, just having our ethically non-monogamous fun. We still have to work to survive. We still have to pay bills, shop for groceries and take out the garbage. And we still fight. It is not the lifestyle we fight about, at least for the most part. We had those fights and everyone who is new into the lifestyle will. Even veterans to non-monogamy will fight. We have the same fights that monogamous couples have.
The difference is that accidentally becoming swingers changed us for the better. Even though the last two years had it's ups and downs, we became closer. Our sex life has gone through the roof and we look forward to seeing each other every day. We talk through our problems better than we ever did in the past. We still have a ways to go for it to be perfect, although is there really such a thing as a perfect relationship? Above all, we know who we are as individuals and as a couple. And the fun we have had along the way has been epic.
After 12 years together and and 2 years in the lifestyle, this is the first time that I feel we are going in the right dirction for a healthy, life-long lasting relationship.
Happy anniversary, Baby Girl.
