Most of my adult live have been spent questioning my motives with nearly every female that I befriend. Why is this? Well, I was conditioned, as most of us are, to believe that interests based on sexual attraction, physical attraction, even emotional attraction are plain wrong beyond your significant other/spouse/the ONE. This conditioning is everywhere, soaking through our pores, coloring everything we think and do like a box of Rit dye. For most people, this dye goes unnoticed, and your feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions reflect mostly what you want for yourself, but there's a significant chunk there that is subterfuge. Because when this dye seeps deep enough, we think that we're doing these things we want, we're demonizing those thoughts that go against the "want" so much so that we begin to punish ourselves for stray thought.

Here’s the big question…is it possible that jealousy is a choice?

I very rarely get jealous. When I do, it’s not for reasons that most of America gets jealous. I’ve watched my wife with another man. Sexually. And flirting, conversation, these personal intimate moments that would drive most people crazy. But for me there’s very little.

When we first started swinging, the first time I saw her with someone else, it struck me how not jealous I was. That concerned me for a tic. Why aren’t I jealous? What’s wrong with this situation? (Luckily I didn’t dwell on this long, as a certain beautiful curly haired girl was vying for my attention…) It came back to me later, as I sat in the aftermath, thinking about the evening, our first evening in a brave new world. This question, why wasn’t I jealous, and what did that mean?

Why does it have to mean anything? My lack of jealousy was not a commentary on my relationship and the quality inherent (or lack thereof) in it. It just was. Then, a month after we joined the lifestyle, at a party, Marilyn got all sorts of attention and I got none. The jealousy came in waves. Sweet blind rage jealousy. The “get your stuff, we’re leaving” kind. The silent treatment in the car kind. Oh yes, jealousy, there you were. I wasn’t broken. I did have feelings, I did care, clearly. But, aha, this jealousy wasn’t about that, it was petty, childish…this was because Cooper didn’t have fun, and Marilyn did.

So I thought about that a good deal. What she did. Who she was with. Neither of these things bothered me. In the least. So this was the night I began to realize how high my trust level with her was. I began to realize that trust is like an antidote. Trust and confidence. As I began to become more confident in myself, my sexual abilities, my emotional availability. I began to be less and less concerned about these things that might “make one jealous.”

Since then, I really haven’t felt it. The jealousy. An occasional pang here and there perhaps. Marilyn and I do things that many swingers don’t, as well. We’ve gone on separate dates with friends. We have no issue with separate rooms. We have a comfort level that I still marvel at and am impressed with myself. This isn’t about bragging here, it’s because I really have come to believe that jealousy can be moderated, muted. It’s not about repression either.

I’m not suggesting that if you feel jealous you should bury that deep down inside, or grin and bare it. That would be like packing down the black powder. It may be more compact and less noticeable, but eventually that spark’s gonna set it off. (May not be a thing…don’t know anything about black powder ‘cept what they’ve done on Mythbusters.) What I think you can do, though, is when feeling that pang of jealousy, recognize that’s what it is. Once you do that, you can analyze it. That’s the hard part, of course. Pulling the handbrake on that surge of emotion and saying “what the fuck?” But that’s where it really is. It’s the exercise burn. You gotta get there to move beyond.

Because once it’s recognized, and you look deep down at it…well, I realized it was just leftover from high school and being left out. And that’s silly, isn’t it? I mean it’s a real emotion, and it’s something I felt, but I didn’t have to allow it. I didn’t have to go with it. At the last minute, instead, I made a sharp left turn and used that moment as a springboard for a discussion of our rules as a couple, something that was patently necessary. But the best thing about this recognition moment, is that you can decide what to do with it.

I know! It’s a rough suggestion. Jealousy is, like anger, an overwhelming emotion, one that sets up shop in the center of your brain and says: “Fuck it, I’m in charge!” But just as anger management can help you control anger, and as most of us have learned to control ours over the years, jealousy can also be controlled. Because, like anger, jealousy is based in fear. The difference is that, while we’ve been taught to control our anger, you know, take a breath, count to 10, we’ve been encouraged to nurture our jealousy.

It’s what TV shows are about. It’s what mainstream America wants us thinking about, building in our minds. Jealousy of gadgets, money, the sex we can’t have with the people we’re not with. Jealousy isn’t just encouraged, it’s the fucking American Way! The tide can be turned, however, the change can be made. I’ve seen it.

Jealousy is like fire, the less oxygen it gets, the smaller and smaller it gets, until it’s nothing more than a wick. And unlike those other emotions we’ve been taught to repress, killing the spark of jealousy won’t make us dead inside. It’s a wholly unnecessary emotion. It only causes pain. Never has someone said “Thank God I was jealous! It saved us all!” No, jealousy only becomes the beginning of the problem, or the catalyst, or the deciding factor in an issue that you clearly should sit and think on a bit, wait for calmer heads to prevail.

‘Cuz maybe, just maybe, it isn’t as bad as you thought. Maybe you were just being silly. Maybe, after all, you trust your partner completely. That she won’t run off with that guy she was flirting with at the bar, that he won’t suddenly feel that sex with you isn’t as good as sex with others. It’s trust, it’s confidence…it’s the road to compersion*.

(*Compersion – taking pleasure in those you care about having pleasure, but that’s a topic for another time)

I grew up Catholic. Which I feel is the direct through-line to who I am today: someone who’s rebelled against the inherent nature of Catholicism, but mostly against the associated guilt. When my Catholic school, in fifth grade’s laughable sex ed curriculum said “If you masturbate, you go to hell…” they lost a follower. ‘Cuz I’d just discovered this awesome thing that my body could do. So telling me that I’m going to hell for that? Fuck ‘em.

Over twenty years later, I’m confident that if a Catholic hell exists I’ll be there to meet you all. Because let me tell you, I’ve done my fare share of coveting my neighbor’s wife. Of course, I’ve also fucked my neighbor’s wife, so…I guess there’s a special level of hell reserved for me. I mean, the masturbators get turned into trees and eaten by Harpies, so…

But that’s all miscellany. This is the curious case of Cooper and Marilyn who seeme to miss the shame that a lot of swingers feel, and see the potential for growth that a lot of swingers don’t. Shame? The swingers? Do tell… It’s not shame at what we’re doing, it’s knowledge that “they” wouldn’t understand. Substitute pretty much anything you’d like for the “they.” Your employers. Your family. Your friends. Your schoolboard. So these swingers, living with the shame, hide their true nature. This is a lifestyle that is pretty much still firmly in the closet, wedged somewhere in the back behind the garment bags.

For us it’s a little different. Our shame quotient is far lower for whatever reason. We decided as soon as we realized we weren’t just dabbling, we were changing our lifestyle, that we ought to tell our friends, so they wouldn’t find out from other people, so they’d understand why we weren’t around as much, so they’d feel like we weren’t keeping secrets from them. Most of them gave us “We’re happy it’s made such a positive impact on your marriage…we don’t really need to hear details,” and left it at that. Which was fine. A few simply drifted away. Which is certainly sad, but for the first time in our lives we felt like we were whole people, like we weren’t hiding anymore. From ourselves, the world, from religion, from oppression. We knew who we were for the first time, new sexual beings in the universe, discovering what hedonism has to offer, and we liked it.

What we soon came to realize is that a lot of people don’t know that swinging still exists. For the public at large swinging conjures 1977, key parties, wife swapping, days before AIDS. The bygone artifacts of what the love generation of the 60s became when they grew up. And who’s to blame them? What indications do they really have that swinging is alive and well? The only non-monogamy ever talked about in mainstream media is the ubiquitous threesome that all guys want and all sitcom women like to tempt their men with so they can laugh about it over cosmos later. There’s only one mainstream media example and it was set in the 70s. “Swingtown,” a 19 episode series cut down because CBS wasn’t ready to be HBO. (And I highly recommend picking that one up)

So, you have a general population where an estimated 1 in 70 are swingers. (Statistic pulled out of my ass after reading a bunch of books on swingers, I believe it came from The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers by Terry Gould…but incidentally, since so many swingers deal with the shame, all statistics involving them are meaningless, so I could just invent numbers…like bajillion) Then you have a small small chunk who knows about those swingers. Then you have those who’re shocked and appalled and implore you to please think of the children! But you have a majority of the population that’s blissfully unaware.

These are the interesting folk to me. While a portion of them would slide into the shocked category, some would ask: ”Really?” I’d want to answer that question with a strong “Yes,” and a smile. A wink. A comforting squeeze on the shoulder. Something to reassure them that we do exist, that these thoughts they’ve been having about that couple they have over for drinks every once in a while aren’t evil. That there is possibility of extramarital fun without cheating.

I’m sure, should swinging be thrust suddenly into national consciousness there’d be all sorts of bible thumping and wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth talking about the sanctity of marriage. Movie stars can live crazy hedonistic lifestyles and we find it glamorous, but if the couple down the street does, well, that’s just….a dirty shame. So, they’d go on and on about how what we’re doing violates the sanctity of marriage while they’re off lying and cheating to fuck people outside their relationships.

I can’t help but think we’re better than them.

We acknowledge our imperfections, our lusts, and we share that with our partners. A study revealed that, promised they’d never get caught, 74% of men and 68% of women would have an affair. (I actually have a citation on this one… http://www.infidelityfacts.com/infidelity-statistics.html though in fairness, they don’t have a citation) That should be shocking to anyone who doesn’t already think we weren’t meant to be monogamous.

So we spread the good word. We are evangelical. That’s part of the bonus of being open with your social circle is people will come to you and ask how it works and if it might work for them. You can give them honest, open, and reasoned advice about it. The beautiful thing is when you’re no longer afraid to talk about sex, people will go out of their way to ask you, because they often have no one else. What people want to hear more than anything else are the words:

“Don’t worry. It’s okay.”

I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time going into philosophical reasons for swinging, or even anthropological ones (though there are many for both) in this forum, because what I’ve found is that people tend to invent the philosophical and anthropological reasoning as a way of validating their chosen lifestyle. Buncha hypocrites! So instead, I’m focused more on why WE swing, the WE being my wife and myself. And we got into it for all the wrong reasons (according to most websites and books,) because we got into the lifestyle to fix something in our marriage.
WOAH! I know, right? Never become a swinger unless your relationship is perfect because swinging will magnify all your problems and blah blah snore… I’m sure there is a lot of validity to that, I’m SURE of it. Swinging has magnified problems, but again as this is a Why WE Swing story and not a Why THEY Swing, or Why ONE Swings, I can assure you that for us, swinging was the answer to a question that had been nagging us since the beginning of our lives together some 10 years before. Why do we want to fuck other people?
And from the looks of our friends and loved ones, we were not alone in this thought. Look at sitcoms on TV if you need more proof. I don’t think there’s a “fat guy/cute wife” sitcom out there that hasn’t done the “why did you look at that other girl, does she have something I don’t” plotline at some point in its run. We’re dishonest though, as a society, because we want so desperately for this to make him “the bad guy.” But don’t worry, ‘cuz they laugh and love their way through it, mostly giving a resounding assurance that “I love you and don’t need anyone else, honey…” AWWWWW…
It may be true, that’s the thing. It may definitely be true that he doesn’t need anyone else, ever, for all of his life, but WE ALL LOOK. And that bothered me for many years. I agonized over why my “I want to fuck that girl” drive would so quickly kick in when I’d meet a new female friends. Or why I don’t have any female friends I DON’T want to fuck. These are things we’re not supposed to be thinking, right? RIGHT?! So we hide from ourselves and our partners. At least I did. For ten years. Pretended to not think of anyone but her.
But then it all fell apart. Because as we know entropy ensures that the center will not hold, and our feebly constructed fantasies will all come tumbling down around us in the end. Or sometimes well before the end. So one night I spilled my guts. It bothered me that I’d only been with one woman besides her, and that we got married too early, and that sex was more of a chore sometimes than it should be. I piled it on, and unfairly so, because I left Marilyn (my wife) dazed and almost unable to respond. This is why you should most assuredly talk early, talk often.
She was glad I told her. She was hurt I didn’t tell her earlier. She asked questions, was patient, and for the next month tried very hard to hide her certainty that I was going to leave her. But then, through a lot of soul searching, she realized a very similar fact about herself. She was also bothered by the fact that she’d only been with me her entire life, that we got married too early, that sex was a chore, and for the first time since our first anniversary, mentioned a vague concern she had sometimes that she might be gay.
So, rock bottom was there. We felt like roommates who loved each other and very occasionally had sex. Friends more than lovers. It was rough. Despite our friends saying that “you guys have the friendship, many marriages don’t even have that” we even got around to discussing the big D word. But that didn’t last too long. A few days later we both came to each other saying “I don’t want to get divorced, I want to fix this…” looking over our issues and coming to the conclusion that the rotting core of all our problems was this desire to fuck other people. And we BOTH wanted the same thing! So we began to discuss our options. There weren’t many. Taking a break, opening up our marriage so we can see other people, both of these came with the same rather glaring fault, the words: “Yeah, I’m married, but it’s cool, really!” And to this day I’m still not sure how THAT works. But then came the offhanded comment, almost a joke in fact: “Well, there’s always swinging…”
But the next day, that comment came back. “How would that work?” I didn’t know, exactly. My only notion of swingers was hardly modern day, the key party from Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, and that didn’t exactly go WELL. So we did a google search, and discovered the BRILLIANT site: coupledoingit.com and their 50s style video about becoming a swinger. It was all so cute, and fun, and…friendly. Suddenly this scary word SWINGING looked like something people like us did.
So we did it, pulled the trigger, joined a site, went on a date and officially became swingers. Almost a year and a half ago.
So, the crux now: why we swing?
In the time since those first tentative kisses and gropes, those nights where we needed the ice breaking games to get naked, the days terrified about what might happen if our friends found out, Marilyn and I have grown closer than ever. We talk about anything on our mind these days. I mean, nothing’s really as bad as that initial conversation. It’s no longer scary to discuss sexual needs and wants, to say things like “I want you to peg me,” and “I’d like to be whipped.” We’ve gone from the “we don’t want to be that couple who doesn’t have sex weekly” to the couple who has sex multiple times with each other, and multiple times with our other friends on a weekly basis.
Why we swing? Must you really ask? Because we’ve gotten to meet some of the most genuine and open people we’ve ever met before. We’ve surrounded ourselves with a brand new crowd that for the first time doesn’t have to be held back by society’s decorum and the sexual tension that accompanies wanting to fuck your friend’s wife. We’re on even keel, for the first time in our lives. And now even the problems seem minor.
Do we fight? Sure! Who doesn’t? Has swinging caused issues? Absolutely! The way any new life focus can cause issues that simply couldn’t have been there before without it. Is it worth it? With every fiber of my being, I say YES.
Why we swing? Because we LOVE it. Because we can’t imagine not doing it anymore. It has opened up our lives in so many wonderful ways that we can’t thank enough those who guided us through those first shaky steps. We went in looking for a simple fix, something that might ignite a flame that really was never in either of us. We found a blowtorch.
So now we try to help others. To help them understand why we swing, why they might, or might not be a good match for this lifestyle. It’s not for everybody. The risks are catastrophic. The issues too. Jealousy is a bitch if you don’t know how to manage it. And it’s true, if you have a bad relationship, it very well MAY implode. Perhaps we’re just the lucky ones.
We swing because it allows us to see the best in each other, to see why other people find them attractive, to see that people find us attractive, to constantly wrap ourselves in the warm embrace of people who understand, to quell the questioning inside us of are we normal, to feel the unbelievable highs of new relationships, and to over and over, experience the joys of unique orgasmic delight.
We swing because we can’t not do it.