It seems that changing our entire sexual outlook is going to have to mean a whole new set of friends for the wife and me.

OK, we’re not getting rid of all the old friends. Not really. Besides, we didn’t have that many to begin with. Oh, it’s not that we’re antisocial, misanthropic, or unlikable. Nor do we stink, or have any weeping sores on our faces or anything. Frankly, as many of you out there might have discovered yourselves, it’s harder to make friends as you get older. In school, there are so many people in such a concentrated space, all of similar age, that you are likely to find a pretty fair number you actually like and get along with—and with whom you share many interests. Even in the working world, if you’re in your 20s or even early 30s, you might have avoided getting loaded down with kids and the massive responsibilities that go with a full-fledged family situation—which means you can hit the taverns and join intramural sports teams and all that with more frequency than middle-aged farts like me.

With the wife and me, the problem had been moving to a whole new state about nine years ago, far from our families and friends. It’s not a particularly dense population here, so the pickings are slimmer. We don’t have any relatives out here to help watch the kiddo. And the things that interest us aren’t as readily accessible out here (plays and other arts, ethnic food, neighborhood festivals, etc.), so finding people with similar interests is even harder.

In recent years, we’ve made a few really nice acquaintances, some of whom might have real friend potential. But even so, there’s been that nagging sense that something is missing. My wife has a friend who goes way back, and even though he’s still in Chicago, half a country away, they can speak for hours on the phone. I have a few friends from college who, while I don’t communicate with them often, have always remained a strong part of my life. With these friends from way back, my wife and I share history and very key compatible traits. There is a bond there. It’s something we haven’t been able to replicate here in New England yet.

Yes, we have a couple guy friends who are life partners, and our respective little girls are thick as thieves. We like both of them (the adults, I mean…of course, we like their little girl, too), but while we get together at times, and we can have entertaining conversations, there has always been the sense that we’ve really only advanced beyond strong acquaintances to friends because of the kids. There are other folks, as well, with whom we think there might be the possibility for connections, but various parenting, scheduling, and other challenges of adulthood prevent us from finding out. And of course, there are people we really think we’d like, but the interest on the other end to get to know us better might be lacking.

Thus, we know people, but we’re not really “friend” friends. And so we remain isolated and a little lonely out here in our little corner of New England.

And then it happened. The thing that made it all even harder for a little while.

What happened? Well, it was The Big Reveal that my wife made several months ago about what she needed in our marriage. The Big Reveal that led to The Big Talk about opening up our sexual relationship to other people. The Big Talk that led to The Big Decision to actually pursue some hybrid of swinging and polyamory.

Then the idea of making friends with many of the people who might have been good candidates otherwise went out the window.

It’s not that because we’ve embraced an alternative sexual lifestyle, and my wife has discovered all sorts of kinks she likes (and additional ones that I like now and hadn’t considered before), that we think we can only befriend people who are also swingers, polyamorous and/or kinky. It’s not that at all. I love having friends of all different stripes, and so does my wife.

But when you live in a small city, (really, a big town by the standards of where I grew up, went to college, and started my career) and you don’t know what people’s sexual hangups might be, you find yourself being very protective of a new sexual approach like the one my wife and I are developing. It doesn’t fit in with the norms of the community, and there are, at most, three degrees of separation between you and anyone else in our cluster of cities/towns. Should we end up outing ourselves at the wrong time to the wrong people, my wife would likely be drummed right out of her job. We might become an object of derision as a family.

Fine, you say. Just don’t tell them. And that’s fine and dandy. But if they’re asking what you’re doing for the weekend, or trying to get together with you, and you have to lie about what your plans are because they involve scantily-clad people, stripper poles, and sex in hospitality suites in some cases…well, that’s not ideal for forming healthy relationships. Likewise, if you want to ask them to do a little babysitting exchange, and you want them to watch your kid until very late because you plan on driving an hour or more to an event that might keep you up late with kinky activities…well, they might want to know why you’re gonna be out until maybe 2 a.m. or later.

So, suddenly, we are faced with not only the challenge of how to connect with kinky and/or open relationship types (since having an open relationship isn’t much use without additional people for intimacy), but we also find our pool of “traditional” friends shrinking rapidly.

That sucked. More isolated, even as we want to get more connected with people in both sexual and non-sexual ways.

Granted, the exhilaration of discovering such wonderful sexual horizons and such unexpected kinky overlaps between my wife and I eased some of the pain as we fucked each other senseless for a few weeks. Horniness provided some initial distraction.

But eventually, you have to come out of the orgasmic haze to deal with reality, and the need to find more kinky and non-kinky friends.

We lucked out in two respects early on, even if they were minor victories. One of the few people my wife had truly befriended in our area was, as my wife puts it, “just as weird as she was, though in slightly different ways.” This friend was someone who lived her life like an open book, so when she unloaded to my wife about a lot of her kinky sexual desires and troubles getting them met by the kind of men she desired, my wife knew she could confide in her about our own lifestyles and tastes (like my smoking fetish before The Big Decision, and our open marriage after The Big Decision). So, she had at least one local person with whom to share and commiserate. We also had a more acquaintance-y kind of person (who’s developing more into a friend) whom we realized we could hire to watch our daughter so we could begin going to swinger events, munches, and the like. Given that she was a bit of a “freak” sometimes too when it came to sex, plus being a pot-smoking, hippyish un-schooling hula-hooping mom, we were able to let her know what we were up to, and she didn’t judge us. Hell, one time after she watched our girl we tipped her with a brand-new, unopened beginner strap-on, since she wanted to have one to peg her boyfriend with.

It was a start, but a small one—made somewhat smaller by the fact that neither woman was my friend (though I like them both well enough), so I found myself still short of friends with whom I could safely and openly connect, thanks to our new lifestyle. So, there were some weeks there when I really wondered if we were ever going to find people to play with, perhaps form intimate long-term relationships with, and/or add to our tiny group of friends.

This is where living in a smaller population with fewer degrees of separation turned out to be a blessing—particularly when combined with my wife’s eagle-eye, research-hungry, never-forget-a-face-or-name nature. Sure, we could have made connections faster in a bigger place like a major city, where we might have access to kinky clubs and highly active fetish communities with many members. But we found something special that we might not have been able to find in a larger place.

We discovered how many people we knew—or who we knew through others—were every bit as open-minded sexually as us, and perhaps more kinky in some cases.

It all started shortly after we joined the OK Cupid dating site, because we had heard that it was swinger/polyamory friendly (as well as free). It didn’t turn out to be a great way to meet people at all (for us, that is), but we started noticing a few people on there who lived in our area, or within a reasonable drive, who were among our shared Twitter friends online. In fact, one tweep of my wife’s saw my profile on OK Cupid, figured out it was me, and was about to hunt me down for cheating on my wife, until my wife let her know we were both on OK Cupid and were mutually cool with it. Then shortly thereafter, we joined FetLife as a way to make connections in the local kink and fetish scene, and discovered that some of the people we had found who crossed over on OK Cupid and Twitter were also at FetLife. Bonus!

And then those people, as we revealed ourselves to each other online, told us about others in our circle whom we never suspected were in open relationships, into kinky sex, or both.

What this has amounted to is that it’s quite likely in the near future we’ll actually be playing with (and perhaps making deeper connections) with people we already have gotten to know pretty well online, and in many cases are vetted by other people who know and reasonably trust.

That makes the whole crazy trip we’re on so much easier, so much more exciting, and filled with so much more potential. Looks like we’re going from “friends with impediments” to some “friends with benefits.”

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