Photo Credit: "Lovers" by Hearts
I “met” M on Facebook and he quickly became my go-to guy on swinging and group sex and anal penetration. A swinger with his ex-wife for several years, he jokes that he is known in the California sex community as AssMaster. His primer on anal intercourse is the best I’ve ever read—and very supportive and empowering of women. He brings intelligence, humor and a fresh perspective to sex talk. This week we’ve had a dialogue inspired by two posts, Monday's Ask Auntie Sue and "How many times have you been properly in love?"
M—
You posed the question if a married person can be a decent affair paramour if they were not in a stable marriage. Well, the short answer is that I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a stable marriage, but I do have some experiences to share.
In the swinging lifestyle, MOST people give LIP SERVICE to being totally horrified by the idea of "affairs" where any of the participants has a spouse/significant other that is not fully aware of and consenting to their partner’s play. Various couples define that differently: some call it “cheating” if they are all sharing a bed and their partner engages in some play in the morning before their spouse wakes up, even if they were all playing the night before. Many call it cheating if they are not in the same room. Most would call it cheating if the spouse does not know about it, or if they broke any of their "rules". (I.e., if they have a no anal rule and they have anal with a playmate, I've heard that called “cheating”. Same with breaking the condom rule.)
I won't go into details about how much the vocalization of "no cheating by swingers" differs from reality other than to note that in my personal awareness, the cheating was rampant among swingers who were getting unapproved action behind their spouses back.
SexyPrime—
Did you cheat,, M?
M—
During my marriage, I never played without my wife's knowledge, and I have no reason to believe that she played without my knowledge...BUT we each repeatedly found ourselves as the other person playing with a swinger behind their spouse's back. What I typically heard from the women I played with (and not just the one's that were cheating), is that their husband's tried to exercise entirely too much control over who they played with, including several of them that said that their husband VETOED anyone he thought they were actually really into.
SexyPrime—
You can’t swing without a partner. So what do you do now?
M—
Married women! In recent years, both in the lifestyle, and in my "vanilla" dating, I've made the odd observation that most of the women who are into me are married, including my last five significant relationships both before and since my divorce. While four of those women are still married, and two of them appear to be making renewed efforts to make their marriages work, I would not describe ANY of those marriages as stable, yet those five affairs with women in unstable marriages were five of the hottest relationships I've ever enjoyed. In particular, I've noted that a middle aged woman in an unhappy marriage will try ANYTHING sexually. They are usually both angry and bored with their sex life, and once they decide to cross the line of infidelity, they have no rules.
That last part is a lot of the attraction for ME...I still don't understand why the women that are attracted to me seem to be mostly married, but I'm good with that.
.SexyPrime—
I can see where you would be the place to go when a woman has decided to let go and try anything. How do you compare female swingers with vanilla women?
M—
As a group, swinger women are more insecure about their sexual skills than their vanilla sisters. I think the primary reason for that is that vanilla women generally have very few chances (not counting porn) to see other women having sex. Swinger women see other women squirting, or deep throating, or enjoying anal, or making their husband moan in ecstacy, and it makes them feel like they have shortcomings. Vanilla women don't see that so they have no reason to doubt their skills.
It is easy for women to discount what they see in porn, as they should...harder to discount watching a woman from six inches away who is bouncing on your husband's cock and taking the whole thing when you can’t, like the young woman who wrote to Auntie Sue this week.
SexyPrime—
Yes, when I sent you her letter and pictures for consultation, you immediately saw the pics as their kit for posting on swing sites—and said the young woman’s insecurity about her skills was normal.
M—
I thought the letter did in fact read like a youngish swinger woman who is excited about their sexual experimentation, and is feeling a bit intimidated by other women who can take all of her man's cock when she can't—a situation compounded by her insecurity over the rarity of his orgasms which I addressed in my letter to you about the rarity of my own orgasms.
SexyPrime—
But do you really think swingers have superior skills?
I don’t have your insider perspective, but I have been the voyeur/journalist at swing parties and sex clubs, but I don't recall being knocked out by the skill level of most of the people I saw, men or women.
One party at a house in a Dallas suburb was like a trip back in time—big hair, fake nails and boobs, extreme tans on both sexes. I expected the Herb Tarlek character from "WKRP" to step from behind a drape any minute. And lots of sexual posing! I am sure there were more faked orgasms in that room than in the average suburban neighborhood on any given weekend.
But, yes, I can see that it would all look different if you were a young woman watching someone else take all your husband's cock when you couldn't.
M—
I do NOT assume that swinging women are more skilled than vanilla women. ON AVERAGE, swinging women have a more varied degree of experience, and many of them seem quite insecure about their sexual skills compared to vanilla women, Many vanilla women who could really stand to read your column and take some good advice, have an inflated opinion of their sexual skills.
I've often been told that many men THINK they are very skilled, and are not. Since men are not my preferred sexual partners, I can only say that is what women tell me, and I assume it is true. I have just observed that among vanilla women, their skills and their belief in their skills has little correlation, much like what I hear about men.
SexyPrime—
Yes, I hear the same thing from men and women: S/he doesn’t know she s/he is doing in bed. Often they are the same people who spout the doctrine of soul mate/sexual spirituality love in which technique is de-emphasized. People, if you don’t have game, you can’t open that soul portal. Technique allows the emotions to connect.
Otherwise, there’s a lot of faking going on, in the name of god or otherwise.
M—
Oh don't even get me started about the posing and faking at big swing parties and clubs. And while the fake nails and missile tits get a lot of attention, the most bizarre was the mainstreaming of "stripper shoes", i.e. completely ridiculous high heels, often transparent.
I have always considered the larger parties and swing clubs to be the Lowest Common Denominator of group sex for the reasons you cited. On one occasion, at a major swing club near San Diego (that is no longer in business), I was in the orgy room (which was essentially seven mattresses side by side with a walk space at one end) and I noticed that there were 14 people fucking, and it was as 7 couples with all 7 of them doing missionary. The larger crowds tended toward the most conventional sexual expression.
Smaller groups lead to more experimentation and more serious pleasuring. The sweet spot seems to be the range of between two and six people in the room. More than that and it breaks into couples doing the simplest acts while trying not to get kicked in the head by other couples.
It bothers me that a group (theoretically) open to non-monogamous group sex can be so incredibly narrow in their sexual range...and even look down on the "freaks" who were more experimental. Many couples had elaborate sets of rules that barred them from trying anything creative with their non-spousal playmates.
I love swinging, and many of the wonderful people I’ve met among swingers, but I could never adopt the Polyanna view of swinging that so many swingers espouse. Some of the nastier aspects of swinging are very common and any couple that goes there should be aware of them, and not be blindsided by the utopian rhetoric of many self-appointed spokespeople in the lifestyle.
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