I am not a doctor and I am not a swing lifestyle expert. This article, the dictionary and swing lifestyle site review are based on personal observations and research on the topic. Most research is based on confidential conversations with participating couples, plus some internet research. The swinging lifestyle is not for everyone, but for some it can be an enjoyable experience. The Lifestyle, as it is called, is for people who are mature and in strong relationships that are secure enough to be open to the experience.
The stigma on swinging is that it is a male dominated and driven lifestyle. After all men are more controlled by their natural sexual urges. There may be some truth to that, but mostly the women are in charge. The women set the boundaries, even if they play a submissive role in the more extreme activities.
Swing Lifestyle Benefits
The swing lifestyle is only for mature, secure couples and singles
Couples often join the swing lifestyle because they are looking to spice things up in their sex life. For secure and mature enough couples, there are emotional and physical benefits to the lifestyle. “Secure” and “Mature” are important; we’ll expand on these throughout the article.
These are just a few examples; I’d love to hear about the benefits you have experienced from swinging.
Stress Reduction
All told, sex is a fantastic stress release. Masturbation works well, but it seems to not be as effective as experiencing sexual satisfaction with a partner. Try tickling yourself – does it work? Usually not, or not nearly as effective. In the lifestyle, swing sexual experiences are not usually a one and done. Very frequently, swinging allows for multiple releases during the experience. There is a lot of opportunity to relieve a lot of stress in just one trip.
Reducing stress helps to promote better heart health and mental health.123
Prostate Health
According to resources, like American Medical Association4 and American Urological Association5, frequent ejaculation may have an effect to reducing the chances of prostate cancer.
Life and Sexual Experience
There has been much debate over the reality of monogamy and whether it is the best choice for relationships. Biologically speaking, monogamy goes against the nature of humanity and other animals. That’s right – we are animals; mammals to be more specific. Proliferation of the species drives sexuality, human society imposes morals in an attempt to curb sexuality. Ultimately, we are sexual creatures and the friction between biological needs and society rules tends to cause the turmoil that frequently results in infidelity and divorce.
Mature and secure couples have reported that their relationship is stronger since starting in the swing lifestyle. Not only that, but they have learned other techniques of satisfying their partner that provide more variety in their sex life.
Communication is the key to success.
Consensual multi-partner sexual activities may help relationships grow. Typically a lifestyle couple is more open-minded and are able to communicate with each other. I’ve always said “Communication is the key to success” – I firmly believe in this mantra and the swing lifestyle (and marriage in general) supports how important communication is to life success.
Numerous web-sites in the lifestyle have indicated that divorce for swinging couples is significantly lower than monogamous couples. There does not appear to be any scientific data to support this and statistics are not freely available.
Arguments Against Swinging
It wouldn’t be fair to list some benefits without providing information about the bad stuff, too.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) is a real concern in life. Safe practices are essential to protecting people in the lifestyle. Condoms are the first barrier to protecting from STDs, but they are not 100% effective. It is important to be checked for diseases; frequency of testing depends on how active the participant is in swinging sexual activities.
Relationship Troubles
The swing lifestyle has been known to strengthen a couple’s relationship, however it can also do the opposite. If there are problems in the relationship, or the couple simply isn’t secure or mature enough to handle participation, swinging can be disastrous. Soft swing or voyeurism can help spice up the relationship without necessarily stirring up as many insecurity issues.
Embarrassing Situations
Passing gas during oral play or Aunt Flo visiting unexpectedly happens. It’s part of life; move on.
Swinging couples are often concerned about the “Vanilla” community finding out about their lifestyle. It isn’t very likely that people who are not in the lifestyle are going to find you on a lifestyle web-site. It’s easy to reduce the chance of discovery – Make sure to not use the same pictures from your social media profiles and don’t use your real names in your lifestyle profile name or description. (Be sure to use your real names when establishing relationships, though.) Some sites offer privacy features that include preventing searching engines from indexing your profile, or keep your profile invisible to people that are not registered.
Decide the Level of Lifestyle
Whether entering the game as a single or a couple, the same decision needs to be made. How do you want to participate in the swing lifestyle?
Watch (Voyeurism)
Some people just like to watch others having sex. Kind of like watching a live action porn flick. While sometimes they like to be watched. They find a certain thrill in the experience to be watched, and may even venture into public areas for sexual relations.
It isn’t uncommon for these folks to eventually move into a different level of the lifestyle, but some stay right here.
Soft Swap
Soft swapping in the swing lifestyle varies by definition, but usually incorporates watching and mutual swap foreplay, manual stimulation with toys and by hand, and often oral sex. Intercourse is not part of the “soft swap” lifestyle.
Full Swap
The most common formula in the life style is “full swap”. From rubbing to full penetration, full swap has very few boundaries. In the same room is most common, but some swapped partners will going into separate rooms for the sex play.
I once had a couple tell me that they swap into separate rooms, then later when they are home, they’ll talk about the experience. In the conversation, they get excited and have more sex together.
Another couple told me that he was never able to get his wife to orgasm from oral sex. Over 20 years of trying, with no success. In a same room swap, another woman had gotten his wife to orgasm orally. He watched as it was done and he had a conversation with both women afterward. He gained enough information to succeed. Now oral sex is a big part of their sexual relationship together and with others.
Define Preferences
This section and the previous section delve into the information you use to help find others in the lifestyle. Honesty and openness are important to success in this adventure.
Relationship
What kind of relationship is wanted? Are you looking for just sex, sex and more sex – or are you looking for friendship with sexual benefits (FWB)?
In the swing lifestyle, most single men and few single women are just looking for sexual opportunity – notches on the bedpost, if you will. This is ideal for couples looking to have that fantasy threesome experience. Some couples do not want full swap or orgies, they just want an additional playmate; sometimes the playmate is up to oral only.
Friends with benefits are those that have a friendship outside the lifestyle, doing various things together, while having sexual relations also. Several of the couples interviewed wanted this type of relationship, but sometimes settle for bedpost notches for the fun of it.
Sexual Behavior
Each partner needs to decide whether they want to expose any bisexual tendencies in the lifestyle or keep everything on the straight and narrow.
It is not uncommon for the female parties to be bisexual, or at least willing to play as bisexual for the arousal of their partner. The latter falls closer to the bi-curious category, however true bi-curious is someone who is interested in trying same gender sex for the new experience or they are attracted to same-sex as well.
Homophobic men in the lifestyle often will not participate with a couple where the male partner is bi or bi-curious. Some guys play-off being bi-curious, but are only willing to receive oral sex from another man – they are not willing to return the behavior or allow anal play. Those guys aren’t bi-curious, their simply self-centered or desperate enough to accept sexual relief from anyone willing to provide it.
Prospective Partners
Be realistic and honest – what kind of partners do you want in the swing lifestyle? I’m not talking about the relationship status mentioned above. I’m discussing the kind of people you want to meet.
Appearance
Attraction is often important in lifestyle relations. It is natural. If you’re not attracted to a person, you might not be able to get sexually aroused, which means little chance of success. Be open-minded and you must be realistic!
Do you like tattoos or beards, clean-shaven or messy hair, small or large body features, chiselled muscles or soft cushioning? All things to consider. I am personally partial to petite brunettes with medium-sized breasts and gentle curves. (for example).
Social Behaviors
Smoking, drinking and recreational drugs are social behaviors that can impact a lifestyle relationship.
If you smoke, then a smoker probably is fine; but if you don’t smoke then you might not enjoy the company of a heavy smoker. Maybe the smell of smoke on a prospect signifies a bad boy/girl and turns you on. Or you simply may not care.
Alcoholic beverages are often consumed in the lifestyle. It is typically just a social behavior to help with relaxing away the day’s stresses, but is sometimes used as a tool to lower inhibitions.
“420 friendly” is a common term for people who are okay with marijuana use. Consider if you wish to be around or involved with that and other recreational drugs.
Distance
How far are you willing to traveling to meet with others? It is funny the number of single males willing to drive long distances for a chance to play with couples. As I put it to my wife, “Men will do whatever it takes to get some tail.”
Events tend to happen frequently in big cities like New York and Philadelphia. Persons deep in the suburbs or rural areas will need to drive long distances to visit a club or event.
Expanding your distance radius improves the chances of finding compatible persons for lifestyle play. Keeping it too local reduces success. Some couples do not look locally in fear of their secret lifestyle practice being exposed.
Where to Meet
There are clubs and private parties around the world, with plenty of web-sites to help you find them. Most of the sites out there offer free memberships, but limit communication and search tools. They do this to entice people to pay for memberships.
SLS seems to be the best site for finding events and people in the swing lifestyle. Their paid membership is more reasonably priced than some of the other sites. They even offer a “lifetime” membership.
The key thing with paying for your membership is that serious people in the lifestyle tend to ignore the free members. Mainly because the free members tend to be scammers – picture collectors and game players. If you seriously want to participate in the lifestyle, pay for your membership at SLS.
Not quite as big as SLS, but a bit more expensive is Swingers Date Club (SDC). SDC provides channels for online voyeurism and travel notifications. Other sites include RockTie, Fab Swingers, Passion and Love Voodoo. Fab Swingers is an easier to use web-site. The most modern site, that actually uses html5 code is SwingTowns, Swing Social, and also Quiver. RockTie is gaining in popularity, but the site design has some growing up to do. TrueNudists and TrueSwingers are related, not very popular and the jury is still out on them.
Avoid SwingSeekers – the site is expensive and send bogus communications; likely to trick people into subscribing – You can only reply if you are a paid member. We got a message from ourselves. Apparently we have shown interest in ourselves.
As we have dabbled further into the market, we have found a lot of web-sites and I’ve written an evaluation of the ones that we have tested.
Complete Your Lifestyle Profile
Other than sticking with a free account, the largest mistake people make with their lifestyle profile is not completing it. Providing honest and complete information on your profile improves the chances of being able to meet other like-minded folks.
Include pictures
Be honest and use real pictures.
Upload clear ‘G-rated’ pictures to your public profile – including your face(s). Profiles without any pictures or pictures with no faces are typically ignored, especially if it is a free profile. Yeah, that will rear its ugly head a few times in this article.
Most lifestyle websites have private sections, sometimes called “Privates”. This is where you post you ‘R-rated’ and sometimes ‘X-rated’ pictures. Be sure to check the site’s rules on the types of pictures allowed. SLS allows the ‘X-rated’ stuff in the “Personal” galleries only, while SDC allows certain X-rated stuff in open galleries.
Proofread
After completing your profile, make sure to read it and correct any grammar and spelling errors. Consider if you would contact someone with the content you put on the profile. If there is anything that you do not like, then otherwise compatible people probably will not like it either. Most people who are serious about the swinging lifestyle will ignore short profiles and profiles with poor grammar and spelling.
Review and Update Your Profile
Many sites provide details of who has viewed your profile. With this information you can learn what is wrong with your profile. Review the people who have looked at your profile, do you think they are a match? Read their profile carefully and check on their preferences, then compare it all to yours.
Take this opportunity to tweak your profile to help draw attention, but remember to not change it into something which you are not. Always be honest, but with caution.
Communicate with Candidates
Browse profiles of people in the areas that you are willing to travel. Most lifestyle websites have search tools that allow you to specify distance from you and other preferences for searching profiles.
Send a Message
When you find people who meet your interests, send them a personalized message through the site and introduce yourselves. Avoid using the canned messages that some sites provide. Be mindful of the content within their profile as you write a message to them. If they’re profile is politely written, be polite and respectful in your message. If they’re profile is more graphic and perhaps entertaining, then artistic license is available for your response – but always be respectful.
Fab Swingers, Quiver and Love Voodoo offer a like-type function which allows a simple “hello cutey” exchange without spending the time to type out a greeting message. Fab Swingers also has a like feature that lets you “Fab” someone’s photograph. These simple introduction tools help break the ice.
Respond to Messages
Other people will find you and send messages. Review each one carefully and respond accordingly, even if you are not interested. A polite let down is better than ignoring them.
Next Level Communication
After a couple of messages you might find that you would like to communicate outside the website, through Instant Messenger (IM) or E-mail, but you’re not quite ready to give up your phone number yet. There are numerous free e-mail providers available, such as Yahoo and Gmail. Setup an account for use in the lifestyle and share that when you are ready for next level communications. Then it will be easier to share pictures and graphic stories, if you wish.
KIK is an “anonymous” instant messenger, including picture sending, that can be installed on your mobile phone and does not require a phone number or other verification form to use. Just use a free e-mail account to register and stay relatively anonymous. Just be careful … anyone that has your phone number and also uses KIK can automatically find you.
Meet with Prospects
It is all looking good and it is time to meet face to face. Arrange a meetup in a public location, like a local bar or restaurant. Sometimes it works out to meet at a local lifestyle event. Don’t forget to exchange mobile numbers if you’re not using KIK – it makes meetup communication easier, like “We’re running late” or “We got a table in the back corner.”
Dress nice and be well-groomed. If you are willing to go play on the first date, then make sure your fully prepared for the events which may occur. Dress up your “play” clothes and lingerie with embroidered naughtiness from Adult Embroidery.
Mind your manners and be well spoken. Vulgarity and crude behavior are often not tolerated – at least not until you reach the bedroom. There is a large array of personalities and types of people in the lifestyle from red necks to snobs, pardon the expressions, and everything in between.
Sometimes people don’t have the chemistry to move beyond the first meet. It can be disappointing, but it isn’t the end of the world. There are plenty of others out there that you may have the chemistry to move the relationship further. If you are having trouble finding it, then you should evaluate your goals and profile to ensure utmost honesty is present and make sure you are not looking for a unicorn.6
The After Party
The game is on and clothes are coming off. Things are looking good, but you aren’t free and clear yet.
First and foremost – Always be respectful. “No” means “No.”
All parties need to be upfront about the rules of play. Be clear about use of condoms and activities that are off-limits. If more extreme play is planned, make sure everyone knows the safe word(s).
The rest is up to you. Have fun!
Swing Lifestyle Summary
Basic line items for your success in the swing lifestyle.
- Decide how you will participate in the lifestyle.
- Define your preferences, including sexual behaviors and relationship type.
- Join a reputable lifestyle website, like SLS and be sure to complete your profile.
- Communicate with prospective singles and couples through the site at first, then progress to Instant Messenger or Email.
- Arrange a meeting in a public place, exchange mobile numbers.
- Stay Safe and Have Fun!
Frequently Asked Questions about the Swing Lifestyle
Why are people looking at my profile, but not communicating with me?
First impressions are important. Consider the content in your profile. Incomplete sentences, using letters and numbers instead of words, vulgarity, and numerous spelling and grammatical errors will turn off prospective swingers. Short answers and blatant demands or claims will steer people away, too.
Do I really have to pay for membership?
I have two answers for that question –
Websites are not free. The costs of the owning the domain and reliable hosting alone can cost a large amount of money for popular sites. The cost of developing and maintaining the site can be high as well. Please consider paying for your membership.
Picture collectors, spammers and other malicious characters are usually run from free members on these sites. As a result, it is not uncommon for free members to be ignored – especially if they don’t have valid pictures and quality content in their profile. Consider paying for your membership, several sites have reasonable prices, some our priced high. Check my report on swing lifestyle sites for what we found.
I need to be discreet. How can I do this and have face pictures on my profile?
Each person has their own preferences for appearance and sexuality. Pictures are needed to ensure, before wasting anybody’s time, that physical compatibility exists. Besides – when it comes to meeting, how will you know each other if there are no pictures?
If absolute discretion is necessary for your comfort or situation, then hide the face pictures in private photo areas which you control access. Have faceless pictures for public view and don’t forget to hide distinguishable marks like tattoos.
Why do so many people discourage single men?
Unfortunately, a lot of single guys are in the lifestyle just to get laid – and that’s it. Yes, the lifestyle is about having sex with other people for fun, but most swingers are in it for friendship as well – or at minimum, mutual satisfaction. The stereo-typical self-centered guy looking to get off and run is largely frowned upon. Those guys have ruined it for the good single guys that are actually interested in satisfying their partners as well.
Our Favorite Toys
The Magic Wand is a powerful Cordless wand. It rivals some of the corded wands that we have used.
The French Connection reminds us of the Kerbangers we played with as kids, but for adults. Each end is a powerful, individually controlled vibrator. This toy can be used for double penetration, external teasing, or both.
The Flip Zero V is a masturbation sleeve with two vibrators strategically positioned for his maximum pleasure.
Here’s hoping that you have fun!
- Harvard University
- American Heart Association
- National Institute of Mental Health
- The Journal of American Medical Association, 6 April 2004.
- Medscape Medical News, 15 May 2015.
- Unicorn is a common term for single females in the lifestyle, but in this case I just mean any mythical relationship or person.