Why Do Swingers Fear Of Being Outed?

Swingers rather for the most part do their extra-marital playing altogether and ensure to keep things light and fun. Depending upon whom you ask, a heterosexual open marriage could be poly or swinging or some special arrangement distinctive to the couple.
 
Whether voluntary or involuntary, we should talk about coming out as swingers. This is becoming a more regular occurrence as many people in society are reaching a more evolved understanding of sexuality. This enables some swingers to voluntarily share their private choices with certain people in their lives.

Unfortunately, it also happens because mistakes are made that can expose swingers. These mistakes could involve trusting the wrong people, or not safeguarding our information well enough. It doesn’t matter why or how it happened. What matters more is how you handle exposing your private decisions to minimize the headaches and maximize the benefits.

REASON 1: Relationships – Parents who swing

In a research paper published in ‘The Huffington Post’, a participant named Allison Weaver stated that she was six-months pregnant when she and her husband visited an orgy. It was a strange night—not as a result of the orgy, but because she declined to take part. “I was simply so tired,” recalled the 38-year-old NGO worker. “Everybody was celebrating, and I attempted to get into it, yet I just proved so unable. This was like, ‘Hello folks, if it’s all the same to you, I’m just going to rest for a moment here and shut my eyes. You guys continue, and don’t really mind my presence and worry about me.”
 
Such are the hardships of being in a non-monogamous relationship while pregnant or expecting a baby. She attended the party because of the basic rules that were chalked out by the couple before they started swinging, “Never to attend a swinging party without the other partner.” Couples in sexually open marriages today are part of an undeniably modern and well-ordered network. Not only are there now swingers’ clubs and events in every major World cities, the Internet and social media have connected and bonded various sexually adventurous couples, making it a lot simpler for like-minded individuals to locate each other secretly.
 
If you combine this with a generation of open-minded individuals, including bisexuals, transsexuals, kinksters, and polyamory, then you have a developing sexual subculture of individuals who are coming out of age. Also, what do individuals do when they have grown up? A significant number of us couple up and become parents. This, you may be astonishing to believe, yet applies equally to swingers.

So how to be successful parents who swing?

1. KEEP IT DISCREET FROM YOUR KIDS 

“It might be disturbing and frightening for little youngsters to know a lot about their parents’ sexual adventures,” Elisabeth Sheff, a former human science professor at Georgia State University said in an interview to Huffington Post. She is currently a legal and educational consultant for sexual minorities. She further stated, “In this case, the swingers can imagine themselves to be single-parents, in which the Mom or Dad might be dating different individuals, yet keeping up steady home life. If it’s just about playing behind the closed rooms, the children don’t have to know about it.” 
 
So, the kids have no part in their parents’ sexual escapades. It’s best to plan a swinging party out of home in a neutral place or when the kids are not at home. Couples might feel sexier when they visit somewhere else (a pub, a club, any other swinging place) away from the prying eyes and ears of their kids. Some couples might find it difficult to invite play partners at home because at home a mother is, after all, a mother to her kids, and a dad is a dad to his kids.   
 
While there’s no taking care of business on the kitchen floor, some swinging parents love to socialize with other swinger couples who have families. This ensures togetherness because such parents understand the logistical complications of having a family. But if some swinging couples pick up unicorns and single males for a threesome, they must beforehand discuss their family logistics before participating in any sexual escapade. Besides, who wants to know how their mother and father have sex?
 
That doesn’t mean your older kids wouldn’t pry in your private lives if they suspect something, although they also don’t want you to insult their intelligence by telling silly lies. Depending upon your relationship with your older children, you might prefer a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Other families might have a relationship where openness is prioritized. You should take some time to reflect on what is best for you and your children.

2. What if kids become aware of their parents’ swinging escapades?

In an article published in kidsheath.org, a teenage boy accepted that he was suspicious about his parents engaging in swinging activities with their close friends. Furthermore, he also confessed that his parents were unaware of his findings and that it was extremely agonizing for him to accept that his parents’ weren’t normal couples like in a committed relationship. So how to tackle these “Shit happens!” type of scenarios?
 
Parents, like any mature individuals, must talk to their kids and kids (if not always) must be bold enough to hear them! It could be the most awkward discussion for both because it’s the kid’s first sex talk. It will be quite uncomfortable for every one of you; however, you must air this out.
Imagine a scenario: Picture your kid at Pizza Hut with his Mom and Dad. Everybody is greedily gulping the new ‘Sweet Sriracha Dynamite’ pizza, when, out of nowhere, a middle-aged man and lady approach the parents and give them long, lingering embraces. Now the kid’s face is burning with embarrassment. As this flirty couple dips mozzarella sticks into the parents’ marinara sauce, the kid is stunned. He can’t stop imagining these four guys on the living room couch—doing what, precisely?— and he can’t resist the urge to believe: “Is that how my parents made me?” This is highly disturbing. 
 
As a matter of fact, there would be a lot of unbearable and unanswered questions and bogus suppositions that would accumulate for the rest of your life if you don’t work this out intelligently. This is a major issue—and a major secret for any kid to accept. The kid clearly would have a ton of inquiries, and on the off chance that he holds this in for long, this information is going to make an enormous wedge in between the family that might get almost impossible to bridge.
 
So discussing the issue with an open-mind, proceeding slowly, and being patient during this turmoil are imperative. Remember, it’s not just about the kid, it’s about the family as well. And families stick together, don’t they? The parents must be completely honest with their kids if this shit happens. Regardless of how strange our parents might be, or how stressful our relationships with them become, it’s always healthier to at least try and understand them and vice versa. The discussion shouldn’t be about judging the parents or judging a defying kid, but to discuss, understand, and acknowledge who we really are.

REASON 2: Neighborhood, Friends, and Relatives – The fear of being judged

Your private life ought to be your own, wherein to do anything you desire, however, there are pessimistic individuals on the planet who love to gossip and pass judgment on others. You may consider that your friends and companions will acknowledge, yet you can’t foresee who will or won’t get it.
 
There has been an excessive number of cases about relatives disregarding swinging members. Friendly neighbors may begin to worry that you are subtly attempting to lure and lay down with them. If you regularly attend religious services, you can expect a few glaring looks from judging people. You should hope for the best, but anticipate the worst from other people.
 
A few people may begin considering you to be a sex-obsessed crazy couple. It just takes one neighbor to state something before their children, who will at that point spread the gossip around the school. All of a sudden, your children are being irritated and tormented over your private sexual life, fantasies, and experiences. 
 
Let’s remember that some kids love to tease and bully other kids. If you publicly come out in your local community, you could be exposing your kids to some harsh times with the class bully.

So, how to approach other couples, friends, and relatives about swinging?

1. Swinging symbols

Apart from maintaining a level of discretion in this lifestyle, swinging symbols can be highly beneficial as well. Contrary to popular thoughts that there are no signs or symbols that swingers use to attract different swingers, in many cases, it appears that a few people are continually searching for a systematic approach to check out whether a friend, neighbor, or colleague is a swinger. The most popular swinger symbol is "The swing" which you can wear for example as swinger jewelry.

Besides, swinging symbols ensure that couples or unicorns familiar with this lifestyle would clearly understand the hidden message. Vanilla people or people who aren’t sexually adventurous certainly wouldn’t care if you have a swing symbol as sticker on your car or a lady wearing some sort of anklet. Besides, wearing an anklet can be fashionable too.

2. Visiting online forums, dating sites, and swinging sites:

Some people would get very awkward around a swinging couple if they are misunderstood. This might happen when you and your partner would approach a couple you find attractive. They might seem like swinging couples, but ends being vanilla. (Oops!) So, it’s best to do your homework.
 
Before gathering anybody from a site or meeting anyone, try to discover as much data as you could about them, and furnish them with sufficient information about yourselves, to avoid any untoward incident and distasteful experience (for them as well as you). Think about talking via telephone or chatting on a webcam over Skype before you meet. Online video chats before a face to face meeting is a proven method for getting rid of the fakes. Keep in mind you would prefer not to waste a Friday or Saturday night suffering someone’s company over dinner if your vibrations essentially don’t match with them. Meeting for a dinner is an incredible first ‘date’ with another couple. If you’re 100% doubtful about whether you’ll like the couple or not, then plan your first meeting at any coffee shop or any bar for a short time to get to know each other.
If you have a user profile on a swingers website, you have to ensure it exactly reflects what you resemble, your age (without extending reality excessively far), your body shape, what you need, and who you’d like to meet. The better ‘search criteria’ you apply the less time you will waste and the more closely matched profiles will be on your list. Furthermore, ensure that you upload the latest photograph of you and your partner rather than pics quite a few years back where you participated in a gym competition or your partner walked on the ramp in a bikini.
 
Many swingers are publicly “out”. You should try to talk with them first. If you can’t attend a swinger event to meet these people or find these people on the swinger community websites, don’t fret. Do some Google searches for “coming out as a swinger”. You will find there are many stories online to give you a better sense of what to expect. A common experience among these swingers is you just can’t predict how positively or negatively people will respond.

3. Ensuring honest communications with your partner/spouse, close friends, and relatives

There must be 200% trust in between the partners, openness in their minds, and being respectful to each other when it comes to swinging. This lays the foundation for this lifestyle. Just imagine the level of trust a couple needs to have when one partner boldly confesses his/her feelings, “I’m really attracted to that guy/girl, and I just can’t wait to have sex with him/her” ... and then also feel confident enough not to be slapped by the other partner.
 
Individually, share with your closest friends, so they don’t feel hurt that you hid a big secret from them. This also lets you frame the conversation and calmly explain why you aren’t a risk to their relationship. It is best to role-play these conversations beforehand and brainstorm the best and worst-case scenarios so you can prepare the right responses for each close person in your life. 
If things go wrong when you come out as a swinger, you can try to go back to secretly swinging.
 
You might need to tell all the vanilla people you are dropping out of the lifestyle and seeking relationship help. To be safe, you should temporarily remove your profiles on swinging websites in case someone gets nosy and tries to check your story. Then, you will need to make a very public show that you are living a “vanilla only” life on the weekends. After many weeks, you can restart a much more discreet swinging lifestyle.

4. Pretending to be in some extra-marital affair

Another option is to pretend it was an extramarital affair and not swinging. 
Everyone’s situation is different. You need to do what is best for you. Some couples felt they had to pretend that their spouse was cheating when they were exposed to another swinger. It’s an unfortunate truth that it can possibly be easier to pretend an extramarital affair was forgiven than admit you were exploring the world of consensual non-monogamy.

REASON 3: Religious beliefs

In the reputed magazine “The Vice”, a swinging couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, shared their horrible experience when they decided to come out as SWINGERS. “We were outcasted from our community, and it was the worst period of our lives and the most horrible experience. We were active church-going people and religious, and somebody in our church discovered about us and reported against us to the pastor. When we met the pastor, we realized it was just a formality to throw us out of the church and community. People were very judgmental—they never listened to us. And the second shockwave waited for us when our friends and families got reported against us.”
 
Sadly, this is true for almost every practiced religion in the world, and every community spread across the world. In Australia, swinging is still considered taboo and there are legal ramifications of being outed as swingers.

How to Balance Religion and Swinging?

When two married people engage in sex outside their primary relationship, that is adultery even with the knowledge and consent of their spouses. In every religious belief, adultery is by and large considered a sinful act, and the word adultery literally means ‘engaging in sex with someone other than your spouse’. So, to make the question simple, ‘Is adultery always bad?’
 
Religions typically say yes, adultery is always bad. Laws are barring both consensual and non-consensual adultery in many countries. But in the USA, twenty-two states legally consider Adultery ‘not a crime’. Even in hard-line religious and conservative countries like India, adultery is considered no longer a crime and can’t be considered a basis to seek divorce. This decision came from the Supreme Court in the year 2018 when it stroke down a 158-year-long-colonial-era law which treated females as male property.
 
As persons, you have to take and live with the decisions you make in your life. I think faith and swinging can be reconciled with true intents. Numerous couples accept that they have learned hard that there exists a huge difference between religion and faith. If you consider the Church, The Temple, The Mosque to be your religion, then its run by humans, and every human being is imperfect. People have a constitutional right to judge, but that’s people, that’s not God.
 
In the same interview published in ‘The vice’ (discussed at the beginning of this segment), Mr. and Mrs. Jones stated, “We run a podcast on swinging and our listeners know that we’re Christian. Moreover, we’ve had more than a dozen clergy people reaching out to us who supported us from the faith side. This has acted as a huge morale boost for us and like-minded Christians who are afraid to come out, to share their experiences with others, and who are struggling to reconcile their religious faiths and swinging lifestyle. We want to reach a maximum number of people and inform them that professionals, counselors, and clergy are also getting interested in the same thing.”
 
To conclude, I will like to share another interview published in therapidian.org. A spouse of straightforwardly asked Reverend Ray Lanning, a retired minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, “We’re happily married and we are concerned about our Christian faith. He follows the works of Jesus by helping the poor and destitute. He is an active member of an organization helping the needy. But we’re also in the swinging lifestyle.” And what Reverend Ray Lanning replied would certainly help numerous couples struggling to reconcile faith with this consensual adultery. “I believe you’re doing a trade-off with God. To compensate your sinful acts of swinging and adultery, as a dutiful Christian you’re helping the poor and needy. It’s not confusing to engage in such ethical tradeoffs. For example, King Herod the Great reconstructed and beautified God’s temple in Jerusalem, while he bathed in the blood of countless victims of his brutal tyranny.”

REASON 4: Work, Job, Business

You should also think about how being outed will impact your work. If you are retired, then it’s an easier decision to make, but most swingers are still working. Even if you never tell your boss, coworkers, or clients, sharing your swinging status elsewhere can get back to them. It is too easy to find out very personal details about people just by going online. It only takes one nosey person to discover your secret then gossip about you.
 
Hopefully, your boss and coworkers will accept your personal decisions and respect that they are private. But we live in the real world, and too often there is a self-righteous person who goes out of their way to cause trouble. Even if you own your company, you aren’t guaranteed to be safe. Someone could start harassing your customers to boycott your business. It just takes one person to threaten your income. It is usually very hard to legally prove that someone broke the law when they unfairly denied you a promotion, raise, or new contract and we aren’t talking about swinger contracts. We don’t want to scare you, but we do want to help you think it through and make an informed decision.

REASON 5: Legal Ramifications

Some of these situations do not allow for public honesty about our private decisions. For example, the US military forbids swinging and regularly prosecutes military personnel who engage in consensual non-monogamy. Many countries send swingers to prison.