A friend and work colleague of mine was married for years and considered both her and her husband swingers, though my understanding was that she was doing most (or all) of the swinging. The local swingers mostly knew each other through some online group, but I guess they had a bar for awhile that catered to them (it was a otherwise gay bar, though these were straight couples). They were nice people; I’d hang out with them sometimes, though I’m not much of a bar person. It was something that she was terrified to get out, mostly because of work implications, I guess.
It was a surprisingly large group of people, from everything I observed, considering the size of the area (Des Moines). They’d have some big get-togethers; it wasn’t all online. Naked camping weekends, that sort of thing.
Technically only once, my girlfriend and I went over to my best friends apartment for some quality drinking time. I think we started playing quarters but it evolved into strip poker. He had a girlfriend who was also there.
It didn’t take long for us to all be bare assed sitting around the kitchen table. It was funny watching the girls trying to cover up and deal cards at the same time.
My friend innocently asks us what we should play for now? Sly bastard. The stakes were that the winner had the choice of who to have sex with for one hour there in the apartment, male or female.
I knew if he won he wouldn’t choose me and if I won I wouldn’t choose him, so that left the girlfriends factor. His girlfriend and I were pretty good friends and had hinted that she would be open to female on female sex. My girlfriend was fairly open minded about sex as well.
Hmmm… this should be interesting. He was and still is a better poker player than me, in other words I just set myself up for potentially setting myself up for having to listen to him and my girlfriend moaning in the bedroom for an hour.
Yep, you know what happens. He won and chose my girlfriend with a large grin on his face, bastard ;).
His girlfriend and I sat on the couch with the TV turned up really loud.
It all turned out well and we still are good friends to this day, 25 years later. And I did end up having sex with his girlfriend turned wife about 8 years later with his permission but that is another thread.
Sure. I’ve had girlfriends I’ve shared and I’ve been shared myself. In the context of an open relationship, that is. The examples you give, by contrast, reek of pimping your SO out, which is pretty disrespectful of their own decision-making process. I can’t really imagine a scenario where I’d actually tell my SO to have sex with one of my friends, or wager his/her body. That’s fucked up. That implies that s/he is my property and I can sling him/her out like s/he was a bag of pot. Of course, I guess I could suggest it, but I’m not that free of jealousy that I would actually do that. I’m OK with an SO messing around with other people, but I’d rather not know them too well or know much about what they do.
But a lot of people have open relationships, and not all of those people are swingers or go to swingers’ clubs. For example, I’ve participated in a handful of open relationships and known a number of other people in open relationships (including marriages), all in San Diego, yet there’s only one swingers’ club in the area and it’s only open one night a week–and I’ve never heard anything about it except on Craigslist. Therefore, most open couples probably have little or nothing to do with swingers’ clubs, and I suspect most of them also don’t swap; they’re just OK with all parties involved seeking sex outside of the couple. That’s as close as it gets to the question in your OP without getting, IMO, creepy. Of course, different strokes and all that.