Tuesday Talks: Open Relationships vs. Swinging

Transcript

Speaker1: This podcast is intended for adult audiences. Over the age of 18, it contains adult language and situations. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to us, and not of any employer, organization, committee, or other group or individuals. This podcast is not intended to be taken as professional advice. Welcome to the Swing Nation podcast, a podcast by swingers for swingers, where we look to educate others and push back on the negative stigmas and misconceptions associated with our lifestyle. Come with us and share our pineapple journey as we travel the globe, interview the experts, learn and grow together join the nation so lacy people are asking how do they get to go to a party or an event with us they check out swingers society.net you create a, you sign up for an event, and you come hang out with us. Super easy. That's right. 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I think when we explain this, we might want to throw polyamory into the mix when we're doing explanations of terms. But go ahead. What do you got? So I Googled open relationship. Whoa. You Googled something? I did. You researched it? I am the expert here. Look at you, little podcast prepper little podcast i know so i was just really curious what an open relationship actually is because i personally don't consider you and i in an open relationship so i wasn't sure like if i was right or wrong okay so based on google it says an open relationship means having more than one romantic or sexual partner at a time. It's an arrangement that both parties agree is non-exclusive or non-monogamous. As one or both parties engage in romantic or sexual activities outside of the relationship, the arrangement agreement aspect is key. So based on this, we're in an open marriage marriage so by that definition that you just read to me that's like the definition of non-monogamy yeah like saying you're an open relationship is basically the equivalent of saying you are non-monogamous yes now i will say i think that is the tech when i've looked into this before and researched that is a textbook answer and i think i think that is correct so you by that definition you can exchange open relationship and being non-monogamous it means the same thing yeah yeah according to that but if i'm being honest when i think of open relationship i think of like wide open spaces right so in the lifestyle in the swinger community when somebody says that they're in an open relationship what do you think they mean by that i think less rules more freedom i think swingers it's all based on boundaries agreements i don't like the word rules but you could kind of put that in there um and that's kind of what keeps the relationship safe if i guess if that makes sense um and to me someone who is in an open marriage has less of that i agree and from my understanding so if we think back when me and you first started dating we essentially said we're going to be in an open relationship and essentially what that meant to us which is what i think most people at least in the swimmer community think when they say open it's basically you can see and do and date people however you like i can see and and do things and date people however i like but we are agreeing that me and you are in a relationship yeah to me like swinging you need prior authorization right it's like i need to come to you and be like hey i'm gonna do this right and you have to say okay and vice versa you know back and forth and to me in an open relationship that is not there but obviously I'm wrong right and I guess depending on where you put your rules and your boundaries it could be it could be what we're saying and it could be different so it is really confusing but I will I think it's true if you know in common practice when you say open that just assumes there's less boundaries in place. And I think the individuals are more autonomous in making decisions in an open relationship than they are necessarily in like a swinging or polyamorous relationship. Well, I think like our monogamous journey, non-monogamous journey, our swinging journey, it's very much like a partnership. Like everything is done together. We bounce ideas off each other. we kind of go back and forth on what we want to do what we don't who we like who we don't and to me an open marriage or open relationship it seems more singular right not so like more autonomous on the individual not so much the partnership making decisions as they go together yeah but i will say i think even if you were in an open relationship you could say hey we're going to do x y and z but if if we're going to do this one we're going to talk about it first you know you could you can put those uh guardrails wherever you want really in any non-monogamous relationship which is why these terms kind of all end up blurring together yeah which is important because we've talked about this before, when somebody uses term and says oh i am in an open relationship you really is the individual that they're talking to need to kind of say yeah okay well what does that mean to you because what you think they mean might not be what they actually mean oh and that goes for every aspect of everything yeah unicorn bowl i mean you could go down the line. People have different interpretations of what all those words mean. And that's why when somebody says, I am this, and you say, what does that mean to you? Right. But you need to ask follow-up questions because what you think, they might think something completely different. A hundred percent. Okay. So what I just gathered is an open relationship is non-monogamy. So what, I guess, if we're differentiating the two, what is swinging? How is that different from just non-monogamy? Well, now I feel like we need to look up the definition of swinging and compare it to. You can go ahead and do that real quick. Okay. So I Googled what is a swinger. I said swinging, sometimes called wife swapping, husband swapping swapping or partner swapping is a sexual activity in which both swingers and partners in a committed relationship engage with others for recreational purposes which i would just agree with that yeah because i don't think both partners have to engage right like hot wife couples but i still think the husband is a part of the situation. Even if he's not actually engaging in the intercourse. I think he's still. He's getting something from him. He's engaging in some way. It's just not the actual penetration of the sex. Right, right. Yeah. Oh, he likes the reclaiming. Yeah. So he gets that part of it. It says swinging is a form of non-monogamy and is an open relationship all right so you don't you just learned so swinging by this definition is a sub culture of an open relationship of non-monogamy do i think like having an open relationship like sounds kind of cool like i want to tell people that yeah i'm in an open marriage we're really cool well because of this that you like that better because of the stigma that surrounds swinging yeah right so you're saying open and maybe that's why a lot of people use the word open and don't use the word swinging is because it doesn't have that same um context that's what yeah but you know my stance on that i i want to fight for the word swinging because i think i think it represents us the most accurately um okay and then i just want acceptance i don't really care what you call it now i know it's not in our he didn't ask what this meant but what i think really the other the third tier here of of non-monogamy that gets talked about the most is polyamory do you want an official definition of that let's get an official definition of polyamory okay it says it is okay so polyamorous is characterized by or involved in a practice of engaging in multiple romantic and typical sexual relationships with the consent of all people involved so that says romantic and sexual right which again if you talk to some polyamorous people i don't think it has to be i don't think it has to some some polyamorous people are in romantic relationships but that aren't sexual and some are in sexual relationships that aren't romantic uh it all kind of depends but the common practice of polyamory is essentially saying feelings are okay right if you're you're a polyamorous person, polyamory meaning many loves, you're okay with having multiple partners that you are actively seeking a loving relationship with. That's kind of the common understanding of polyamory. Yeah. Opposed to swingers who typically leave romance, feelings, love out. Off the table out it's more of a sexual situation yeah and I think you know I just recently found this sketch where they kind of explain the differences between the types of non-monogamy and if you just kind of I think this will help our listeners to and it helped help actually me a little bit to visualize what we're talking about here right so so draw this picture in your head with me lacy right draw almost like a what would you call it like a tic-tac-toe box but just a squirt like an x but a line all right hold on this is going to help you visualize it okay draw a straight line up and down right and then draw Thank you. But a line. What? All right. Hold on. This is going to help you visualize it. Okay. Draw a straight line up and down. Mm-hmm. Right? And then draw a horizontal line. Okay. So you just made like a T. Yeah. All right. On the top line, right, sexually open. Mm-hmm. Underneath, on the bottom of that vertical line, right, sexually closed. Mm-hmm. And then on that left to right line, the left we're doing emotionally closed and on the right we're doing emotionally open right so all these and what i mean by this is all these types of non-monogamous relationships there's that's really you're it's a combination of how sexually open you are and how emotionally open you are. Yeah. Right. And so like polyamory and open relationships, in my opinion, kind of fall into that you're open to being an emotional connection and you're open to a sexual connection. So they kind of would fall in that top right box where the swinger lifestyle, you're sexually open, but you're emotionally closed closed right so you're kind of that top left box monogamy you're sexually closed and emotionally closed to anyone else besides your sexually closed and emotionally closed to anyone else besides your partner so your bottom left and really i don't know what would fall like emotionally open open but sexually closed there might be some polyamory people yeah don't have sex but have emotional relationships um and that would be kind of so i think all of these terms is kind of a blending of how sexually open you are and how emotionally open you are and you kind of fall on this on this scale of non-monogamy depending on on one year we fall and the funny thing is the more we talk to people about this uh the more we even talk to each other about this i think we learn how we all identify as different things but we all kind of dealing with the same stuff right because me and you identify as swingers but we are learning more and more as the years go by we're okay with a little bit of feelings right like i don't want to move in start a family raise kids with other people but we care about our friends like we genuinely care about our friends