Welcome to another episode of That Other Lifestyle Podcast where we take a deep dive into the pitfalls and challenges that swingers often face - Red Flags. This episode will serve as a comprehensive guide to help both novice and veteran swingers in recognizing and mitigating undesirable actions and behaviors that might spell trouble in the thrilling swinging lifestyle.
We start by discussing the important role of intuition in discerning uncomfortable situations or infringements on personal boundaries. We then classify red flags into four main categories - Etiquette, Relationship, Respect, and Situational. Our motto is clear: You are not obliged to conform to any request or behavior that makes you uncomfortable.
Throughout this episode, you’ll learn to ditch your rose-colored glasses and gain wisdom from seasoned swingers. We touch on various topics including handling pic collectors, establishing trust before sharing explicit content, avoiding pressure to meet quickly, and verifying the real nature of the participating couple. Moreover, we talk about the significance of maintaining respectful conversations, observing boundaries, and avoiding being overly pushy.
We also enlighten listeners on the drawbacks of couple gossip, advocating against one-night stands, and the importance of fostering long-term relationships. We spotlight how situational aspects such as excessive alcohol can compromise judgment and consent, and hence bring about potential harm.
This episode is a reminder to always trust your intuition and prioritize your values when participating in the swinging lifestyle. Remember, it's okay to feel uncomfortable and distance yourself from situations that don't sit well with your comfort, beliefs, or past experiences. After all, being safe is always better than being sorry.
For more insightful discussions, follow us on your favorite streaming platform, visit our website, and don't forget to recommend us to your Canadian friends. Your feedback and topic suggestions are always welcome.
Transcript
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you may be, I hope you have blue skies and a smile in your heart. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle Podcast, where we talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the weird sides of this wild lifestyle. Good news, this podcast is now available on YouTube as an audio podcast. I am fully aware that audio is my best media. One day I may branch out into video. Meh. But for now, please enjoy the sultry, smooth voice of Jason, that guy with a microphone, as we talk about the lifestyle. Website is thatotherlifestyle.com.
Patreon is patreon.com slash thatotherlifestyle. Subscribe, follow, like, all that stuff. Get that out of the way because I have a favor to ask. I need Canada, specifically the country. I have a map that shows me where all my listeners come from. Shout out to New Zealand. Thank you for tuning in. I have no listeners in Canada though and I want listeners in Canada. So if you have an LS friend up there, tell them to check out the podcast. Please note this podcast is intended for adults only. Probably not safe for work either.
We will talk about topics of an adult and sexual nature, and I will use salty language often. This content is for entertainment purposes only, and again, only for those over 18 years of age. I also try to be as inclusive with my language and terms as I can. It can be challenging to formulate and write and say all the inclusive terms in every instance. For simplicity's sake and time management, I may use terms like husband or wife or partner or spouse for the purpose of the narrative I'm sharing. But this podcast is for everyone though.
No matter your background, gender identity, gender expression, or whatever truth you may be living, everyone is welcome. Today, my friends, we are talking about red flags in the lifestyle. A red flag is any action or behavior that another person or couple engages in that pushes your personal boundaries, personal values, and morals, or just gives you the creeps. What are the actions of others that you should take note of? What behavior should be considered unacceptable? And what should you be aware of and when to listen to your intuition? I'm going to answer that last question right now.
Despite all my media training that tells me to save the hook for the end to keep the audience listening, I need to get this out of the way before we go any further. Always trust your intuition. This may make more sense later after we talk about the red flags, but if you are interacting with another couple and it does not feel right, something is off, or you just get creeper vibes, bail, walk away, do not feel bad about walking away, ever. Assert your voice. Stand your ground. You do not owe anyone anything just because they find you attractive.
You do not owe them your time, body, attention, or words. You do not owe another an explanation unless you want to provide it. You do not have to negotiate or ask anyone to correct or change their behavior. You are an adult with a voice. Use it. I want to knock this out early because even if you stop listening to me at this point, listen to your intuition. Now that I got that intense bit out of the way, this will be a multi-part episode because there is so much ground to cover. I want to do the subject justice and dive as deep as I can into this topic because it is important to people.
For new couples, you do not have a frame of reference on what is acceptable behavior in the lifestyle. For advanced couples, you have the experience and knowledge to nod along with me as I share the great truths here. I owe a big heartfelt thanks to my lifestyle friends who contributed to this episode by sharing with me what they consider red flags, green flags, maybe a few gray flags. I appreciate all their input more than they will ever know. I had to go to my friends for input on this episode for two reasons.
The first is that there is very little, like super small amount of research available on the internet, like a handful of blog posts and videos talking about red flags. For newbies, I know they have concerns. They want to know what to look out for. What are the red flags? When you're new, you're jumping into this headfirst into a whole new ecosystem of people and community, and it's damn hard to navigate. And if you need guidance, I got you. The second reason I needed input is because red flags can be subjective.
There will be points throughout this episode and the next one where I will tell you specifically, look out for this behavior. This is bad and you need to drop the other couple or person who exhibits this behavior. There are legitimate red flags that I feel the whole community can agree upon. If you listen to this list though and realize that you are guilty of some of these actions, here is your wake-up call to fix yourself and your spouse. And I think people fall into two camps on this. One is just ignorance. You have a red flag taped to your back and don't even realize it.
On the other side of camp, you wave those red flags around proudly and don't care. You may even employ these tactics on purpose. We are going to call them for what they are. Toxic. Toxic is a good word for these behaviors. The lifestyle community has the nicest, best, most wonderful people you will ever meet. I will be the first to stand in front of the angels and saints in heaven to share the virtues and awesomeness of my LS friends. But toxic people. One toxic couple can ruin a conversation, a date, a party, a group, or a whole takeover.
One toxic couple who never learns from their bad behavior can make life miserable in the lifestyle. One toxic couple can make people quit this hobby. Toxic people, you know who they are. They exist in the vanilla world and then they come on over to the lifestyle and maintain the same level of ick. Selfish, narcissistic, abusive, mean people exist everywhere. At least in the lifestyle though, you have control over who you interact with. You can choose who you make friends with, continue to be friends, and who you have to cut ties with.
What is hard in the lifestyle is we are all ingrained to be polite. We don't want to hurt someone else's feelings. We give people the benefit of the doubt. We go out of our way to acquiesce to the demands of others. In a lifestyle, you do not have to do this like in the vanilla world. Remember what is at stake here. Your mental, physical, and emotional health can take a huge blow by dealing with toxic Thank you. you do not have to do this like in the vanilla world. Remember what is at stake here.
Your mental, physical, and emotional health can take a huge blow by dealing with toxic people in the lifestyle. Toxic people can lie about their testing status and then you catch an STI. Toxic people can be manipulative and try to keep you from seeing other couples or try to get you to cut off friendships demanding exclusivity that you do not want to give. They could not away at your mental health or your marriage. We may not be able to all agree on what are the red flags for this type of couple, but we can all agree we do not need them in our lives and we do not need them in the lifestyle.
I feel there are some red flags you can look out for to identify these supremely toxic people. I can help you with that part. All of the swingers I talk to, there is a set of behaviors that are unacceptable from another couple, and I promise this list will surprise the hell out of you by to the top of the that part. All of the swingers I talk to, there is a set of behaviors that are unacceptable from another couple, and I promise this list will surprise the hell out of you by the time we get to the end of it. One of my favorite quotes is from BoJack Horseman. It's a show on Netflix.
If you have never watched this show, it is an emotional roller coaster that will leave you mentally shook. One of the characters tells BoJack that, quote, you know it's funny when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. Boom, wisdom for the ages right there. When we join the lifestyle, it's rose-colored glasses, y'all. The excitement, the fun, the people, it's all wonderful. I know for us, for me and my wife, when we started, we had on rose-colored glasses and we didn't see the flags as red until we got slapped in the face by reality.
You need to take off the rose-colored glasses in this hobby today. The way you do that is to set your rules, limits, and boundaries. Set your play style that you and your spouse are comfortable with. You need rules of engagement and a standard operating procedure. It sounds like a lot and it is. You need this to help you identify the toxic people and the red flags because those are the ones who will try to push your limits and boundaries and rules and not in a good way. There are objective and subjective flags. Objective flags are actions or behaviors that are generally considered bad.
The type of flags that should be observed and reacted to quickly. Subjective flags are dependent upon your personal dynamic situation or goals. goals. What I may consider a deal-breaker, you may be totally on board with and naked and ready to go. So let's do an extreme example to illustrate my point. Let's talk about crack, y'all. Crack rock, a derivative of cocaine and other substances. I must admit my knowledge of crack is limited to grade school drug education programs, and now I'm questioning as I write out this sentence why there was so much education on drugs when I was in school.
Anyway, crack rock. Let's say you meet a couple online. Very attractive. Fun. You start chatting. All green flags. Until they share with you how much they just love crack. Just a big spoonful of crack in the morning. Is that a red flag? Damn right it is. This couple is engaging in dangerous behavior, socially unacceptable behavior that you do not want to be a part of. In this case, it is easy to see and say and speak up that no, you do not want to associate with people who recreationally do crack. Your intuition would be firing on all cylinders telling you to avoid these people.
The toxicity of this couple in my story? Yeah, it's literally crack, y'all. But what if the toxicity of the other couple is not as apparent as crack usage? What if the other couple makes unsettling comments at dinner? Or the chat gets weird? Nothing specific you can put your finger on, but just a feeling. An uneasy feeling in your stomach. Maybe you feel it, but your spouse doesn't share that feeling. I want you to take away this piece of advice. Listen to your gut. Listen to that little voice in your head.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck and for some reason every time you're around them you feel icky or maybe possibly they're doing crack, it's an icky crack duck. You need to pay attention to your intuition because you could potentially be sharing your spouse with this other couple. All my friends I talked to about this had a similar sentiment. We look out for our spouses. Our spouses are the most precious, wonderful, amazing person in the world to us, and we want to take care of them.
We want to make sure that anyone we may swing with will respect our spouse and their body and our rules and our marriage. Everyone I talked to, and it was a bunch of people, so you need to heed this warning, said, we are watching. We are watching the other couple. We are watching you, just like I expect the other couple to watch me. I hope you followed all that. We are watching the behavior of the other couple to make sure they meet our standards, that they will be respectful of our spouses and our rules and our marriage.
In talking to my friends and rolling this over in my head for a couple of days, the red flags, or what you should be looking out for, I think falls into four categories. And I think we'll be doing a category or two per episode. Four categories we're going to tackle. Etiquette, relationship, respect, and situational. There's a fifth category. It's going to be like gray areas that are open to interpretation, but the first four, there ain't much wiggle room on these. The fifth one, that's where your own personal rules and decisions come into play.
We're going to be talking about etiquette right now. I want to share the behaviors that may be considered a red flag in dealing with other people based on the community's general standards. While we lack a nice concise guide on manners, this will at least get you started on what to look out for and what not to do. These flags are in no particular order. They besides just easy segues for me from one to the next. On deck first, we have pit collectors. Usually the very first interaction you may have with a couple is through one of the sites. I personally recommend sC.com.
I got a link on that lifestyle.com to sign up. You make a profile. A few days later, a new couple reaches out. Oh, snappity, you got a message. Hopefully they write more than just, hey. And I feel a rant coming on. Hey, H-E-Y is not an acceptable opener, y'all. I tell people at the gym, hey. I tell people at the grocery store, hey. I tell hey to lots of people. You are reaching out to another couple to maybe hopefully get naked with them. And your big opener is, hey. Be creative. Be unique. Be better than hey. Anyway, you check out the other couple's profile. They seem cool, so you respond.
Maybe after three exchanges, the other person asks for pics. Well, you have pics on your profile. What more do they want? They want nudes. They want the good stuff you save in your phone and share with no one else. But you don't know that. Unsure what to do, you send that picture y'all took when you visited the Grand Canyon where you both look really cute outside in the sunshine. They respond with a nude. A bunch of nudes. Unrequested nudes. You're shocked at their forthrightness, but you don't want to make it awkward, so you send a nude back. Then they send a whole album.
Well, you obviously must reciprocate, so you send more nudes.
You send the secret nudes your wife told you never to share, and they keep upping the ante, and you end up sending dick pics and butthole shots, and you realize an hour later, you never even got this this person's name every experienced swinger who had just heard this story winced a little bit because you got a pic collector on your hands a pic collector is a person and you don't even know if they are a real couple who only wants to get nudes from other people that's it they don't care about conversation or communication or ever advancing past sharing naked pics some people might be some people's kink, which is fine.
A lot of people, though, it is not, and it is a red flag. If you engage with another couple on a site and they start asking for pictures, risque, explicit pictures, right off the bat or earlier than you feel comfortable sharing, it's a pic collector, and you should stop communication. You don't know what they might do with these pictures. Think about that. They might keep them in a secret album on their phone, or they might throw them up on the internet. They generally have the same tactic each time.
They say hi, maybe 10 words total, and then they'll either directly ask for pics, or they'll send some over knowing that they now make you feel obligated to reciprocate. You never ever have to send nudes to anyone. You never ever have to reciprocate. Just because a person sent you a picture of their genitals never feel like you have to share one back. They shared that picture willingly, but you do not have to share anything in return. My wife and I have a rule. We have an album of pictures on the sites that we are comfortable sharing with others.
We do not share any more nudes or explicit photos until we've met you in person and trust you. If a pick collector reaches out, though, make it awkward for them. Just pretend to be completely oblivious to any picks they send as bait. Send nothing in return. Ask about their 401k or their favorite 90s sitcom. Compare their genitals to various characters from Friends or Seinfeld. Like, yep, that pecker really looks like a Kramer. Or, oh my God, that vagina is a Jewie. Another note about online communication. You need to be able to verify that the other couple is really a couple.
It is super easy for a single man or a woman or whoever to make a profile and not actually have a spouse. They pretend to be a couple. They pretend to be married. It happens. You can and should ask to verify a couple is really two people or the people you think you're talking to are real. If a couple wants to verify you, good. Do not get offended. This is a perfectly normal request. If a couple gets really offended or evasive or defensive about verifying either through a texting app or by video, that's a red flag. And here's one more. Old or heavily filtered pics.
Some of the sites you can tell when a pic is uploaded, which is great to know. I feel and recommend that a person's profile pics should be updated at least once every six months. People can make radical body changes in that time frame. I want to verify what you look like and you are who you say you are. This is catfishing 101. I'm not talking about just like soft filters either because my damn phone will put an auto filter on all the pics that I take and they make me look like a smooth-faced alien. If you bust out Photoshop and start creating or subtracting curves, that's the line.
That's too much and you're doing this wrong. If we make a date and y'all show up and look nothing like your pics, that's a problem. That's called dishonesty. You can justify it in your head however you want. Well, if they like me, it doesn't matter how I look. Or this is just me and they need to accept it. That's fine, boo. You do you. I will accept you for however you look. But my acceptance does not hide my judgment. Judgment because you are being dishonest. And then my brain does the thinky thing. And if you're dishonest about your picks, what else are you dishonest about?
Testing status, maybe? Rolling on down my list, jumping to sex talk way too fast. Granted, there's a sliding scale for this one. But if you start talking about getting frisky with my wife within four or five minutes of us talking, yeah, that's a no-go for me. But the reason is you're turning my spouse or me or maybe your spouse into a sex object. We are not objects. We are not sex toys here for your amusement. Telling my wife how you're going to rail her and make her squirt and then sending over dick pic impresses no one. Stop that.
Learn how to have a conversation that does not revolve around sex. I said it before and I will say it again. Your dick is not a selling feature. You want to have an eye-opening conversation? Ask a bunch of swinger women what they like in and think about dicks. It ain't size. Do you have some stamina to back it up? Do you know what you're doing with it? Again, I never had one of them say, yep, I only want 10 inches. I had a bunch of people tell me five inches is enough if you know what you're doing. And going hand in hand with sex talk is being pushy.
This one could have fallen in the gray area, but I want to quantify the type of pushy behavior I'm talking about here in this etiquette section. The general consensus among all my friends was pushy is the right word for this. You know it when you feel it. The other couple keeps pushing you and your spouse to meet and pushes you to have sex and pushes you to other behaviors that is just pushing your own personal boundaries. Pushy is hard to define, but oh, you know it when you are the one being pushed. And honestly, another couple may not even realize that they are pushy in air quotes.
Their excitement to close the deal overrides any sense of restraint. But pushy people want, and they want immediately. They want to get laid right now. They don't care about your name, who you are, where you're from. You are now a fleshlight or a dildo for their pleasure. You might be down with this though for a night. You might be in the mood for a passionate one-night stand. No names, no conversations, just grunts and goodbyes. The rub though is that other couple that was really pushy. It doesn't matter if you said no or yes. They would have found someone else.
They want to justify and satisfy their own lust, and you were just a background character in their story. Another way of saying this is pushing couples do not respect boundaries or rules you may have. They want sex now, and they will tell you that often often they may want to push your personal boundaries. Compromise is good in this but never sacrifice your personal limits for another couple. Say for instance you always play with condoms. Standing rule between you and your spouse and that other couple tries to get you to break it or wiggle that rule. They want to negotiate with you.
No, negotiating is for finding compromises not for you to drop a personal rule. Generally being pushy is a big turnoff and a red flag and it goes hand in Thank you. No, negotiating is for finding compromises, not for you to drop a personal rule. Generally, being pushy is a big turnoff and a red flag. And it goes hand in hand with setting expectations for a night and having director syndrome. I'm calling it that. I like the name. Director syndrome is when someone in the foursome or fivesome or ninesome wants to direct the action in an unnatural way.
They stand up in the middle of the orgy and start barking orders and commandments and arrangements of people because they want to see it or fulfill a fantasy like some demented porno director. There are degrees to this one. Starting during the lead up conversations, you could say, I really like X or I really want to do this activity if everyone's on board. Great. Very smooth of you. Declaring that everyone has to cover their body in marshmallow fluff and bark like a dog because you saw it online and it really turned you on once? No. Let events play out. Just let the sex flow.
No one wants to be told what to do or stop doing what they're doing to satisfy just one person in the group. And an addendum to this, when you are on a date and one person, their whole focus is the sex later and their whole focus is on making sure a certain act is performed, like girl on girl or foot play maybe, they will not be happy unless their weighing is stepped on by four feet. No offense to foot fetishes, but don't be a director. Remember, this ain't a porno. Unless there's a camera involved, then just act naturally and don't look at the camera.
Randomly transitioning to another red flag. Gossip. I need you to be wary of couples that gossip. What? Gossip is just spiffy with me. I enjoy hearing about the misdeeds, misfortunes, and general suffering of others. That's a fun Sunday afternoon for me. Boy, howdy. No. To me and others, gossip should be avoided. I don't need to know that another couple is having marriage problems or what embarrassing thing happened at a party. I am not a part of it. I don't care. It will not make my life any better by knowing this.
None of my business and I do not need to know about anyone else's misery to continue functioning as a human being. Avoid people who gossip about other couples. Shut that shit down. If you're hanging out and the other couple wants to start spilling the tea about what so-and-so was doing at the last party, shut it down politely. If you can't at the very least though, at the very minimum, do not add to it. Unless someone else's behavior directly causes me pain or discomfort or there's an issue that needs to be shared to preserve my friend's physical or mental health, it ain't my business.
Couples that gossip with you about other people are going to gossip about you when you're not there. It happens. It's human nature. If you fall in with a couple or a group of people that gossips a lot, sooner or later, you will be the topic they discuss and you won't have any idea it happened. People that gossip, they are a walking red flag and they probably smile about doing it too. Going along with that, I feel that couples that do not have repeat business, so to speak, I can see that as a red flag. To me, the beauty of the lifestyle is developing those long-term friends with benefits.
I like developing relationships with people and it makes the sex better, honestly. The more times we get frisky, the better it gets. We can learn about each other's bodies and likes and dislikes and grow together. If you are a one and done kind of person, that causes me hesitation. If that's your style that you only do one night stands, go for it. For me though, it's not our style and that leads me to question, why is it yours? Why do you only like one night stands? Do you ever try to get repeat business and it doesn't work? Is it the other couples that you play with?
Did they make the decision that it's only going to be one time? Are you bad at sex? Are you bad at the follow-up? Are you trying to rack up numbers to satisfy some goal in your head? Are you trying to conquer the world? Are you engaged in a weird sex cult to gather our collective sexual energy for some nefarious plan? These are the questions that go through my head. It's perfectly normal. Maybe not your head. Which again goes back to the fact that some of these flags are subjective. There are generally accepted flags of bad behavior. I can't deny that.
But sometimes the flags are dependent on what angle you're looking at them. People will say being pushy is bad. Others will say with the same fervor that a couple is not pushy, they're direct. That's the problem with trying to identify a set, a codified set of red flags for everyone to agree upon. You may find one couple that is just a bag full of red flags and the next couple they interact with are cool with everything. You may engage in actions on this list and no one has ever said they were a problem. The questioning though, that's the important piece.
If I begin questioning your behavior because either your actions do not match your words, as in you don't walk the walk, or I'm questioning if your style is a match for me and my spouse, there's something there. That is the intuition talking. I know I say listen to your intuition. The problem is the modern world, vanilla world, silences our internal gut check. politeite society tells us to sit down and shut up and not question. But the lifestyle ain't polite society. We are a people set apart because again, remember what's at stake.
Potentially sharing your partner and yourself physically with another couple. That's a big damn deal. Want to know what is a red flag? Anything that makes you go, huh? Anything that makes you question. You might not be able to answer the question, but the act itself is enough to listen. It's enough to stop for a second, look for that answer. There might be a red flag staring back at you. And I'm shoving in one more type of red flag here, not because it makes any sense, but because I have space in the script and I wrote it and it can just fit in nicely right here.
There are situational red flags as I call them. They only pop up in certain scenarios, but you need to watch out for them. I need to call out inebriation. If a person is intoxicated, they cannot properly consent. Based on that, there are two red flags and a little mini red flag. If a person is inebriated, I need you to stop and assess the situation. If said intoxicated person wants to fool around, I strongly encourage you to stop and not go along with it. If they cannot consent and you proceed, you are crossing a very bad line, a line you cannot come back from.
If the intoxicated person's spouse knows full damn well their spouse cannot even stand up straight and they may have vomited a few minutes ago, is insistent that everyone is good to go and on board. No, they are not. You need to stop. Kind of obvious if the spouse is insistent on fooling around and including their lizard brain drunk partner in the fun. They don't give two shits about their spouse. They don't care. They only want to satisfy their own horny meter.
We will talk about this next episode, but if you notice in another couple that one spouse does not respect the other spouse, either mentally or physically or emotionally, bail. You can do it politely, and you can tell the other couple y'all want a rain check for another time. If they are truly interested in you, that's fine. If they get mad, it shows their true character, and again, you should bail. A mini red flag is a person who has to, required, must get hammered in order to participate in any fuckery.
I'm talking about five shots of Everclear, and they can't say their name when they're done. They have astronomical levels and inhibitions, and only an equal amount of alcohol will help them. Or they just don't want to participate in the lifestyle, and the only thing that helps that is liquor. Whatever the reason, I don't like this. It makes me question so much about a person's intentions. Are they being forced to do this by their spouse? Are they really on board? Do they really like me, or is it just the liquor mumbling?
When you start asking questions, any questions, too many questions, it's better to back off. With all these red flags I talked about today and we'll talk about in the next episode, if something comes up, if you feel uncomfortable, walk away. Do not feel bad about walking away. Stick to your personal values and rules. Those inform your actions, not someone else forcing you or obligating you or manipulating you to engage in behavior that goes against your own personal autonomy. Have an agreement with your partner.
If one of you gets the creeps or sees a red flag waving in the distance, listen to them. Agree with their judgment and support them. Remember, it's always better to be safe than sorry. You have permission if you feel uncomfortable to walk away. Your partner should support your choice to walk away and just follow you on out the door. Trust your intuition. Trust your gut about another couple. Maybe one of these flags is enough for you to decide that you should pass. Maybe you need multiple flags. That is a personal assessment I can't help you with.
I can lay out what the community may generally see as a red flag, but this is all open to personal interpretation based on your values. Thank you for joining us today. If you like the show, please subscribe, like, follow, wherever you may be listening. Check out our website, thatotherlifestyle.com, and check out the Patreon, patreon.com slash thatotherlifestyle. Oh, and please introduce a Canadian to the podcast. I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me.
My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only, and please join us for the next episode. Until then, whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.
