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.
Family
If you are thinking about voluntarily coming out, you should think about the possible ramifications. It will impact your family, especially if you have children. Kids generally prefer to know as little as possible about their parents’ love life, so they won’t want to hear the nitty-gritty details. They want to know that their home life is safe and stable and that their parents can be relied upon to help them grow up. When opening up to your kids you will need to decide what is best for them.
There is no magic age to tell your children about this. Some swingers never tell their adult children, and other swingers share some information about their relationship with their young children. We aren’t going to judge you, but we will mention that you should proceed cautiously. You might want to share this information when school is not in session so your children have more free time to absorb the information and ask questions. If you decide to only tell your older children, you should be prepared for them to accidentally (or maliciously) reveal the swinging secret to your younger kids, because kids can say the darndest things.
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.
If you have older kids, they might have guessed about your swinging already. Kids would have to be clueless not to wonder about your over-the-top sexy swinger wardrobe, or the weird packages getting delivered, or the mysterious trips you take, or the weird conversations they overhear, or why you were skinny dipping late at night with your “friends from college”.
That doesn’t mean your older kids want to know about your sex life, although they also don’t want you to insult their intelligence by telling silly lies. Depending on 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.
As for your parents, too many parents tend to be a little less open-minded, especially if they are very religious. You need to think very carefully about how your parents will react. On the plus side, being honest with your parents could make it much easier to arrange babysitting so you can go on more playdates. You can’t unshare this secret, so think long and hard about who you decide to tell, and how.
Work
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.
Friends
You just can’t predict how vanilla friends will react to finding out that you aren’t vanilla. Some trustworthy friends will turn into the biggest blabbermouths and spread your secret far and wide. Other friends might distance themselves from you out of fear you will ruin their marriage. They will rethink every conversation and assume that you were secretly trying to sleep with them the entire time. They will over-analyze everything you do and say, assuming ulterior motives. It is common for ignorant vanilla friends to think swingers are simply out-of-control nymphomaniacs who can’t be trusted.
Then you might also find some friends who are curious and ask you a bunch of questions about the lifestyle. You can answer these swinging lifestyle questions, but you should immediately tell them you only make friends out of swingers and not swingers out of friends. Playing with friends too often results in a bad situation for everyone involved. This explanation also helps you avoid having to turn down your friends who are sexually unappealing but nice people. Your friends can find their own paths into the lifestyle if they choose to do so.
There are other ramifications you need to think about. For example, your neighbors might think differently about you. If you regularly attend religious services, you can expect a few glaring looks from judgy people. You should hope for the best but anticipate the worst from other people.
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.
If you think coming out as a swinger is the best option, or if someone involuntarily exposed you to be a swinger, then here are a few tips to make it easier for you.
Tip # 1- Stay ahead of the gossip. Talk with the people closest to you, so you can protect them from shocking surprises. Kids are much better at handling teasing and bullying if they aren’t surprised.
Tip #2- 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.
Tip # 3- 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.
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 as swingers. It’s an unfortunate truth that it can be easier to pretend an extramarital affair was forgiven than admit you were exploring the world of consensual non-monogamy.
Tip #4 – As much as we value honesty in the lifestyle, all swingers live in different situations. 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. Proceed cautiously and make sure there are no legal ramifications of swinging before revealing your secret.