Shared by Plesh Hartley
I stood next to the pool, enjoying the beautiful Mexican weather, the sunshine, the light breeze, the sound, and the smell of the ocean a few feet away. “It’s now or never,” I thought as I removed my sarong and draped it across my chair, the sun and breeze stroking my naked flesh. As I surveyed the swimming pool at the resort, I took in the variety of naked bodies before me, thinking how far I’d come since our first trip to the nude beach merely one year ago.
Drifting back to that day during the previous summer when I had, admittedly somewhat reluctantly, agreed to visit a nude beach for our 25th wedding anniversary, I smiled to myself. How very much had changed in that year. How very much I had changed. How very much our marriage had changed.
One year before our first trip to a lifestyle resort, we spent a glorious week in Florida visiting nude beaches. The first day there I was nervous but agreed to join in as cheerfully and eagerly as I could muster. My husband enjoys being nude and hates wearing clothes. They make him feel itchy and trapped. I, on the other hand, don’t enjoy the feeling of being naked, my skin feels itchy and uncomfortable, not to mention being naked in front of other people. I don’t have a perfect body. I birthed a lot of babies. But I had agreed to try it for him.
I looked around and saw all body types at this beach, relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather. Well, almost all body types. I saw old bodies, young bodies, heavy bodies, and average bodies. What I didn’t see was perfect bodies. I also didn’t see what I normally see women doing at the beach, the uncomfortable stance trying to cover their protruding belly. We’ve all seen, probably most of us have even performed, the maneuver where you try to slyly wrap your arms around your middle where your suit doesn’t cover. But here stood all these people, all these women, who have chosen to not hide their imperfections but rather to just enjoy the freedom of having bodies and not having to hide them. On our second day to the beach, much to my husband’s surprise, I stripped off my clothes before he did. I had found freedom from the fear of an imperfect body.
During this week, we not only enjoyed the freedom of a nude beach, but we began listening to some Lifestyle podcasts. Or rather I should say I listened to them with my husband, who had been listening to them for years. Somehow having experienced the freedom of public nudity in a completely non sexual environment, my mind began to open to a very different view of sexuality as well. I was beginning to break free of old stuck patterns of thought and hangups I’d had around my own sexuality and arousal. The nude beach was not arousing, as it was really just a mundane environment of freedom. But the mindset of freedom began to bleed into my whole being.
By the end of this week we were discussing the possibility of entering the Lifestyle and had started looking into our local Lifestyle scene. Within a few months, we found ourselves fully immersed in this fun, new world of openness and excitement. This immersion into a sexy, fun, exciting new environment is what led us to find ourselves at a Lifestyle resort one year later, naked and confident, well mostly confident.
As I looked around the resort, I again noticed the variety of body types. Some of the least “perfect” bodies were attached to some of the most confident, outgoing and fun people. We found ourselves forming a group of people with whom we enjoyed much laughter, tequila, and some other rather sensual experiences.
My husband and I are both introverts at heart. If he and I would go away just the two of us, we generally only spoke to wait staff at the restaurant. We were not able to meet people and introduce ourselves and get to know other people, or even strike up a conversation with the locals to find out about local entertainment. That is, until we entered the Lifestyle. Something happened as we stood on that nude beach and realized that we are just normal people. We began to gain some confidence that allowed our inner introverts to step out and enjoy the social world around us. Upon entering the Lifestyle, we further began to develop the confidence to talk to people, to put ourselves out there. It seems a little backwards at first glance, that while living in this by no means perfect body, being naked would bring me more confidence than being dressed to conceal my imperfections. But perhaps the mindset of having to conceal ourselves, the need to hide our imperfections is really what makes us feel less adequate, afraid our disguises will be seen through.
I have come to believe a good many things about people and their bodies over the past few years. First, I believe that all people and all bodies deserve to feel good. Physical pleasure is healthy for us and we should not deny ourselves the opportunity to enjoy physical pleasure because we think we don’t deserve it because our body is too thin, too heavy, too wrinkled or too whatever.
Second, I believe that a person has the right to choose the body style that they truly feel happiest with, and oddly enough that is not always the same body style the magazines want us to believe is best. I believe that opening our minds to accepting what we truly believe is beautiful helps us to accept ourselves in a much healthier way. Once I realized that I did not find either men or women attractive that were too thin or too buff, I realized there was no reason for me to dislike my own body for not being super thin or super buff.
Third, I believe in striving to be better. We are always changing and if we aren’t becoming better, we are becoming worse. I believe in happier, healthier, more fit bodies. I think one pitfall for humans is to think that we will be happy when … We will be happy when we lose 10 pounds. We will be happy when we can do 100 push ups. The danger is that when we set our happiness with ourselves and our bodies on a goal, we rarely actually feel happy. When we meet that goal, we see another obstacle to our happiness. I truly believe we need to learn to love our bodies and ourselves as we are. Then, and only then, can we truly begin a healthy journey toward having the body we desire. Having a good body image doesn’t mean we don’t continue to make improvements. Nor does it mean we accept that we can never be any different. It means that we appreciate the body we have today, how beautiful and sexy it is, while continuing toward healthy goals and habits. The difference between “I will love my body when…” and “I love my body now. I will also love my body when…” is a difference between a physically and mentally healthy life and a life of despair and disappointment.
In the span of one year, my husband and I went from backwards introverts who could barely ask a stranger for a restaurant recommendation, to outgoing confident people who created a safe environment of openness, candor and confidence for a group of strangers in Mexico. Since that trip, we have found ourselves in that very role on many occasions. Rather than being the people who need to be rescued from our own introversions, we’ve become the couple that helps bring other introverts into the game.
Entering into the Lifestyle has been one of the best things we have done for ourselves individually and for our marriage. We are more able to openly discuss things. We are far more confident in our everyday lives. We are eager to meet new people and experience new things. We see each other and ourselves as desirable to others. The confidence that began on that nude beach and led us to try the Lifestyle has been further nourished by the Lifestyle and by the amazing people we’ve met along the way. That very same confidence has allowed us to grow in our normal, vanilla lives as well. The confidence to love and accept ourselves, not just our bodies, now as we continue to grow as people has been life changing.
Swing & Tell is a series of real-life stories from real-life people sharing their experiences with the swinging lifestyle. Please remember that everyone’s situation is unique, so what someone experiences might not be what you will experience. Click here to share your story or read other swinger stories