There’s a reason monogamy is often referred to as traditional. It’s what’s we’ve been told we should choose. Monogamy has long been the only relationship choice that society considers being virtuous and right. Sexual freedom is still a young concept, and so is the swinging lifestyle.
Once we step out of the monogamy framework that we’ve been taught to see as right, it is common to experience guilt. New can often feel wrong, especially if it’s a lot different from what we were raised to believe in.
With its many complexities, swinging confronts individuals with choices they may have never encountered before. Navigating through the lifestyle can challenge the relationship in ways a couple has never experienced before. Swinging also offers a playground for individuals to explore their own boundaries, internal contradictions, and sexual preferences.
What Is Guilt All About?
If we behave or think in a way that is different from what we believe is good or right, we are likely to feel guilty. Guilty feelings stem from the awareness that we are not acting in the way we would expect ourselves or others to act.
What determines our guilty feelings’ intensity is the size of the gap between the idea of how we should behave, think, or feel and how we actually behave, think, or feel.
For example, a person who expects themselves to be 100% emotionally faithful to their partner catches themselves secretly fantasizing about a relationship with another swinger. The awareness of the gap between the idea of complete emotional fidelity and the fantasy that includes someone else is what makes a person feel guilty.
The intensity of guilt also depends on the ability to reconcile those two versions of themselves – the idea of what they expect themselves to be and the version of themselves that acts, thinks, or feels differently.
What Comes with Guilt?
Guilt is a complex feeling that rarely comes alone.
For example, guilt often comes with shame. We feel ashamed when someone else knows that we are behaving, thinking, or feeling differently than we should. The moment we share our guilt with someone, we risk feeling ashamed.
Then, there is self-blame and regret. A person wishes they could turn back the time and do something different, convinced that it is solely their action that caused an irreparable mistake, even in those situations where the responsibility is shared.
Anxiety also accompanies guilty feelings, as a person tries to prevent their secrets from exposure. Too much guilt can lead a person to cut off areas of life, one by one, feeling that they do not deserve to have them. A person may slowly shirk their life as they withdraw from other people. The weight of guilt can sometimes be so heavy it leads a person to depression.
What Do Swingers Usually Feel Guilty About?
Guilt is not a feeling that emerges once we’ve done something wrong. Guilt can also surface with the absence of the behavior we thought was right.
We can feel guilty for something we’ve done, but also for something we haven’t.
Here are some reasons for which swinging may provoke guilty feelings.
- Going Against the Social Norms
Social norms can seem very binding, making a clear cut between what is right and wrong. They impose the definitions of a healthy relationship or the institution of marriage that do not involve being sexual with other people. Having to protect their swinger privacy and hide the lifestyle to avoid judgment can make a person feel as if what they are doing is wrong.
- Being Intimate with Someone Else
Guilty feelings can come from the experience of sharing physical intimacy with someone other than your partner. Your partner may feel compersion with your swinging, but you may still feel guilty. The pleasure and excitement from being with someone else can make you question your commitment to the relationship and lead you into feeling guilty for desiring others.
- Developing Affection for Someone Other than Your Partner
Swingers come up with rules and boundaries to prevent transgressions. Even with those rules, swinging can transform into more of a polyamory situation for some people. Swinging always involves a risk that the physical intimacy will transform into affection.
- Being Dishonest with Your Partner
No matter how transparent and honest a couple is in the relationship, there’s always something that each partner wants to keep to themselves. Maybe it’s the thought that other swingers are better lovers or that they find someone else to be more attractive than their partner. Not sharing these thoughts can seem like an act of transgression and, therefore, make a person feel guilty.
- Breaking the Rules and Stepping Over the Agreed Boundaries
The difference between swinging and cheating is in the transparency of the swinging agreement, and the uncompromised trust partners have in each other. Guilty feelings are common to occur once a partner goes against the swinging rules they agreed to. If they do so intentionally, the feelings of guilt are likely to be more intense.
- Your Sexual Self Is Not Aligned with Your Other Roles
Your sexual mind won’t often care about the other roles you have in life. It may desire the opposite of what you already have. You are a successful business person who dominates the conference rooms, yet you crave submission in bed. You are a devoted parent who does a good job teaching kids the right values, yet your desires in bed are considered perverse. You are very religious, but you sleep with people who are not your spouse. This lack of consistency between different social and personal roles and the difficulty with reconciling these roles can provoke guilty feelings.
Coping with Guilty Feelings
We all have our own ways of coping with guilt. Depending on the reason that provokes it and the intensity of the emotions, we may find different things to be useful.
To help you find your own way, here are some of our suggestions on how to cope.
- Recognize The Emotion and Its Purpose
Guilt is the voice of our values, the ones we’ve internalized, developed, or consciously adopted. The purpose of this voice of guilt is to signal that we are true to what we see our values are. Once it is there, it gives us a warning that we are going against something we thought to be right. What we need to do is to understand its role in our behavior. What values is it trying to remind us of? What expectations do we feel we’re failing? Whose expectations are they? Listen to what your guilt is telling you.
- Understand the Source of Guilty Feelings
What are guilty trying to fix? We have already mentioned some reasons for which people may feel guilty about swinging. It’s important to notice how some sources of our guilt may be outdated and no longer relevant. For example, we may still carry the weight of societal expectations on how a relationship should look, even though we are now free to decide our own terms.
- Self-acceptance and Self-compassion
We are human beings navigating through life, love, and relationships. It’s important to remind yourself that your feelings do not determine who you are. They are the signals of what’s going on inside that you can affect and transform. Though you may wish you could have done something different in the past, you cannot turn back the time. There’s no use in diving into self-blame as it won’t help you feel better. Instead, focus on what it takes to forgive yourself and to have the courage and strength to continue.
- Share your Feelings with Someone
Only with those people we really trust to be willing to listen open-mindedly and without judgment can we really vent to about guilt. Connect with those people. They may be your close friends, or they may be the swingers you just met. If you struggle to find somebody you can really feel comfortable with, meet with a coach, a counselor, or a therapist. Talking through things can help you process the feelings, provide you with useful insights, and remove the focus from inner judgment to what you can do now.
- Make Peace with Inner Contradictions
With so much talk about authenticity and finding your “true self,” guilt becomes a common state of feeling that occurs the moment you step out of what you feel was at your core. However, we all have incoherent, contradicting parts of ourselves that match the complexity of our many roles that adapt to different circumstances and periods of life. Recognize these polarities within you and try to approach them with acceptance. We can continue to be something or someone, even when we decide to try a little bit of something else.
- Do Not Shrink Your Entire Being to One Wrong Choice
We tend to judge other people and ourselves based on our actions. Still, a bad choice can be just that – a bad choice. We do not judge a sports team by how they perform in the opening period. We know it is smarter to wait and see how they perform during the entire game or season. So, if you’ve done something you feel is wrong, do not focus on that single moment. Think of the choices you are yet to make. Your guilt signals that you know that you’ve done something you felt wasn’t right and that there is an intention to make it better.
- Learn from Your Mistakes
Though you cannot take back what you’ve done, you can learn and grow from the experience. Instead of tormenting yourself with guilt, think about what this experience has to teach you. Some of the most valuable lessons can come from processing the guilty feelings. They inform us about the need to correct or change our actions, so they really reflect the values we care about.
And of course,
- Focus on What Is in Your Control
Often we focus too much on what we should have done that we ignore what we could do NOW.
If the source of your guilt is not something you can change, do not torment yourself with it. That line of thinking will not help you resolve the guilty feelings. Instead, ask yourself: “Can I affect this?
So, you have been hiding things from your partner before. Think about what you can do now to improve the honesty in your relationship. You have broken the rule. Apologize, take ownership of your mistake and discuss how you can make things better.
Don’t forget that …
…we are bound to make mistakes and think thoughts we shouldn’t be.
…we cannot always control how we feel or be fully aware of what our needs are.
…we may act impulsively and make a transgression that we didn’t intend to.
The ultimate antidote for guilt is this awareness that we are flawed human beings and our readiness to forgive ourselves for the things we do wrong.