DIY Monagamishmash – When Swinging Slides Into Polyamory

It’s been a year since we decided to open our marriage. We started out thinking we wanted things a certain way, but we have learned a lot since then.

We created our profiles for a few swing sites, wrote them well, put up some tasty photos. We met with 3 or 4 couples with varied success. The fifth couple we met was really great – the chemistry was there and they were smart and cute. We learned a lot from this couple, I’ll call them the Lifestylers, since they are fully immersed in the scene, and most of their friends are too. The Lifestylers even have a go-to couple who they see regularly, and take vacations with. We saw the Lifestylers for about 2 months total, which was fun, but it left us kind of scratching our heads. The Lifestylers, being professional swingers, showed no sign of emotional attachment at all. We were puzzled. To us, when you are seeing someone regularly, don’t you grow a bond together? The Lifestylers, perhaps sensing our confusion, broke it off before we could ask.

We met many other couples through the Lifestylers. One of the couples I will call the Norms. I immediately was attracted to Mr. Norm. My husband liked Mrs. Norm too. We invited them over for dinner with their children, whose ages matched our kids’. The kids got along well, and so did we. We saw them a lot. We hung out as families. The adults would go out as a foursome, or one from one couple would visit the other two. It got intense. Mr. Norm and I started talking about exclusivity. My husband began privately wondering to me about whether he was just going along with it for my sake.

And then things went really badly.

My husband decided that he was, in fact, just going along with it for my sake. He decided to opt out. Mrs. Norm was heartbroken.

And Mr. Norm and I were falling in love.

Around this time, I met another couple in a totally vanilla work setting, and found them to be very interesting and cute. Online connections led to flirting, and I introduced them to my husband. Let’s call these two the Golfers.

Mrs. Golfer and my husband quickly established a very intense connection. Mr. Golfer and I soon figured out that we are not so compatible, but we are both happy to support his wife and my husband together.

So, as it stands right now, Mrs. Norm is slowly accepting her husband’s love for me. I see Mr. Norm once or twice a week, with Mrs. Norm’s permission. Mr. Norm is working hard to find new people for his wife to flirt with, and once they find a couple who is great and trustworthy, perhaps Mrs. Norm will see her new couple by herself, and allow her husband to see me more often.

My husband is hot and heavy with Mrs. Golfer, and I think they are falling in love. I have never seen him so radiant and happy. He is still very loving and attentive to me. Mr. Golfer is content to watch his wife and my husband together, for now.

Kind of complicated? Or really simple? Depends on how you look at it, I guess. Our big revelation here was that we are not really swingers. We like the emotional connection, and once we find it, we are content. I think that might be polyamory, although I’m not totally sure that we fall into that category either. The phrase “open marriage” has an unpleasant promiscuous ring to it.

My husband likes and trusts Mr. Norm. He has said that if I had met Mr. Norm before him there would be no doubt who I’d be married to now. Mr. Norm and I are indeed getting very lovey-dovey, with big orchestral swells and daydreams of weekends alone and away.

I find Mrs. Golfer to be adorable, and I can see why my husband is so on fire for her. Plus, she is someone new, someone different, and these are things that I could never be for my husband after 13 years of marriage. She and I have hung out together; she is smart and very funny.

So, dear readers, what do you think we are doing?