This is being posted by me, but comes from both MrsCoupleErotic22 and myself.

Had you asked me 20 years ago, even two years ago, if we would consider swinging, my initial response would have been laughter followed by a resounding no. I imagine my wife’s response would have been the same, sans laughter. She agrees.

I see people come to the forums with lifestyle questions looking for advice. The first question that comes to mind is, do they have complete, open and honest communication and a rock solid relationship? Swinging will not help build that, but it can sure tear a relationship down if they are missing. So to me, those are the prerequisite criteria for swinging. Just two short years ago, we did not meet these criteria ourselves.

A little more than a year ago, my wife came to the conclusion she was not happy, or at least not as much as she thought she would be almost 20 years into our marriage. She had the courage to come straight out and tell me, rather than just holding it in until she was miserable and our relationship was irreversibly damaged.

She told me our marriage was not what she thought it would be when we got married. This was a HUGE revelation to me. I was stunned, and a bit hurt. But in hind sight I am very happy she said it. I had plodded along for years thinking she was happy and everything was good. I was happy as well, or so I thought at the time. Had she not had the courage to address the issue with me, our lives would be much different today. It is even possible we would have gone down the same path as so many others, ending in divorce.

You see, we married young and had no parents to turn to for marital advice. All we had was each other, and we were both pretty naive when it came to what being married was all about.

Early in our relationship neither of us communicated very well. Our relationship was filled with miscommunications, mistakes and misconceptions. As time passed those miscues just sort of passed into the realm of acceptance about what the other wanted and expect out of our marriage. There was no one BIG issue, but rather many small ones that had gone unresolved over the course of our marriage. All those small issues had festered for so long, she reached a point of discontent.

Sounds like a horrible marriage, but it was not all bad. In fact our marriage was pretty good, in comparison to most people we knew. We loved each other, and did all the things happy couples did, we were just missing something. For everyone else, it seemed like a great marriage, it even seemed so to me. We were often told how great a marriage we had by others. This used to add to her frustration because she felt that our marriage could be so much more.

Once she told me she was not happy, we had to figure out where to go from there. We both loved each other and neither wanted a divorce, so that left trying to figure it out. To me, the simple fact she had the courage to tell me how she was feeling, and that we both had the desire to work on our relationship, put us well ahead of many couples we knew. We spent the next several weeks on late night, sometimes all night, discussions on what was wrong in our marriage. It was exhausting, but one by one, we discussed every problem we had in our relationship, from money, to jealousy, to sex, to cuddling, to communicating and many many more. We agreed that anything and everything was on the table, and to leave no stone unturned. Our new mantra was complete honesty, hold nothing back.

We began to realize that most of what each of us thought the other wanted was incorrect. Our assumptions of what the other wanted were based out of the early miscommunications of our marriage. It was like someone turned on the lights, and we began to resolve our differences.

She began to find the things in our relationship she knew she was missing and I began to find things I never realized I was missing. In a few short weeks our relationship had grown more than it had the previous two decades. Now we both felt we had a great relationship, but wanted to continue to make it the best relationship possible.

Throughout the process not only did we resolve long standing problems, but we began to learn new things about each other’s emotions, thoughts and desires. We were rediscovering each other and falling in love all over again. It almost felt as if we were dating again. We were both very happy.

Among the many things we learned about each other is one that ended up leading us to the lifestyle. I had been sexually active before we married, but she had not. For years having a third in our sexual relationship had been part of our fantasy life, but never a real possibility to happen. She isn’t the type to stray, but there was some curiosity and a bit of desire to see what experiences she had missed. She had never brought it up because she was afraid of what I would think.

Last fall, she just came out and said she wanted to see what sex would be like with another man. She had grown up the quintessential good little girl, so saying it did not come easy to her. To both of our surprise, I was encouraging. She, in turn, encouraged me to explore as well. This was a huge step, I had never been the jealous type, but early in our relationship she had been. Our relationship had grown to the point that we were comfortable enough to have this discussion, if nothing else.

We both knew this exploration was not about love, but sex and curiosity. But what we knew about the lifestyle, at that point you could have written on the inside of a match book cover. In fact we did not even consider it swinging at first, just exploring our desires. We had no idea how to go about making this happen, other than possibly through someone one of us already knew. I began to research the topic, and that is when I stumbled upon the” lifestyle”.

I read as much as I could find, unfortunately I did not find this site until much later. The more I learned the more we discussed and tried to figure out if it was right for us. We talked about how we would feel afterwards, could our marriage survive, would we feel guilty or jealous? We discussed it from every perspective we could imagine and few we hadn’t, but learned about online. We both agreed that NOW our relationship was solid enough for us to at least give it a try.

We read that we needed rules, so we made a laundry list that could fill a small book. We found out about swingers sites, so me made profiles, separate profiles at first, before realizing a shared profile was best. We met new people and chatted and improved our profile. It was very much a learn-as-you-go experience. Getting to know people well enough for us to be comfortable took a little while. Eventually, last winter, we set up a play date.

When the day finally came, we had first time jitters. We really did not know what to expect, even though we had read as much as we could find on the topic. We met at a local bar and ended up talking for hours before retiring to a nearby hotel. Once there, things moved at a rapid pace. It was both comfortable and easy while still extremely exhilarating. No jealousy, no qualms, no hesitation.

Afterwards she and I went back to the bar while our guest stayed in the room to recover, we were still too charged to relax. It was around 3am. She and I talked about what just happened. We were both happy and surprised at how relaxed we were. Other than a few minor first timer miscues, things had gone very well. We were happy we had made the choice to do this. So much so, we returned to the room for round two before heading home a few hours later.

In the coming days we talked more. We discussed how we felt, what we thought, what the impact on our lives and relationship was. We realized that most of the rules we set out were silly, artificial means to protect a relationship that had already become rock solid. We realized our love for each other and communication were what protected our relationship, not the rules. We have pared those rules down to a small handful that deal with safety, communication and discretion. In fact, I am not even sure we would call them rules anymore, they do not need to be enforced, they are simply the things we know we need to do to maintain a healthy relationship. We follow them instinctively.

Since then we have met more people, had more encounters and more fun. Swinging has added an entire new dimension to our lives that we both truly enjoy. But most importantly we have continued to grow closer as a couple with each passing day and our love has grown stronger. Not because of swinging, but because of the overhaul of our relationship that my beautiful wife precipitated.

Had we not gone through the process of rediscovering our relationship and mending the flaws we would have likely have never entered the lifestyle. We had problems that not only could swinging not fix, it would have only made worse. I am almost certain our marriage would not have survived had we entered the lifestyle prior to mending our relationship. Back then our relationship was not rock solid and our communication was not complete, open and honest enough. It is now, thanks to my wife’s courage and our hard work, not swinging.