Men only. Has swinging influenced your sexual identity?

[viajero 40]

So I have noticed from other polls on this site that the incident of bisexual behavior is far higher than any mainstream polls taken. I have two theories as to why this may be. One is that bisexuals are more inclined to swing. The second is that a swinger who identifies as straight is more likely to explore same sex behavior. I expect there is a combination of both occurring. I plan on doing one poll for men and one for women. This poll is for men only. Due to the taboo of bisexual men that doesn’t exist for women I’m curious to see how different the results will be.

 

Choose one of the first two options only if you have no interest in any future same sex activity. Choose any of the other three if you are open to further same sex activity. After reading other forums I should have used heteroflexible a term some like. I would put heteroflexible and Bicurious as pretty close together so you can choose 3 for that option.

[good times 991]

While I have seen an increase in the mount of men willing to admit they are bi-sexual in the last couple of years (just a few years ago their were virtually none), I haven't seen any increase in male bi-sexual activities in swinging.

 

Regarding your theories, I can't say that I agree with either. I can think of no reason why a bi-sexual male would be more willing to swing than a straight male. In fact, since bi-male sexual activity is still somewhat taboo amongst most swingers, I would guess that a bi-sexual male would be less inclined to swing than a straight male.

 

As to your second theory, I have yet to meet a straight guy that would be inclined to "explore same sex behavior" at all. So, I am curious what gives you the idea that this may be so?

 

I think that internet polls actually give the wrong impression. This is because most people only answer polls that interest them, so the numbers tend to be severely skewed towards those interested in the subject of the poll, in this case bi-sexual males. Thus, when looking at polls on swinger sites recently, it would be easy for someone to get the impression that male bi-sexual activity is much more prevalent, and much more accepted, than it is in the real world. The fact is, we have been to swingers clubs and parties all over the country, some in areas where gay activity is very high, and we still have yet to meet more than a hand full of males that admit to being bi-sexual, or even bi-curious. The only place we have ever seen any male/male sexual activity, in fact, is at a gay club that also hosts swinger parties. Even in that case, the males involved were not swingers, but were the gay clientele of the club.

[viajero 40]

I was looking at three polls on this site. One was the Kinsey scale for all males where 15% said they were bisexual and another 32% would put themselves as a 4 (incidental M/M activity). The other was on a poll for men and women about their feelings on M/M activity. This could have the bias you say in which more bisexual males respond but it surprised me that 40% of the males who responded said they loved M/M activity. Then there is the preference of MFM over FMF 65% to 35%. I'm not sure what to make of that result.

 

Now it could be bi-men are not inclined to go to swingers clubs or would play it very straight knowing that the atmosphere is hostile to this M/M activity or that some couples could be. In fact most swingers club have restrictions or make it very difficult for single men so any bi men would have to be part of a couple. I've read here that many bi-men who swing keep it on the down low even on the internet. So it could be that this particular board attracts a lot of bi-men that do not go to clubs but would love the idea of swinging.

[good times 991]

%

Actually the 32% would put themselves as a three on the Kinsey scale. But that is really irrelevant.

 

To better illustrate my earlier point about forum polls though, at any given time on this site we have about 6-7 thousand active members. In the 5 years that thread has been up only 2694 people have been interested enough in the topic to even click the link to the thread. Of those, only 152 have bothered to vote in the poll. From my experience with forum polls, I would assume that if a person was bi and he read that thread, he would be more compelled to answer the poll than someone who is straight. In fact, while their is no way that I know of to test the theory, it would not surprise me to learn that nearly 100% of the bi-males that saw that thread voted in the pole. Yet, of the 2694 people that looked at that thread, less than .03% answered the poll that they were bi (including everyone who voted a 3 or more). From my experience meeting folks in the lifestyle, the actual percentage of bi, or bi-curious males in the lifestyle, is considerably less than that.

 

My point is, even if you just consider the members of this forum, their really are not a lot of bi-males in evidence. All we know for sure is that about .000002% of the 88,011,000 members here have voted they were bi in one of the poles relating to the subject.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Why assume that a bi person would be likely to click on a poll about bi activity? I simply don't participate in any polls on this site because they are meaningless and because I'm interested in reading the personal expressions, not irrelevant numbers.

 

The most important factor in whether you see bi activity in swinging is your bi friendliness. Couples who are bi find a surprising number of the straight couples they meet open to MM activity in a foursome when ladies are engaged and encouraging. Even more straight males in a threesome are open to male sucking when meeting a bi couple.

 

When straightness is encouraged, there will be no mention of male bi activity because any wise bi male knows when to keep that aspect of himself quiet. Thus straight men tend to see no increase in bi male activity in swinging while bi men see a very different trend.

[casablancabuff 59]

I believe males who swing obviously have more liberal attitudes about sex and are more willing to experiment than vanilla males.

As far as men listing themselves as str8 and then are willing to try m/m activity, probably 60 percent of the men who contact our profile(where I am listed as a bi-curious man) have themselves listed as str8. It has been our experience so far that MOST single men looking for couples are at least willing to try some form of m/m activity even though their profiles say differently.

 

On edit: I originally posted 80 percent but after thinking about it, I realized that was probably too high. The point is, we have found that when you look at the profiles of ALL the str8 single men in our geographical area, more than half have contacted us about an mfm. Food for thought.

[viajero 40]

That last three post say quite a bit about where my thinking is. If an activity is taboo then most people will do a pretty good job of hiding their interest in the activity. So to those not into it, it seems like they are a tiny minority. For those interested, they either suffer in the closet or they seek out companions. Then they become surprised at how many more people there are that share their interest. I have met so many men who didn't have their first homosexual experience until late in life. These men always thought of themselves as straight and I can't think of any that would seek a relationship with a man. In most cases their first MM activity was in the context of swinging. Swinging with the right people creates a very safe means to explore a curiosity.

 

I've even heard the reverse of this situation. A gay guy told me once that he goes to gay bars with a female friend and she often gets hit on by bi guys. A lot of gay men are convinced that bisexuality doesn't exist. There are straight men, gay men and closeted gay men is all they see.

 

No one needs to convince me that the majority of men are heterosexual and not at all curious. However, it is my theory that bi men out number gay men at least 3 to one possibly even more. When I seek having sex with a guy just to get my rocks off I seem to meet 3 or 4 bi guys to every one gay one. I've never sought out swingers but I've been offered the opportunity to swing on two different occasions. Also when I get a gay men to open up about his sexual feelings many times a few admit that they do, on occasion, and would sleep with women but they don't want to lead one on and get in a relationship.

 

So while a survey may find that gay/bi men are 3 to 7% of the population that includes all the prudes and celibate members of society who if they had any bi inclinations would never admit it to themselves much less anyone else. It also includes people who are strictly monogamous and would never think of having sex with anyone but their spouse. Now if you took a poll of the more sexual adventurous members of society I would expect that figure would naturally rise substantially.

 

That is why I made the poll. I was curious if a man on woman could see themselves as completely straight before swinging and then find they enjoy a same sex experience. It wouldn't take away from their attraction to the opposite sex but it might make them realize they are not so purely straight.

[good times 991]

The point is, we have found that when you look at the profiles of ALL the str8 single men in our geographical area, more than half have contacted us about an mfm. Food for thought.

Doesn't surprise me in the least, as an mfm does not imply m/m activity at all. My question would be, of those guys listed as straight that you actually hooked up with, how many were actually willing to participate in m/m sexual activity? I would guess very few, in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if some guys would even say they were bi-curious when they really are straight, if they thought it would better their chances of hooking up with your wife.

 

My only point, seeing as how I could care less if someone, male or female, is bi or not, is that even if their were 100 times more guys who are bi in the swinging population than are willing to admit it to me, it wold still be a relatively small percentage of all swingers. Don't get me wrong, I am sure their are a lot more guys that are bi or bi-curious than are willing to admit it openly, I just think it is still a relatively small number.

 

And to my earlier point about guys saying they are bi just to improve their odds at hooking up, this is not just speculation. One of the most often heard topics at the clubs is bi women complaining about all the women who list themselves as bi or bi-curious who are not. These women claim to be bi or bi-curious either because they think it improves their chances at hooking up, or it is the husbands fantasy and the wife goes along with it in the hopes that eventually he will get over it. My wife is straight, and I cannot even count how many couples we have hooked up with that the woman claimed to be bi, but when alone with us revealed that she really wasn't (for the sake of this discussion, I consider a woman truly bi only if she is willing to perform oral on another woman). In fact, of the couples we have played with in the last ten years or so, at least 70-80 percent of them list the wife as bi, yet I can count the women who liked to play with guys and girls equally well on two hands. Most, when asked, say that they can be bi under the right circumstances, but they prefer to play with men. And the large majority of those we later find out from our female bi friends that try to play with them, will not go all the way with a woman.

 

So while I can buy the idea that a straight guy like myself may know some guys who are bi that just won't admit it to me, I think the same is true in reverse. Their is most likely an equal number of guys who might let someone who is openly bi think they are too, with the hopes of hooking up with the bi guys wife.

[Chicup 41]

 

I think that internet polls actually give the wrong impression.

 

Our fetish polls are testament to that here.

[slevin 1,374]

Why assume that a bi person would be likely to click on a poll about bi activity? I simply don't participate in any polls on this site because they are meaningless and because I'm interested in reading the personal expressions, not irrelevant numbers.

 

Amusing. When Chicup posts in bi-sexual threads you cite that as evidence of his latent curiousity in male/male sexual activity. When good times uses similar logic to illustrate the potential for more bi-sexual males to vote in the poll you say the opposite.

[Coupleerotic22 1,419]

A few thoughts.

 

First, I bypassed this thread initially because I did not have any interest in it, swinging has not changed my sexual identity at all.

 

Second, when I read sexual identity as the thread topic, I did not associate it with bisexual behavior until I read the thread. (I surf using New Post Link and almost never look at what category it is filed in, so i failed to make that connection). Sexual identity seems a much broader term to me than sexual preference.

 

I finally checked out the thread because it kept popping to the top of the new post list, so I figured it was worth checking.

 

As for polls. Having spent a good chunk on my career trying to decipher marketing polls it has become very clear that the vast majority of polls are very poorly written. Writing polls without bias in the question or answer is much more difficult than one would imagine. Compound that with bias when reading them. People bring there own bias to the process, both in creating and reading polls. As a result most polls have a fair amount of error in them.

 

I wish I could find the article, it was a magazine article from around 2000-2001, about bias and poll error. To sum it up the writer estimated that each bias error in a poll potentially had a 2-3% change in the margin of error. Further he estimated that the average poll had something 2.5 to 5 bias errors in a 3 question poll. So a 3 question poll could be off by 18-20%. So a poll that shows and even plurality could be a 3-1 majority. I don't I agree that there is that much error, but certainly some. And those are scientific polls, not an internet poll, that inherently has a larger margin of error.

 

casablancabuff - I am with good times on this one. Because a SM contacts you (I assume SM because you said MFM) then that does not necessarily mean they are bi does it? I know we contact and are contacted by couples where the female is bi - my wife is straight and we rarely have people assume she is bi because contacted them. That is our experience, perhaps yours is different.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Slevin, I would say Chicup's interest in male bisexuality is hardly latent. I think you're reaching to attempt to link Chicup's interest with bi male interaction in a poll. Very different: interest shown by intense posting action in a thread, and interaction in a poll being dictated by whether one is bi or not.

 

Very interesting the whimsical theory that males will pretend to bisexuality in order to score more. The author of that theory may not have read much in the bisexual threads, or more likely he has tongue firmly in cheek - that's got to be the least likely explanation for any potential increase in proported bi male activity.

 

It is important to understand that those who project any sort of distaste for male bisexual activity will not see much of it. Those who project an encouragement for such exploring will see a very different proportion of straights who are open to it. Our experience as a couple surprises us in how many straights are willing to explore. Doesn't mean they aren't straight, just means they are open to sexual geography that is less limited than the predominate path.

[SW_PA_Couple 4,024]

No broad conclusion can be drawn from any informal poll. Typically, the given choices exclude a large proportion of people who might respond. This poll presents an example. I have read its list of statements and I match none of them.

[slevin 1,374]

Slevin, I would say Chicup's interest in male bisexuality is hardly latent. I think you're reaching to attempt to link Chicup's interest with bi male interaction in a poll. Very different: interest shown by intense posting action in a thread, and interaction in a poll being dictated by whether one is bi or not.

 

I'm not discussing the validity of either assertion, but rather the obvious contradiction in your opinion of the two assertions. While you may maintain that one is different than the other, from the outside they are quite the same basic assertion.

 

To use your own continuous refrains; I think this dichotomy says more about your own opinions than anything else

[casablancabuff 59]

Our experience as a couple surprises us in how many straights are willing to explore. Doesn't mean they aren't straight, just means they are open to sexual geography that is less limited than the predominate path.

 

^^^

This is all I was trying to say.

 

Granted we do not always hook up with str8 SM who claim to bi-curious but we do always chat with them to find out what they are open too and for the most part they all want to explore oral sex with a man as part of a mfm. So whether they actually go through with their bi-curious fantasies with us or not, they definitely are open to it and want too on some level.

 

Are they duping us just to get at my wife? I am sure some of that goes on just as we have dealt with SM who say they want an mfm and then bail as soon as we try to set up a meeting with both of us. These same SM always ask my wife if she is willing to meet alone and of course she refuses.

 

All I was trying to point out is that we chat a lot with the SM in our area and for the most part a big percentage say they are open to m/m exploration as part of mfm. They in no way want m/m one on one. That is too scary for them and is not what we are looking for anyway. What are the true percentages? Heck, I don't know and don't really care. I was just trying to point out that a lot of men are more open sexually than people realize and I think that is a good thing.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

"I'm not discussing the validity of either assertion, but rather the obvious contradiction in your opinion of the two assertions. While you may maintain that one is different than the other, from the outside they are quite the same basic assertion."

 

No contradiction. Contradiction indicates two opposing opinions on the same subject. These two subjects, one a poll about bisexuality, the other what Chicup's often very negative posting in bi male threads indicates about him, have only one thing in common - they involve bisexual males. My not being interested in polls has nothing to do with my opinion of what Chicup says in his posts reveals about him.

 

"To use your own continuous refrains; I think this dichotomy says more about your own opinions than anything else."

 

My point exactly. What people say in threads reveals much about them. So you agree that what Chicup says in his posts reveals much about him...

[slevin 1,374]

"To use your own continuous refrains; I think this dichotomy says more about your own opinions than anything else."

 

My point exactly. What people say in threads reveals much about them. So you agree that what Chicup says in his posts reveals much about him...

 

No, I said that I think your opinions here are more indicative of your views on bisexuality. To be clear, I see your opinions being: that a poll like this isn't likely to be voted on more often by bi-sexual guys, and that Chicup posting here means he's curious about men.

 

To address your next obvious argument: by using your constant refrain of "what you do/say says more about you" does not mean I agree with you about Chicup. That type of psychological situation does happen, in general. It is not universal and can't be applied to everyone in every situation.

 

I still don't agree about the contradiction, but I won't change your mind on it anyway.

[Chicup 41]

I used to be quite active in a political forum.

 

I suppose that means I'm a closet socialist as well as closet bisexual since I kept posting in socialist threads

[slevin 1,374]

I used to be quite active in a political forum.

 

I suppose that means I'm a closet socialist as well as closet bisexual since I kept posting in socialist threads

 

Well that just makes sense. Tons of politicians are secretly having sex with men.

[SsHubby 56]

My wife and I have chosen to focus our initial lifestyle activites on MFM and I realize that contact may happen here and there but not deliberately. There were some hand bumping as we were pleasuring her but there will be no sexual activity between me and the other guy. I don't judge other people's choices, I just choose not to pursue that particular avenue.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

MFM is simply delicious when there is no male/male action. It increases the sexual geography available to a couple when another man is there. As well as the potential pleasures available to the woman and the men.

 

For those so inclined, including the geography of male/male sexual interaction increases it still further, much further. As well as increasing the pleasures available for the men and the woman.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Chicup, it's not that you post in male bisexual threads but what you post that most defines your interest. Yet it does mean you are interested in politics when you post in a political thread, and it means you are interested in socialism when posting in a thread on socialism. Whether negatively or positivily interested.

 

Your posts have reflected a need to be extreme toward male bisexuality, which suggests to me you are reacting intensely. Why? Because it is more horrid than bestiality? Or the thought of you doing it (and enjoying it) is more horrid than bestiality?

 

Slevin, it was put forth early in this thread that virtually any bisexual men who see the poll would post in it. I was providing evidence that such an assumption was incorrect, since I didn't and wouldn't. My point was that taking part in that poll might have more to do with whether you are inclined to take part in polls than whether you were bisexual.

[magnum 78]

So I have noticed from other polls on this site that the incident of bisexual behavior is far higher than any mainstream polls taken. I have two theories as to why this may be. One is that bisexuals are more inclined to swing. The second is that a swinger who identifies as straight is more likely to explore same sex behavior. I expect there is a combination of both occurring. I plan on doing one poll for men and one for women. This poll is for men only. Due to the taboo of bisexual men that doesn’t exist for women I’m curious to see how different the results will be.

 

Choose one of the first two options only if you have no interest in any future same sex activity. Choose any of the other three if you are open to further same sex activity. After reading other forums I should have used heteroflexible a term some like. I would put heteroflexible and Bicurious as pretty close together so you can choose 3 for that option.

 

I partisipated in your poll. I am the first respone. Str8, no interest in homosexual adventures. The one thing swinging did for me, confirmed that I have no interest in same sex playing...

 

I will say, the hardest thing for me when I got into swinging. Was the male closeness, I had a really hard time with it at first.