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I agree. I look at it this way, if I were married and my spouse wanted to use our emergency savings account to buy a new car we did't need, I wouldn't allow it. We would discuss, possibly argue or fight over it. If I thought or knew he was going to do it anyway, I would go as far as moving the money to a new account he did not have access to, all in the name of protecting us financially. If one partner needs to disallow the other from having sex with an outside party because it will cause turmoil in the relationship or makes them uncomfortable, I see that as protecting the primary relationship. You can wrap it up nicely with the term veto power, but any time someone uses the veto, they are disallowing the encounter. It actually is healthy and smart to disallow certain things or behaviors within a relationship to keep it strong and protect it. What each person/relationship can allow will differ from couple to couple and that's ok.

One other thing to consider that has helped my wife and I as we have gotten into the lifestyle. We agreed early on that, while we have rules and boundaries, honest mistakes can happen and, within reason, they are not a big deal. For example, we are soft swap and my wife is quite bisexual, so we like play that is fairly intense girl-girl with softer swap between the opposite sex partner. One night we met a couple, and as we played, it was clear that they liked to swap partners. While they respected our soft swap rules, she clearly wanted to play just with me (and her husband with my wife). It was not ideal because, while I found the women attractive and had a good time, my wife was not that into the guy and really didn't have much fun. I noticed this eventually, but not as soon as a probably should have Afterwards, we did not argue or she did not feel betrayed. She simply concluded that 1) it was not a great sexy session for her, 2) it's really complicated to make the dynamic between four people perfect, so sometimes you will miss a bit and 3) no big deal, we move on and hope to have more fun next time The reason I bring this up as an example is that I find that, despite lifestylers open minded views toward sexuality, it is still has a tendency to expose our vulnerabilities and self-doubt. As we play in this lifestyle, I think we have to accept that, like any other aspect of our life and relationship, each of us will make mistakes and misstep, but unless you truly cross a big line, it is no big deal and you learn from it and move on.

You have received some great advice most all of which I wholeheartedly agree. A trip wire for me was a feeling I had to be successful every night. Kind of like your experience when the other wife was not interested in you. She is getting hers, but I am not. Now that left out feeling can be caused by a lot of things including insecurity or as was noted a feeling of abandonment by your partner. But I realized for me it was a combination my competitive nature and this feeling there the night is a failure if I don't get mine too. Once I realized that there will be nights when one of us will have a better time than the other and it is no big deal because there will be other nights in the future.

Astute observation slevin. I personally do not like the term "share my wife" but I've heard enough people using it who are not using it in a negative way to say that many do. My distaste with the word share I think has less to do with the ownership aspect as the word itself. You share a burden, you share food, you share money, that sort of thing. Something is lost by sharing . The idea of "sharing the love" I find equally wrong semantically. One can spread love and joy, but sharing it would imply you take some from me, so we both have some but I have less. So if I "shared" my wife you are taking something from me, and I am diminished in return. Being I do not see my self somehow diminished in swinging I think the term is inappropriate. If I want to be pedantic about it, the term "share my wife" should only be used by new swingers where the man would much rather just have sex with other women and not let his wife but he does so because he can't argue logically against it. He feels he is losing something in the bargain but is being nice and allows it. I'd say our first swinging encounter was like this because I really was unsure of my wife going off to another room to have sex with some other guy, but I felt it was "even" because I was having sex with his wife. The proper language for that would be a "swap" or a trade (often used in lifestyle talking as well). We both equally lost and gained so it was a fair trade. That was over 10 years ago and we have long since matured in the lifestyle, and share/trade/swap no longer apply to us, but allow most definitely does. Other swingers I think simply keep using the language without always thinking about it very deeply, so I'm not going to get upset if they use the term "sharing my wife".