I take a lot of shit from people of little understanding in regards to my lifestyle. They figure since I’m involved in an open marriage that I’m a "swinger". First of all, I think that term died (mercifully) somewhere around 1979.
Swingers are wife-swappers who throw parties, trade off, round robin and daisy chain. Both law and custom also require them to wear a lot of polyester. Sorry. Not me.
The perception of a swinger is one who will fuck anyone (or at least anyone of their complimentary orientation), anytime, anywhere. Eew! Have you seen the majority of people? Most of them I wouldn’t fuck with somebody else’s dick.
Standards. I have standards. The women I sleep with must be beautiful. Now, that beauty may not be classic. Beauty is an aggregate of physical features and perceived personality traits. As you can infer, by that definition they don’t necessarily need to be "pretty". Pretty is a mere conglomeration of physical features. Yawn. A fuck doll can be pretty, but it isn’t worth the time. As a result, there must be something in addition to mere physical attractiveness. That can be something as simple as a glimmer behind the eyes, but it has to be there.
As an aside, I’ve noticed recently that I’m undergoing a sort of shift in ratings systems. Traditionally, my ratings of women have fallen along a modified bell curve. In this set up, a small number of women are "fugly"; a higher percentage falls into the "average" realm, and a small number (roughly equivalent to the fuglies) are "beautiful". In quantitative terms, a woman has to score at least an 8.5 on my rating system to be acceptable partner material, even for an evening. That leaves 15 percent of the female population open to physical interaction.
Now, when you factor in that there are inherent difficulties with many of these women, things like: availability, traditional attachments, inability/lack of desire to cope with non-exclusive arrangements, non-reciprocal ratings system scoring of myself, etc., I’d guess there are maybe three percent of the population available under that standard.
Lately, however, I’ve observed that I’m arriving at my ratings more quickly. I’ve unconsciously switched to a binary scale. They’re either "Yes" or "No". I don’t know if my experience has led me to a more referenceable database that can be queried and cross-checked more quickly or what, but I no longer analyze every feature to develop a cumulative. It’s as though I’ve become able to almost instantaneously arrive at the aggregate. I’m fairly sure the system is valid, since the ratio of acceptable to unacceptable women hasn’t changed perceptibly.
Back to the main point here, there are also secondary considerations. I have rules over and above the beauty requirements. The woman in question must not be on the "Off Limits List" that my wife and I developed. This is comprised of close mutual friends that sleeping with might skew our relationships/associations. Second, I won’t sleep with a co-worker. It’s just not worth the risk if/when things blow up. Third, I won’t sleep with women who have young children. For reasons I cannot explain, kids LIKE me. I’m a cold-hearted, evil bastard for the most part, but kids seem to try to zero in on that smudge in my personality that actually gives a shit about humanity. It’s too easy for them to get hurt if/when things between their mother and myself don’t work out, and I have enough shit on my "karma" list. If an adult woman gets hurt as a result of our relationship, that’s one thing, but not a kid.
When you add in these factors, I’m down to some high fraction of one percent. Call it eight-tenths just for the sake of argument. That’s eight out of 1,000 that are acceptable and available. Those eight, I will chase from sunup to sundown, moonrise to moonset to get next to, but I hardly think that makes me a fucking swinger. It also explains why, unfortunately, my dalliances aren’t as frequent as I might like, but you gotta have standards, right?
M_