The after effects of wife swapping

A reader wanted to know about the after effects of wife swapping. Although I’ve addressed some aspects of the effects of swinging in previous posts, it’s a question that some of you want to know more about.

Although you inquire about the after effects, the real question you have to consider is “What effects are you willing to accept?”

Let me start by pointing out, there will be effects. Swinging or wife swapping changes you and your marriage. Bringing someone else into the most intimate part of your life makes an impact. Let’s examine the major elements of this impact.

Is it worth it? If you ask that question, you have to first determine what your goals are in doing it. Are you honestly looking to improve your marriage? If so, the impact swings both ways. It can make parts your marriage more exciting in some areas, while pushing the two of you further apart in others.

Are you doing it as an escape from boredom or other marital problems? Or are you and your spouse interested in adding spice to your marriage by opening up non-monogamous relationships?

Remember, when it’s non-monogamous for you, its non-monogamous for your spouse as well.

Telling yourself that it’s only recreational, or adult fun is fooling yourself. Yes, you’ll wake up the next day, yet your marriage will be changed. It will be changed by your partner having had sex with another person.

That special bond only you two shared is GONE. Your marriage is no longer an exclusive relationship at that point. It’s just a series of two different relationships. One with you and one with the third person.

Will either one be more important than the other? Of course it will. Perceptions are everything in marriage, and there is no way to avoid that question when having sex outside your marriage. The impact on feelings can be quite powerful, especially if your spouse has doubts about themselves. Bringing in a third or fourth person increases the self-doubts.

The reality is, the emotional and spiritual bonding between the two of you has been corrupted.

Second, not only are their effects, they aren’t reversible. You can’t undo what has been done. You can learn ways of living with it or moving past it, but it can’t be undone.

Are you willing to live with such a change? This is a change that once it’s done, can’t be undone. It’s not a reversible change. Like a tattoo, it leaves a permanent impact.

Although you can treat STD’s and use the abortion option, these actions don’t undo the effects of wife swapping. They cover up the effects, but don’t undo them. You can’t unsee what has transpired.

Third, the effects are multi-dimensional. They occur across a wide swath of areas and they occur on many levels.

The effects impact marriages on an individual level and at the family of origin and societal level of functioning. Trying to diminish the effects by claiming that it was just ‘consenting adults’ having fun puts blinders on what’s actually happening.

There are the external effects and the internal effects. Externally, there is increased exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and foreign bacteria. Every germ or bacterial strain of your playmates you are now exposed to.

Internally, there are the physiological and emotional effects. Physiologically, what happened changes you. It is a different experience from marital intercourse. You can’t just put the memory of it away and forget about it like other sex acts that take place in your marriage bed.

You may think you can live with those effects, but can your spouse? Can they live with the images of what happened repeating in their mind?

Even when the people you’re swapping wives with are ‘clean’, you’re assuming they are telling you the truth and assuming that the bacteria and organisms in their body are risks you are willing to expose yourself and your spouse to. Those other wives may not be as clean as yours is.

This is one reason behind the ‘infections’ often happening afterwards. You may have never made the connection. From this point on, pay attention to when infections flare up and swapping play times.

Let me spell this out the health issues. Those in non-monogamous relationships have been found to have shorter lives, take longer to recover from illnesses, and are unhealthier than their monogamous counter parts (per John Gottman).

We’re not talking about a minor issue. Studies have found that by having a multiple sex partner, the mortality rate increases.

Do you really want to increase your risk of dying? Do you really want your wife to be increase her risk of dying, due to infections and such from swapping wives or swinging? Is the increased levels of guilt worth it to the both of you?

When your swinging includes people who test limits, they’ll test limits in sexual activities as well. You may set limits, but that doesn’t mean that limit testers will respect them or follow them.

They’ll also test limits on ‘protection’ and protective practices. It’s not uncommon for them to ‘intentionally on purpose’ not use protection. They may also ‘accidentally’ let the condom slip off (aka ‘stealthing‘) or get rougher than you agreed to.

Those who you swing with may want more contact with you or your spouse than you intended or more intensive contact. Limit testers will redraw the boundaries of what your sexual comfort level is.

Fourthly, there are the bonding issues, which I addressed in a previous post. What I can tell you is that researchers studying the many dimensions of human bonding are only now beginning to understand that it is not just chemical, but also electrical and possibly magnetic in nature.

This means bonding is much more than just the release of the neurochemical, dopamine. With the creation of new connections and their activation, there are changes in who you desire and the intensity of your desire.

Bonding changes how you feel about your spouse and swing partners. Swinging changes you, physically and emotionally. It changes you down to the molecular level.

The bonding changes how you think, what you feel, what you remember and how you process new information. The experience rewires your brain and your emotions.

Spiritually oriented people have discussed personal magnetic fields for years and how sleeping around weakens those personal magnetic fields. Although you don’t see it, the people you are with changes the energy fields around you.

Those who are aware of personal magnetic fields are also aware of clean energy and dirty energy. Dirty energy being the energies that are non-compatible with yours or of a disruptive nature.

Researchers are finding that magnetic fields influence biological processes like sleeping, so it would not be far fetched to say they influence bonding as well. I have not personally researched this area, yet I can’t dismiss its influence as negligible either.

When science is unable to explain bonding and all the chemicals involved, what’s the likelihood that some swingers expert knows more than the researchers do?

They may base their knowledge on their social experiences, but that doesn’t mean that they fully understand the effects of creating new bonds and disrupting old ones has on people physically or psychologically.

Then you have to consider the social effects. Wife swapping changes your social atom. It changes the whole nature of the relationships and the people you associate with.

It can also become a source of alienation between you and other family members. You have to consider who knows and who you do not want to know.

When you have to be concerned with such matters, it does not pass what my brother-in-law calls the “sniff” test. If it doesn’t smell right, then it’s likely not something you want to be doing.

Having to keep secrets along with tracking who is “in” and who is “out” of your social atom, along with having to be careful about who know what does not pass my own sniff test. Having a secret life that has to remain hidden is not a hallmark of healthy human relationships to me.

Internally, there are issues concerning guilt or buyer’s remorse. I saw this very plain when I talked with Rachel about her ‘swinging’ experiences. She made sure that she was drunk before ‘playtime’. The room where relations occur are even frequently referred to as “playgrounds” or “playpens”.

Numbing her conscience was the only way Rachel could swing. Whenever possible, she limited her play to same sex. She felt like it was a betrayal to her husband and her marriage vows when it came time to be with other men. Swinging for her became an emotional nightmare.

She loved her husband, and didn’t want to loose him. For her, wife swapping was about keeping her husband and making him happy. His happiness became her new standard.

Rather than look at what she was doing in terms of right and wrong, she viewed all she was doing in terms of whether or not it pleased her husband. Pleasing him became her new moral standard.

When he approached her about having a website filled with her photos and short videos, she consented, thinking it would improve their marriage. About all the photos and videos did was to make money for him.

Over time the nude photos and videos became a source of shame that she often had to hope that people did not find. She never intended for the wife swapping to go that far, but…it made him happy.

Having to make sure that you are numbed out in order to wife swap does not sound healthy or wholesome or natural to me. Neither does being exploited in pictures and videos. Rachel was tired of this way of living and the toll it took on her.

The increased sexual activity will lead to the desire for more. Your sex life will change. Part of the change is that you no longer desire the exclusivity of your spouse, you want others as well.

The increased sex drive changes the way you’ll look at members of the opposite sex. You’ll view them as sex objects first, then as people. You will also be more attuned to sexual vibes.

The tuning into sexual vibes often leads to impulsive sexual decisions. You may find yourself having sex behind your spouse’s back.

This takes me back to the question I asked at first, “What effects are willing to accept?” You have to consider how far you are willing to go, because once the wife swapping starts, it will take you deeper and further into the darkness than you had planned to go.

If you’re struggling with the effects from swinging you may be experiencing relationship trauma. You don’t have to get drunk, take pills or medications to numb yourself out, and keep symptoms under control.

When you have been traumatized, there are reasons for you not being able to get over it’ and bounce back.

When you are ready to do something about changing a swinger lifestyle and recovering from it, my video “Overcoming Relationship Trauma for Swingers“. Provides you with the tools, exercises and techniques you need in understanding and moving past what has happened to you.

Best Regards,

Jeff

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16 Responses

  1. I’m not a swinger but actually reading this bec my friend told me they were swinging. While my friend SAYS he is ok swinging I can tell he is not. And I’m sure his wife isn’t either. I commend you for having this support system out there for people. I bet you are helping people heal who are feeling terrible regret and guilt. That’s pretty amazing of you.

    1. S,

      Thank you for writing and sharing your experience. I find your friends choice of words intriguing. When he says “he is ok swinging”, it says a lot. He has convinced himself that it’s acceptable, hip and tolerable. Saying something is OK is about tolerating something rather than loving it.

      Your picking up on the mixed messages is astute. He and his wife probably accept the situation as a ‘tolerable task’ rather than being enthusiastic believers. I suspect there are many people who put up with it and tell themselves “it’s OK” when they really don’t love it and are at complete peace about it. When you are not at complete peace about it, you’re really not copacetic about the situation.

  2. Our culture is not so open minded however in my late 40s i was going through erectile dysfunction problem and my wife who was in her early 40s was going through increase in libido. It was a very frustrating time for her, around same time i came across a friend of mine in his mid 40s going through just the opposite. Though it took some time for me to express myself to him but it was going to help all of us so i allowed her to do with him.

    1. Patthary,

      Even when there are erectile or libido issues, there are still consequences to wife swapping. The motivations behind it doesn’t remove the consequences. Your marriage bonds and relationship will change. Sleeping with someone other than your spouse or allowing your spouse to do so only deals with a symptom and does little in resolving the problem.

  3. I’ve been sharing my wife for years, she’s beautiful and loves it! I love it! We communicate better than any other couple. We can’t get enough of one another. It’s the hottest live porn imaginable. More swinger couples or sharing couples seem to have longer lasting relationships than those who can’t be open to share thoughts or desires to one another. My 2 cents

    1. Jake,

      Thank you for writing and sharing your experience along with your 2 cents. You make it sound very positive. My experience is that the communication is not better, or that the couples ‘seem’ to have longer lasting relationships. I also haven’t seen data supporting that position in general. Including the word ‘seem’ is telling.

      Your comment “It’s the hottest live porn imaginable” concerns me. It makes it sound more like a live sex show with high intensity, than it does in terms of lasting relationships or communication improvement. Your wife may love it, yet I wonder what the ‘it’ is. Is it the attention, the stimulation, the sharing, the dressing up or something else?

      The language of your post suggest that there is a focus on external and visual stimulation, improved ability to talk about sexual matters and desires, yet that doesn’t equate to good overall communication or intimacy. I’m not hearing mention of some of the components of healthy communication like trust, support, encouragement, and removing her fears.

      I realize a short post can’t convey everything.

  4. Human Being are not monogamic fundamentally …To my experience swapping, where both partners agree to exploring sexual pleasures outside of their own , is very exciting and fulfilling. It’s important that both should be into it equally and have a strong and open communication between all involved. The fun of it is in experiencing this aspect of life together and it has to be as a team and not solo .

  5. i have often fanasised about wife swapping .i have seen porno videos of actual swapping but if it came to the crunch the thought of my wife with another man would do something to me & i do not think i would be the same person again my advice is DON’T

    1. James,

      Thank you for sharing your thoughts. The porno videos are intended to inspire fantasies and soften viewers up to the idea of wife swapping. I’m glad you resisted giving into the fantasy. Once that line is crossed, it changes your marriage relationship and family.

  6. Been wife swapping for 30 years now and it’s with my minster and his wife . Best thing we have ever done . It’s god plan to do this .He has a plan for all of us .

    1. Joe,

      Thank you for sharing. Thirty years is a long time for swapping to continue. I’m sorry to hear that a minister is involved. I have to disagree that it’s God’s plan for this to happen. In the places where Scripture addresses wife swapping, it’s an illustration of how wicked things have become or a statement of judgement. If as you say, it’s His “plan”, that plan doesn’t end on a happy note for any of those involved. It’s my hope that your comment was trolling rather than a statement of fact. If it is a statement of fact, the state of ministers is concerning, which is something I’ve addressed in many posts.

      Jeff

  7. Of course you’re fan of the Bible and scripture Jeffrey, should have known from your use of language and constant refererral to spirituality, vows and the large importance you place on societal norms informed by others perspectives on marriage. Its alright Jeff, try be more positive, if its not your gods plan he wouldnt have put you in a swinging situation to get you off. I think maybe you just had a negative experience and now use the basis of that to hide your insecurities and fears surrounding women and open relationships by sprinkling a lil bit of heyzuz all over your blogs. Good luck Jeff

  8. Sir
    I have fantasies about wife swapping I am always imagining during our sex about some other partners joining with us this make me to do more sex for longer time
    I use to share my fantasies to my wife during sex she use enjoy the fantasies and cooperate the sex once our sex is over we don’t give much important to my fantasies.
    Infact I wanted to realise the fantasies but we are much afraid of our life get spoiled after that this is the reason we don’t want to give it for a try and nevertheless to this we are in a country where it had been considered as a big sin
    I would like to have advice about my fantasies and shall we try to go it for to make it happen in real life or let it be a fantasies only secondly shall we give up these kind of fantasies during our sex
    Waiting for your kind reply

    1. Fakruddin,

      Thank you for writing in about your concerns. Imagining about sex with others when you’re with your wife is not a good idea. If anything, it creates alienation in your relationship. She need to know that when you’re with her, you are totally with her.

      Giving her anything less that 100% of your attention will damage the intimacy in your marriage.

      Although indulging in fantasies about relations with other is arousing and exciting, it’s not in your best interest. My recommendation is to enjoy your wife with all of you.

      The sense of intimacy with her will develop more fully the more the two of you talk with each other and grow closer. Good communication leads to good relations in the bedroom.

      My advice is to give up the fantasies, especially in the bedroom. At some level your wife will know when you are fully with her or whether your mind is caught up in a fantasy of yours.

      Keeping It Real,

      Jeff

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