Swinger Code Words and Signs

When you’re dealing with hardcore, dedicated full-blown lifestyle swingers, it’s a ‘secret’ club. They have special websites and tightly controlled social circles. They’re an elite group that control who’s in and who’s not in.

Some communities even have several websites where swingers find other swingers in their area. The websites tell others about the community and also serves as a way of finding new ‘customers’.

They’re used like a Craigs list in finding new swingers, since they tire of the old ones. There is always the thrill of finding new people. The sites are also about ‘screening’ those deemed undesirable from being part of the swinger scene.

In understanding swingers, you’re entering a whole other world. Thier world is filled with new meanings and terms for old words.

You’re also dealing with finding meeting places that you need to have ‘someone in the know’ tell you about. These people take many precautions to hide what they are doing and protect the swingers involved.

It’s puzzling since if they were really “okay” with what they were doing, why all the need for secrecy?

When outsiders learn about swinger, it changes their relationship. It changes how they interact with them and talk with them.

Having a lifestyle built on double-meanings and surrounding it with secrecy has some contradictions to it. When swingers talk about sharing, its more consuming sexual relationships at the expense of others. I suspect it’s more about ‘sharing’ only with other elites.

It’s like a special cliche or dinner club that keeps out those deemed ‘undesirable’. The swingers will swing (or as they call it, ‘play‘), but only with a limited, approved few.

It amounts to sharing your toys with ‘special’ friends. That to me is not swinging, it’s more like limited sharing.

The ‘elite’ swingers often give lavish gifts to those who can’t return the favor in order to create an indebtedness. This indebtedness creates a feeling of emotional payback. They create an environment where ‘you owe them’.

The elite swingers are highly organized and exist in many communities. Gaining access to them requires secret code words and signs. Even learning about them requires knowledge of what terms are used in finding their website.

With the non-elite swingers, the rules are different. With the non-elites, there’s also a special language. You will hear talk about being ‘in the lifestyle‘.

There will also be special terms used in describing outsiders or those holding traditional views of marriage. This is where you hear the term ‘vanilla‘ in reference to outsiders, newcomers or the uninitiated.

Within the group, the whole term ‘adultery‘ or ‘cheating’ is redefined.

Adultery is when you sleep with someone besides your spouse ‘without permission’. Somehow when you sleep with someone else with permission, the act is viewed as tolerable, while the other is not.

So, you swingers may agree with you that adultery is a bad thing, yet what they mean when they use the term ‘adultery’ is something totally different than what you think they mean.

Since there is a whole different language, outsiders who don’t know the language are lost and confused. The insiders on the other hand use it to keep their special club limited to those ‘in the know’.

Swingers often pick on double-meanings of words and subtle cues that you may miss. This is not a ‘secret code’, this is a matter that ‘they’re not like you’. They don’t think like you do.

You’ll hear terms like ‘play’, vanilla, unicorn, hard swap, soft swap, same room, separate room, on premise, off premise, bull, open door, closed door along with localized terms from various regions.

In the swinging community, each of these terms refer to specific behaviors. If you are ‘in the know’ they are descriptive terms for various forms of swinging behavior. For the uninitiated, such terms might as well be a foreign language.

The use of such terms shouldn’t surprise you. Consider how many code words or special references you have for the sexual equipment of you and your spouse.

When most couples have their own special language for sexual activities, it should come as no surprise that when you have a community of people, that they would share special terms for their activities.

There are also some signals for swingers such as ‘pineapple decor’ and wearing a black ring (these may vary from community to community). In some communities, the wearing of toe rings by females is viewed as a sign of being “in”.  Each of these terms and items has meaning within the swinging community or ‘lifestyle (or LS) as they say.

There are even code words for those who leave the swinging lifestyle. The term “drop-out” is used in referring to those who left the lifestyle.

They don’t look at the world like you do. You assume that because they live in the same neighborhood, go to the same stores and speak English like you do, that they mean the same thing as you do.

Being from the South, we often used the expression “Those people ain’t like us“. I learned what that expression meant. Expecting them to be like you and think like you, is a BIG assumption that may lead you to make big mistakes.

Best Regards,

Jeff

PS-If you are struggling with emotional turmoil related to swinging, it may be relationship trauma. Using larger amounts of alcohol or drugs to cope, going into deeper emotional states and losing your motivation could be your body’s way of telling you it’s been traumatized.

Your body may be telling you something that your mind is trying to block out.  Each relationship you have changes you whether you intend for it to or not.

The webinar “Overcoming Relationship Trauma for Swingers” will help you deal with this issue. You are part of a unique group that has unique needs and calls for unique solutions.