Before I tell you exactly how I came to identify as a bisexual swinger after twenty years with my husband, I’d like to provide an overview of our relationship. This is the prelude to our lifestyle journey, the “before,” our shared history.
This entire journey leading up to now is also the story of how I became myself. Well, not became, because that would imply past tense, and I think that one’s “self” is found anew often, a series of constant discoveries. Through these series of posts I reveal my metamorphosis from an average, white, middle-class, conservative, Christian, Midwestern, apprehensive girl into a woman who is sex-positive, self-confident or at least self-aware, more spiritual than religious, and on a journey of continuous self-improvement.
I blog partly to journal this for my husband and myself. We love our love story, and we’re proud of our journey and marriage, and writing things out helps us to remember and grow. Though my story centers around sex, it goes much deeper than that. Sex is but the outward expression of my love, desires, and sensuality. Through our sexual history, I see my sense of self unfolding. And I am proud of that, too.
I also blog to simply share my story with others. I don’t see or hear about unconventional sex lives like ours in the media or among my peers, so it was once easy to think that we were strange, or awkward, or just young and stupid. But the more people I meet on this journey, the more connected I feel to humanity, to God and the universe, to my husband, and to myself. It feels like a bit of a risk to bare it all. I could turn out to actually be an outcast, a ludicrous suburbanite with nothing better to do than dwell on her own sexual awakening. The risk is that I share myself, and it turns out that I’m nothing more than a fool.
I’m going to take the risk, which in itself shows how much self confidence I’ve gained in my relatively short time on this earth so far. I put myself out there for the world to see me, and my “us.” This is our backstory, our prelude.
Young Love
My husband, Jack, and I both grew up in the same suburban town in the Midwest. We both had a conservative, relatively religious upbringing. My upbringing centered more on Catholicism, with catechism every week and church every Sunday, rosaries, and a giant extended family. Jack’s family was quite well-off, privileged, Christian, and focused on etiquette and doing the right thing, albeit with some family turmoil thrown into the mix during his impressionable early teen years.
We met when we were in high school. We were both seventeen, balancing fun times and friends with good grades and college aspirations. We were quick to fall in love, admitting our deep affections to each other after only dating for two months. We were horny, too, and spent most of our free time together driving around our town, looking for places to park his SUV so that we could climb into the back and fool around. We considered having sex after prom (I know, so cliche), but decided that we weren’t ready. Besides risking pregnancy, we were still largely influenced by our families’ assertions that sex was best kept for marriage. We wanted it to be just right, so we decided to wait.
I went away to college first; I was in the grade ahead of him. The month before I left, he gave me a ring — not an engagement ring, but something we called a “promise ring.” We both knew what this meant — we’d be married someday, but we were simply too young just yet. The feelings were there, but not the means.
My first semester at college was awful. I felt like Juliet torn from my Romeo within my first year of love and lust, when the dopamine of my first love was still setting my emotions raging. I was homesick for Jack, but my mother assumed that I was homesick for home. She offered to have me move back, to enroll at the local university. Jack insisted that I stay. Second semester, I began to focus on my physical health, and my mental health improved, too. I ran outside and lifted weights at the gym. I shed my baby fat and gained some confidence and independence.
The next year, Jack joined me at my private Midwestern college. The next three years that we spent there were some of the happiest in my life. We were inseparable, known as the couple that everyone always saw together — walking across the quad between classes, eating together in the dining hall, studying together all over campus. We both worked in the library, arranging our shifts so that we’d be near each other then, too.
Our values and views started to change and shift in college, away from our parents and our conservative hometown. During his freshman year/my sophomore year, we finally had “real” sex for the first time. It was…well, it was a start.
Studying Sex at College
Jack joined a fraternity, and this became our home base on campus. I spent so much time at the frat house that the guys asked me to be the Sweetheart not once, but twice — something that had never been done before and as far as I know hasn’t been done since. I ate meals with the guys, helped them with their papers, and offered them relationship and sex advice. The guys were themselves around me. I was the girl they could talk to about anything, sex and body functions included. I suppose they sensed my own lack of shame and my interest in sex.
Our sex life was no secret. Looking back, I feel awful for our roommates, who surely knew that every time they went to class, we fucked and fooled around in our twin XL dorm beds until we passed out for a midday nap. We never stayed at parties much later than midnight, eager as we were to have some drunken sex before succumbing to alcohol induced sleep.
We connected with others through our interest in sex back then, too. People were fascinated with the ease that we spoke about all things sexual. The frat guys loved how I made girls feel comfortable enough at parties to show some boobs and let loose. On occasion I would dance or make out with other girls, the guys greedily watching.
It’s funny how you see things differently as an adult, looking back at your silly college self. There was a lot of exploration that I didn’t quite understand then, such as a relationship that I had with a girl who was dating one of the other frat guys. We were genuine friends at the time. We cared for each other, supporting each other through the ups and downs of college classes and job hunting. She and I also both had high sex drives and a shared grasp on sex-positivty. There was physical attraction…she was beautiful, voluptuous. Her eyes were sparkly, her skin was flawless, and her hair was always amazing and smooth. Amazingly, she told me that I was beautiful, too, and when she said it my heart soured a little each time. Jack adored her, too, and encouraged our friendship.
I remember thinking that it was a strange friendship we shared. On more than one occasion, this girl and I did things that had me wondering if we were crossing a line. One standout night started with some role playing in the basement of the frat house, doing one of those murder mystery parties in a relatively small group of about eight. Later, the party moved back into one of the bedrooms, evolving into sensual dancing, lots of touching, and eventually the two of us sharing vibrators and then having sex with our guys, side by side on the double futon mattress. Two other couples had sex in other parts of the room. It wasn’t an orgy, per say, but it was memorable.
She wasn’t the only girl. There were several. Another distinct set of memories involves a childhood friend of Jack’s, along with his girlfriend. The girlfriend and I made out a couple times, the guys watching. Another time we showered together and let them watch. I chalked all my experiences with girls back then to immaturity, fun, and exploration, never dreaming that they could be a stepping stone, an indication of what was to come later in my adult life.
Looking back, I see that Jack and I were muddling through a baby version of the lifestyle, living in such close quarters with so many others, our lives intertwined. Sex was our hobby, an expression of our inner selves and a way to let loose. It both connected us and let us explore our own deepest desires.
We still took our classes very seriously; I graduated at the top of my class with a nearly perfect GPA. Through our liberal arts education, I was even able to explore and express my interest in sex in a platonic, intellectual, way. Stemming from a literature class called Victorian Sexualities, I wrote my senior thesis on the prevalence of “adult” themes in children’s literature. With confidence, I presented my findings and insights to an auditorium of people, my parents included. (They probably spent much of that presentation wondering who the hell Christina Rossetti was and why anyone should care about the deeper sexual themes of “Goblin Market,” but to their credit they told me they were proud of me, and that meant a lot back then.) Meanwhile, Jack centered every psychology project possible around sexuality.
Babies Lull Our Sex Life to Sleep
Then, graduation. I graduated first, but he hurried to graduation, taking extra classes and graduating a semester early to start working and save up for our wedding and a house. We were Adulting. I got a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, then went to work on a second Master’s degree in Education. An hour after I submitted the final paper for that Master’s, I took my first ever pregnancy test. We were going to be parents at age 25.
Esther Perel has a whole section in her book Mating in Captivity about how parenthood can essentially kill a sex life — or at the very least, cause an interlude. Thankfully, for us, it was just a pause while I grappled with my changing body and responsibilities, but it stretched out for ten long years.
We had wanted that first baby, but we thought we’d have more time to prepare. My gynecologist explained that it could take some time for me to regain my normal menstrual cycle after going off the pill, but after just two weeks off the pill I got that positive pregnancy test. When we decided it was time to give our son siblings, we made our own plans. Figuring out which day I was ovulating seemed annoying and time consuming. Instead, we focused on having sex just about every day for a month, and at the end of the month, took a pregnancy test. Positive, both times. Two little sisters for our son.
The fourth baby was a complete surprise. We hadn’t planned on her — we had planned on a Jamaican vacation to finally be free and celebrate the end of breastfeeding baby #3. Jack scheduled a vasectomy. He was dying to get me to a nude beach, and there was one at a neighboring resort that we could visit to try things out. After I realized that a night of drunken sex had produced another little result, he cancelled the vasectomy, but we still went on vacation. Our week in Montego Bay ended up being chilly, and I spent much of it under a towel to warm my body while trying not to dry heave from morning sickness (which actually lasted all day for the first twenty weeks of that pregnancy — each pregnancy was worse than the last).
Six months after our fourth child was born, Jack finally got his vasectomy. The baby was sleeping, and he was advised not to drive himself home, so his mom dropped him off. When the baby woke up, I piled all four kids in the car and picked him up. Mission complete, childbearing phase over. Not one for taking any more chances, I had gone back on birth control after baby #4 was born. With his vasectomy complete, I threw out the pills and my libido began to return, but slowly.
Upon our youngest child’s birth, we became “that family.” When people see a young, white couple with four young kids, most assume that we’re very Christian, possibly Mormon (we’re not). It seems that only those who have had their own surprise babies realize that we’re actually just really into each other, to the point that our sex life sometimes becomes a little uncontrollable in the wake of our passion for each other. However, for all the good sex that we shared over our years as a growing family, this time was a challenge for us, too.
I did not really enjoy sex during pregnancy, and during breastfeeding I always felt a little awkward, too. I breastfed my first two babies for a year each, and my third and fourth for two years each. I’m a milk machine. To say that Jack loved my size D milk-engorged boobs would be an understatement.
Me? Not so much. They were heavy and in the way on my petite frame. There was no sports bra that could handle them when I ran, and I hated how they’d leak all over during sex. I never felt quite like myself while pregnant or breastfeeding…my big belly and then my big, leaky boobs were always there to remind me that I was tethered to another, smaller, demanding, and not-at-all-sexual human being. My motherly love for the baby was always in the way of my erotic self.
For ten years, from my first pregnancy until we weaned our fourth baby, we grappled with this new challenge in our relationship. Jack was more interested in having sex with me than ever, while I resisted all of his advances. I never initiated sex. Jack felt deflated by my disinterest. I felt annoyed and disrespected. I often just “let him do me,” lubing up and allowing him to rub my back while I laid on my side, eyes closed and in the zone, until he finally came and we could just go to sleep. We loved our kids and we still cared about each other, but this time in our lives was hard.
Emerging Out of the Baby Phase
The years following our fourth child’s birth were hectic yet boring, and ultimately life changing. Certain things go out the window when you have over the national average number of children. We are never on time. We limit our kids’ activities, yet every weeknight pre-COVID was packed with sports and clubs. We assign our older children to help with the younger ones. We are regimented with chores, schedules, routines, and meals, yet the house seems to be in a state of continuous chaos. There is always noise; silence is suspicious. A childless friend once remarked to us, “They all talk to you at the same time, and they all expect an answer!” Our kids are wild, so we’re working to shift our Type A values to an A-minus.
Motherhood has become both easier and harder since leaving the baby phase. The sheer volume of work is staggering. Finally, after living for a decade now in the next-size-up home that we bought after our second baby, we feel settled in. Everything has a place and all of our systems are implemented. Life is crazy, but also cozy and organized. We’ve also come back together as a couple, more rock solid than ever.
Jack and I have started to excel at communication. We worked through the worst of our issues from our early days as a new family, and as new issues arise we are working through them with more respect and empathy than we did when we were younger. We’re especially open and honest with each other in terms of our sexual desires; this has been nothing but positive for our sex life. Jack is especially decisive and good at telling me what he likes. He’s a visual guy, and he loves checking out women, and I think he gets off on telling me about it and seeing that I don’t get jealous. Even our kids tease Jack whenever our hot redheaded neighbor walks by, “Oooh, there she is, Dad!”
Jack is a classic extrovert. He’s chatty and friendly yet blunt. He has very few thoughts that he keeps to himself; his thoughts come barreling out of his mouth like a stream of consciousness, no matter the subject. We have an agreement that Jack is no longer permitted to pause movies mid-scene so that he can gab about what so-and-so reminded him of. Only podcasts will shut him up. Me, I’m the introvert, living most of my life in my mind. I don’t often speak until I’ve fleshed out my ideas in my head for some time. We balance each other out — he helps me think aloud with him, and I remind him that he doesn’t have to share everything he’s thinking. We’re finding our groove.
In July 2017, I nursed my last baby for the last time. It was bittersweet, yet refreshing, to be so very done. We went on a weekend vacation, just the two of us, for the first time since my pregnancy with her, and I smoked cannabis for the first time. Things were starting to change. I was starting to transform.
I was finally able to really leave all four of my children with other people, not tied down by breastfeeding or baby, or tethered to a breast pump during any outing more than three hours long. I regained not only my body, but also my mind and my soul. I adopted healthier habits — slowly making the transition from a glass of wine to a hit of grass when it’s time to relax and unwind. I shed ten pounds. I gave up added sugars and shed away another ten pounds without hardly trying. I upped my yoga practice and started listening to self-help books and podcasts on my commute.
For every bit that our sex life suffered from the effects of pregnancy and new babies, it soars from my renewed sense of self. After the baby years, we found our flow again, making up for all the eroticism that we had lost for ten years.
Rediscovering the Joy in Sex
Our sex sessions took on a new rhythm that we still quite enjoy. We started having sex about three to four times a week. If we have sex too much, our genitals get sore. Not a pretty picture, I know. If we don’t have sex enough…well, then we aren’t as happy. Sex is our way of connecting, reconnecting, using our physical selves to manifest our emotional and psychological selves. It’s once again become our way of playing. It’s our fun, our hobby. Plus, Jack starts complaining that his balls hurt if they don’t get emptied, and apparently it’s not as “good” if I don’t help. Nowadays, I’m happy to comply.
While we are increasingly experimental and adventurous in our sex lives now, our sex sessions often fall into a flow that we naturally took on shortly after the baby phase was past. It’s the sex session that we can fall back on when we’re not in the mood to be creative, and it keeps us going. It’s rather comforting. Our swinger friends call this type of sex “married people sex.” It’s that kind of sex that you default to with that partner that you’ve had forever. You know each other well, and you know what you both like, and you know how to do it so that everybody is satisfied and ends the night happy. Like my favorite vinyasa.
We go to bed together (see our Bedtime Routine). After cuddling and talking (sometimes about sex and sometimes about another topic that we have to get out of the way), we’ll begin to stroke each other. Jack enjoys playing with my nipples, and at the right time of the month, I enjoy gentle nipple play — pulling, tugging, flicking, sucking, light biting, and sometimes as much as twisting or nipple clamps. Or he might venture his hands down to my clit, rub my back, or let me lightly stroke his penis.
Many of these nights, Jack will just say, “I’m going down on you now,” and position our bodies so that he can give me oral sex. I’m a lucky girl — he’s fabulous down there. There’s not one thing about it that I can pinpoint, except that we’ve been playing together and doing this enough that he knows a dozen different techniques to try and is great at figuring out which one I’m going to be into that night. We know each other well enough that often we don’t need to have a conversation or even verbal directions, unless you count louder moaning when it’s getting good. He knows my body language, and I am accustomed to relaxing and letting him take over, enjoying the ride.
On my very favorite nights, I’ll often end up begging him to put his fingers in me while he does this (other nights, I might not be in a g-spot mood or I might be sore from a previous session, or we might be pressed for time, so we’ll skip straight to the intercourse). When he goes down on me while stimulating my G-spot with his fingers, I usually go a little wild. Having a very aroused clit is key to making most women squirt, me included, more so after our Tantric Sex Workshop than ever before. Also, it turns me on to know that he’s so turned on about licking up my ejaculation. What can I say…it’s hot.
Some nights, he might follow up with stimulating only my G-spot, not including the clit, depending on how my body wants it. We also tend to fuck after this for awhile, as having my clit and G-spot so aroused makes it easier for me to have another G-spot orgasm with him inside of me. This part of our session is where we might try different positions, not necessarily to get off but just to enjoy each other. I do climax often during these sessions, though…multiple orgasm girl here! Sometimes it’ll be my G-spot, and often I’ll have a clit orgasm when I am on top of him, but nothing like the next one.
My grand finale is a clit orgasm with him on top of me, missionary style, his body pressing against my clit. I grab his ass to guide him into the exact pressure and position, and he pumps against me. I can’t concentrate on kissing him during this — his prickly beard is distracting — so our heads are near each other but not touching, our breath heavy. I focus. I can feel the orgasm building up just like one of those climax curves we use to teach story structure, up and up the hill, feeling more and more intense and yet feeling my psyche move more and more distant from my body until it’s unreal.
It’s like floating, and pleasure, full awareness of the entire universe and all knowledge and emotion and goodness. It’s as if I leave my body for a moment — but the intensity of the physical demand it requires pulls me back as I roll down the hill I had just climbed, gasping with breath as I come back to earth, desperately trying to keep a grasp on the thoughts and feelings I had just enlightened in myself. We might do this another time or two, sometimes climbing higher hills and sometimes smaller. Always good. Sometimes I get on top, relishing in the control that I have over my ethereal, extended orgasms.
By this point, Jack is impatient to come himself, and he’ll often drag me to the floor, either on the side of our bed or in front of our full length mirror, where he fucks me from behind. Sometimes, my mind washes itself of arousal too quickly after my own little death, and I’m back to normal…not thinking about sex anymore…maybe tired, or maybe focused on what kind of carpeting would look good in our room when we remodel the second story of our home.
But on the best days, I’m still woozy enough from my previous orgasms and still aroused enough for him to perfectly hit my G-spot yet again, and I lose myself for the umpteenth time, briefly, while he pumps away. He likes to talk dirty while he does this, though usually to be fair it’s not always “dirty,” per say — sometimes this is when he tells me, in all the glorious detail that a girl could ever want, about how much he loves me. He’ll call me a goddess or an angel. This is also when he tells me, in detail, all the sexual things he’d like to do with me another time, preferably in front of others or involving others.
I like hearing what he has to say, though I can’t always verbalize back to him what I would like, too. It’s pretty much the one time I don’t know what to say about sex, but I’d say I have an excuse. After being pleasured for an hour straight and perfectly satisfied, I can’t imagine anything else. Whatever he wants to do, I’ll do it.
That’s where the next phase of our story begins. With the baby nearing her third birthday, it was time for us to try for a real vacation again, just the two of us. The destination was easily decided — Jamaica had sun, warmth, weed, and water, plus a direct flight from our airport of choice. And Jack already had the perfect resort in mind.
For months as he finished in me, staring into my eyes through the mirror, he would tell me about how he wanted to bring me to a nude beach. Parade me around in front of people. Let other people look at my body. Show me off. Then take me back to the room and do this to me.
Jack was insistent. We wouldn’t just visit a nude beach while we were staying somewhere else, we’d be staying at a place with its own clothing prohibited beach and pool. A whole week of naked.
Good wife that I am, I agreed.