Just the Tip is a sex and relationship column hosted by queer non-monogamous kinkster Jera Brown. Here you will find interviews with sexuality researchers and educators as well as smart and compassionate responses to anonymous questions. If you would like to be interviewed or have a sex or love question you’d like Jera to answer, email justthequestions@gmail.com or DM Jera on Instagram or Twitter @thejerabrown.
My husband and I fuck around with another couple. So far, it’s very PG-13 stuff. Swapping videos/ pics, making out…yada yada. Both of us are turned on by the idea of switching couples but as much as it turns me on, I’m worried that afterwards would be a mental shit show. Is he thinking about her? Does he want her instead of me? Is he really OK with me getting fucked by another guy? Am I OK with being with another guy? So… basically, it’s a huge turn on, we are tiptoeing closer to it…but we don’t want to regret it.
I want to believe my husband and I will to be okay. However, not having been in the *after* position , I don’t know how I’ll react. The flirting and exchanging pics/ videos, and the handsy stuff we have already done has really helped our sex life. He has always wanted a threesome with another girl. I just don’t know if he could REALLY handle if we brought in another man. But it’s something that we keep bringing up and keep inching towards…so any advice or tips to implement is appreciated.
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So in certain alternative communities (kink and polyamory), communication is really heavily emphasized. Like it’s almost exhausting how much you’re supposed to communicate. But it’s also super necessary when you’re doing things that are physically or emotionally risky.
But in swinging communities or in private swinging settings, there’s less of this culture of communication. In all my swinging experience, there’s still been positive communication that’s happened — it just wasn’t as emphasized. And there are fewer workshops on swinging communication, things like that. (Shoutout to Life on the Swingset which does a great job of swingers education, though!)
My point is: don’t be afraid to communicate. The best group experiences that I’ve had, there was a lot of discussion throughout like, do you want to try to do this now? Is this okay? And anytime we think that talking is ruining the sexy, it ends up, it’s actually the opposite that happens.
It’s not going to hurt anything just to tell the couple up front, “We’re attracted to you. We have fun. This is really new for us, so we want to be cautious.” If you’re taking it slow to begin with, then that shouldn’t be news.
The worst thing you can do is feel uneasy in the middle of things and feel obligated to keep going. You don’t. Not ever. I recommend thinking in advance what you’re going to say if for some reason you need to back out in the middle of it, because nobody that’s a decent human being is going to fault you for that.
You can also come up with a sentence or a phrase that you and your hubbie could use if you’re starting to get uncomfortable but don’t want to make things weird. It’s a way of confirming you need a check-in in a way that doesn’t just hurt the other people’s feelings or break the mood. It could be as simple as, if you go to the bathroom, your hubbie should come check on you. (Or vice versa).
But I don’t want this preparation to act like a self-fulfilling prophecy! You can do some sexy preparation, as well! Come up with fun warm-up games or fantasize about the swap during sex.
But here’s the bigger advice. If you’re worried about feelings coming up and unresolved jealousy or whatever, work through the scenarios before they happen.
I think there are ways that we can be vocal about our fears and have our partners offer reassurance. (What kind of reassurance do you need to feel safe and secure in these situations?) But there are also times when your fears just don’t deserve the amount of credit that you give them. And you can lessen your fears by sitting with them on your own before talking to your husband about them. For instance, so what if he imagines this other woman once in a while? Maybe a weird to say, but: it doesn’t mean he’s less committed to you or desires you less. He could be turned on by the novelty of it or the taboo of imagining another woman.
If so many of our fears are about us not being worthy, we have to fight back. If you know you’re worthy of your husband’s commitment, desire, love, then you can look at these fears or insecurities in a new way. And if a situation comes up that tests any of it, look at whether they’re just old wounds that don’t deserve the fear they instigate.
Especially when I’ve been in three-ways or swinging situations with other femme-bodied people that are much smaller than me, of course, there’s all sorts of body image stuff that comes up, which is natural in a society that values thinness. I know if I dwell on it, then I’m reducing my partner’s attraction to me, which is not fair to them. And I’m reducing my own attractiveness to cultural stereotypes, which isn’t fair to me. But in these moments, I’m not the most logical version of myself.
When referring to the internal part of us that’s scared, my therapist uses the analogy of a crying kid in the car. Because it’s usually a wounded, less logical part of us that’s crying out. And it’s important to make sure the crying kid stays in the back of the car and doesn’t drive. So to some extent, when these things come up, the most conscious, logical part of me has to tell the scared kid in the back of the car something like, “Yeah, that’s scary! But I’m going to keep driving, because this road that I’m on is super fun.”
I’m sure you don’t want to do anything that might damage the connection you have with your husband. But you also don’t want to live in fear of doing that, either. It’s ok to “test it” in a way by doing things that put you both outside your comfort zones.
So how do you strengthen and maintain that connection? Obviously, this is a whole separate topic, but one thing I learned when I was opening up a relationship is that I needed to make my partner feel incredibly important to me. I needed to make him feel like he was the one I didn’t just want to go home with, but also wanted to be sexy for. To be honest, I didn’t do a great job of this. It’s so easy to get swept up in the excitement of new things. But if you’re letting other people in – even if it’s only in the bedroom — I think it’s useful to let your partner know that you’re still excited about him too.