At the Mercy of Others

I’ve been chatting with Pyx about AFF and CL and, really, just how totally fucked up AFF is; those of you who have ever checked out this site knows what I’m talking about.  You’ve already made the big leap from being totally monogamous to opening things up in your relationship, do what a lot of people new to this do and join AFF… and then find out that it wasn’t such a good idea or smart investment of your money if you paid to be a premium member.  To that end, paying that fee just opens you up further to be at the mercy of others and their not-so like-minded thinking.

The first indication that the shit on this site is funky begins with your profile picture.  We had a non-nude picture of us as our primary pic… and weren’t even getting a passing look.  On a whim, I put a kinda nude picture of my lady on there – and the hits just exploded and, oh, yeah, despite what our profile said about what we wanted, we were getting hits from people who just weren’t into what we were into and some of them had the audacity to suggest that if we didn’t want to do shit the way they wanted to do it – read this as have their way with my baby’s rather luscious body – then we were all fucked up, clueless and was even told we had no business being in the lifestyle.

Say what?  Wait, what happened to being open- and like-minded?  Hold up… when your profile said that you were down for anything and that you were wild and kinky, um, were you lying about that?  Oh, so, you want to play with us but you’re not sure if your wife will want to play?  If that’s the case, why are you talking to us?

The questions could continue unabated on why people behave the way they do when it comes to sex and being on AFF and similar sites.  You learn a lot of things rather quickly and what you manage to learn often isn’t very pretty and can be rather distasteful, revealing prejudices that one would think that sex, one of the universal languages, could easily overcome.

So if you went into being open or swinging and had the thought in your head that joining AFF (or some other site) would open the doors to sexual nirvana for you, uh, guess again.  I’m not gonna say that you won’t find what you’re looking for because people are rather successful on AFF… but what I am saying is that chances are good you’re gonna find a lot of shit that you weren’t even looking for and even get requests for sex in ways that would make a porn star shudder.

Like the one ‘couple’ that contacted us on AFF and said that they’d be willing to do whatever we wanted them to do… as long as my baby gave the man a golden shower.  Uh… okay…  So when we stopped laughing and told them there was no way we were going to do that – did you not see the part in our profile that said no watersports? – then we were deemed too ignorant of the needs of others and, thus, unworthy to fuck.

Your needs?  What about our needs?  Ye gods, one wouldn’t think that this question would ever come up, right?  But, more often than not, it does because one of the other things you learn is that being on a swinging site ain’t about your needs and no matter how clearly you state them:  This is about everyone else’s needs and if you can’t, won’t, or are otherwise unwilling to play the game their way, then you ain’t shit and never will be.

After messing around with some of the idiots on AFF and other sites, it’s no wonder that couples who want to swing take a big step back and opt for swinging celibacy, willing to just sit, wait, and watch for that one elusive couple who will want what they want and the way they want it.  One of the things I noticed on the various sites we belong to is that you are often expected and required to do some version of taking one for the team, something that swingers generally aren’t fond of doing.  Even in real life, having sex with your partner is about compromise, figuring out that list of things you’ll both do and won’t do for whatever reason… and what you find out is that if you had it in your head that jumping into the deep end of being non-monogamous was going to be easy, yeah, sure it is… because you’re now in a situation where you may have to compromise and negotiate for sex when you’re really not of a mind to do so.

AFF, in my opinion, is the worst of the many sites and if anyone’s ever joined AFF and they don’t have their own horror stories to tell, I’d be surprised.  AFF would have you pay a premium price so that you can get your feelings hurt, be offended, be summarily rejected, ridiculed, and just flat-out dissed; shit, if that’s your cup of tea, you can probably go to your next family reunion barbeque and have all that happen – and for free, at that.

You can join these sites and be as aggressive in your pursuit of whatever’s floating both of your boats… and you’re still pretty much at the mercy of others because if you can’t get them to agree with what you’re proposing, that aggressive pursuit’s not really working for you all that well.  I think it’s sad to actually see how totally fucked up people can be when it comes to sex and in a lifestyle that’ll make you think that everything’s wide open, free-spirited, unfettered, and unadulterated sexual pleasure – and the reality says that it’s anything but which, of course, is why so many newbies get totally discouraged and give up their goals and dreams of an enriching and liberating non-monogamous relationship.