It seems to me that our culture puts so many labels and filters on people. Material wealth, tribalism, political parties, sports teams, college alumni, religion, race, the opportunities we have to polarize seem endless. Sometimes you can see these things very quickly in the lifestyle , and they will determine who you have some things in common with and those you don't. While you're looking for someone you are going to need to be very comfortable with, a danger is that you could also disqualify a couple too early.
You'll see that as the 4 way connections begin to happen you can get a better sense of the person's ethics, intentions, relationship with each other, etc. Then once you find enough common ground... the real fun and life giving benefits of group intimacy can really begin.
In a great lifestyle encounter all of those filters would ideally fall away letting us see them in their authenticity, the essence of the divine in them, the way I feel we are supposed to see others. When you recognize the divine in another your expectations of them go away, because you are using your divine eyes to see them.
The obvious first step of the chemistry is the visual or physical attraction, but once you go deeper let's be honest... every person is a mixed bag of divine energy, love, intellect, vulnerability, goodwill AND insecurities, weaknesses, bad choices, hurt, and brokenness. Everyone is all of those things, but when we SEE their true essence, or their divine imprint and then we physically connect on the most human level a metaphysical experience takes place. To watch and assist a connected couple make love and see them in their truest sense is a gift, and I believe it can have the power to heal brokenness or insecurities inside our own heads and hearts. Likewise, for us to be able to share our truest physicality is a gift we give that blesses us in return. What everyone receives is the gift of being truly seen and being accepted. Not just acceptance as nonjudgment, but feeing genuinely desired and affirmed. This is the ultimate longing of the human heart. Whatever happens in the encounter, the only requirement is that conscious love and respect for humanity are the drivers of every action.
Our best interactions have been when everyone has focused so much on the others they weren't concerned with their own performance or outcome. Practically speaking, for us that took a lot of prescreening via text and boundaries discussions just to ensure that everyone had a mutual attraction and comfort level with good intentions.
Every couple we talk with seems to describe awkward, sometimes funny, sometimes painful experiences from when they were new. If you're familiar with our back story (episode 2) you know we came back into the lifestyle with a bit of baggage, but I suspect that as time goes on we'll keep developing our personal style and expanding our experiences to include more styles. The most important thing for us is that the primary relationships remain the focus of each couple and that if anything breaks down along the way each couple still has a shared experience with their own your partner, and finally no one is ever defined by the disappointments.
Performance issues happen sometimes, other couple's play style don't always match yours, these things say nothing about you or them, only that it wasn't a good match at that time. We've learned that the quicker we step out of our emotional reaction in nonjudgmental observation and talk with each other about what we were feeling the less we give that drama/trauma any power to define us.
Not everyone may feel these social needs in this exact way. You may not feel like your lifestyle flavor is anything deeper than just some fun sex with some hot people- and that's great too! But all of the love and respectful intentions still apply, because the lifestyle community is in a position of responsibility to positively impact each other. I also believe that sentiment can't help but spill over into other areas of our lives. We all have the chance to pay good intentions forward, and in our own experience what we've gotten back within our relationship is immeasurable .
Namaste,
Eve
Your message here is clear, insightful, hopeful, and far-reaching, Eve. It rings from someone who knows that their talent for such insight is the product of an engagement in the process of their own life journey over time; yet, you still view your responsibility to the whole of the group—the community at large.
A spiritual calling, perhaps, that you are able to somehow know, adds value to your-own life, in as much or more, as it also adds inertia to your own life journey.
But you rightfully, I believe, will/do recognize that your own growth happens in the vibrancy and vigor of those relationships that you have touched and fostered, around you.
God Speed Eve and Adam on your journey…
Hi! Thanks for your latest podcast, number 2.5 or something :) As I recently got my first comment on my blog, I would like to share it with you. https://beforeswinging.livejournal.com/ Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Thank you for your important message. I am a newbie to swinging but a bit deeper into spiritual world view, so I am very happy to find your podcast. Looking forward to hear more from you!