NSE: New Swinger Energy
You want to see them as much as possible, you relish every advancement in physicality and emotion. It’s the thing we’re chasing when we’re single in the vanilla world. And when we’re not so single anymore and the NRE has faded into background noise, it’s the thing we often miss most. For me it was the first kiss that I missed most; that uncertainty, that buildup, the moment where the first kiss would not be held back anymore and faces drifted together. I treasured that. In my monogamous life it was what I yearned for most because I knew it could never happen again in monogamy.
One of the most exciting things about becoming a swinger isn’t even really the sex.
“Hey now, Coop, don’t be sayin’ things you can’t take back!” you say.
But I grow weary of having imaginary conversations with imaginary readers in the middle of essays so I give you the cold shoulder and continue my point. Of course the sex is exciting. The sex also brings along with it the allure of new, different, unique. But by default, for me, the most exciting thing about swinging is being able to live in almost a perpetual state of New Relationship Energy. Keeping everything from growing stagnant and dull, keeping excitement up and reinvigorating you. I’ve cultivated a wonderful group of playmates that I see regularly. But as schedules fill up and jobs/family/etc take up lots of time for friends, I always keep eyes open for the new and different. This is something we’re specifically not allowed to do as monogamous folk.
I’ve noticed that there’s another level to it, beyond simply meeting new couples and developing new relationships. There is the New Relationship Energy that you feel with new couples, new playmates, wanting to spend time with them, exploring their likes and dislikes, their turn-ons and offs, their kinks and quirks. There’s also something else that has the potential to crop up with each new relationship.
New Swinger Energy. (You may not have heard of this one ‘cuz I made it up.)
After you’ve been swinging for a long time, it’s tempting to get a little jaded. Well, it’s not so much tempting as just happens. The lifestyle isn’t all shiny and new anymore. You’re no longer feeling that “Oh my god, we’re doing something really unique!” feeling because you’ve been living it, breathing it. Just like a regular vanilla relationship, your relationship with swinging is settling into its own sort of routine.
I don’t want anyone to misunderstand here. Swinging has never felt dull to me. It has never been what would be considered routine in the vanilla world. Even routine swinging is far more exciting than anything I ever did as a vanilla boy. But it is very easy to settle into whatever your routine is. If you go to clubs every Saturday night, that’s your thing, it’s expected, it’s done. Same as having a swing date every Friday. You probably have some amazing hot sex on those nights, but it may lose some of the pizazz.
The pizazz is the shakeup.
It’s why people in long term monogamous relationships tend to chase younger, faster, more exciting people to have affairs with. They shake up the status quo. They introduce a little new, a little exciting, a little strange into the mix.
Every once in a while you’ll meet a playmate or couple that you connect with in such a way that it not only activates your NRE switch but also flips the far more elusive New Swinger Energy switch. They put in a fresh set of batteries and remind you what it was like to be young, naive, newborn swingers—eyes wide and mouth agape at the world you stumbled upon, where your hedonistic delights were suddenly of utmost importance. After their first date with an awesome couple, we swingers often start fucking our partners like teenagers again, as though a light had been shown into the very core of this lifestyle, and reignited that flame at the center.
This is the difference between New Relationship Energy and New Swinger Energy. With New Relationship Energy you wind up creating an intense connection with your new playmates, and you want to spend all the time getting to know them. New Swinger Energy actually does something very unique. It turns the process back in on itself like a hall of mirrors. Your relationship between you and your primary experiences the spark and the pizazz is back. You find yourself taking new sexy pictures, updating your web profile, fucking like bunnies again. The very same spark most of us felt that first week we were officially considering ourselves swingers.
We all know that the lifestyle has its ebbs and flows and that your personal lives and relationship with your primary will also have peaks and valleys, but those who make the suggestion that New Relationship Energy is superficial are missing the point. It doesn’t matter if it’s superficial or even that it is artificial because your brain has just turned on the happy juice in your body. It’s what gives you a very real high, the glimpse of euphoria that we so rarely get to see in life.
When swinging is at its best, it’s not what you do with the other couples that matters nearly as much as what you’re doing with each other. Is it new, is it exciting? Are you experimenting? Are you using these relationships with others to reconnect in your primary relationship, which sits at the heart of your swinging lifestyle?
Every time you can flip that NSE switch and remind yourself of the exciting realities that what we’re doing is amazing and that our lives aren’t like other people’s, you solidify the foundation on which you’re building.
This article is an excerpt from my book, My Life on the Swingset: Adventures in Swinging & Polyamory.
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