Question: My boyfriend has just told me that he is a swinger.  We have been dating for about seven months.  Does this mean he is losing interest, or is he truthful when he talks about swinging as something we do together?  I come from a very religious, southern, Christian background.  To say that this has been shocking is an understatement of biblical proportions.  We have taken things slow in order to be sure that our relationship is right for us, and I love him.  He has not been pushy, and now I am curious.  Did I mention that I am scared?

Answer: Well, you should be scared.  Relationships are scary at times, and the issues you are confronting are important.  We aren’t discussing whether to buy the red mini-van or the white one here.  What you are discussing with your boyfriend concerns profound issues of sexual identity, personhood and couple hood. 

Faith wise, if you actually read the Bible, many people were swingers and it was no big deal in the Old Testament.  Yet in these supposedly modern times, this is glossed over by most current Christian religious sects.  In fact, they generally freak out where sexual desire is concerned.  They like to ignore history, Biblical hermeneutics (the intellectual side of studying the Bible, as opposed to the ‘I know it all because I know it’s true in my heart’ school), and science.  The simple, often ignored facts conclusively show that swinging (GASP!) existed in Biblical times and was an accepted practice.  It wasn’t until the Council of Nicea, around three hundred years after the death of Christ, that asexual religious nuts hijacked Christianity and passed down much of the sexual nonsense our culture accepts as a given fact today.  

From what you have told us, it sounds like your boyfriend has come to terms with both his own sexual identity and sexual reality.  Everyone has fantasies.  Everyone has desires.  Swinging is simply the honest expression of those fantasies.  If your boyfriend wanted to cheat on you, he wouldn’t have said anything to you.  He would have cheated on you behind your back.  So it sounds like he has been upfront, honest, and really wants to swing with you, not cheat on you. 

There are many different forms of swinging, and many different ways to meet people - slowly. For an online dating site,  especially in the south, our members prefer SwingLifeStyle.

As for being curious, we are not sure what you mean: Some couples watch and get watched, others go as far as oral sex, and others are into full swapping with sexual intercourse with other partners.  The list of ‘types’ or variations on the swinging theme are as endless and as unique as the two of you.