[Veronica and I wrote this one together...]

God bless the internet! Between Craigslist, Adult Friend Finder, Swinglifestyle, Ashley Madison and a whole host of other sites, there are plenty of opportunities to find love/sex/fuck buddies/ friends-with-benefits or whatever else you’re looking for.

But how to figure out who is “for real” and who isn’t?

What raises a ‘red flag’ for us?  Who is wasting our time and who is genuinely interested in seeing us?  And by seeing us, I mean fucking us.  Because that’s why we’re swingers, we have fun fucking other people.  Sport fucking, if you will.

In Bill Cosby’s brilliant monologue about childbirth he references he and his wife being intellectuals. You can watch the clip, which is still hilarious more than 25 years later. Anyway, he references that as intellectuals, he and his wife go to school to learn things that other people just do naturally. Hubman and I consider ourselves to be intellectuals. It’s either that or we were simply able to sit still long enough to complete many, many years of school.

When we decided to participate in the lifestyle we did some research. We mostly used different websites and read some books. We also took the opportunity to question people that we met at our first lifestyle party. While these people were EXTREMELY helpful and probably saved us months of mistakes, experience is still the best teacher. There are many red flags to be aware of out there in the lifestyle. For those of you considering going into the lifestyle, we thought we would share some of our mistakes and the frustrations we have encountered.

Issue #1: Is there a woman in this “couple”?

One common misconception about swinging is that the whole thing is engineered by a bunch of horny men. That could not be further from the truth. While you need a man and a woman to swap, (and for the sake of this, we are going with heterosexual with a side of bi-girl sex) swinging is all about the women. In the more balanced couples we meet, the woman is the one in charge of the social planning.

However, many newbies will start and continue corresponding with couples where there is no woman, and then get pissed when the no-woman issue reveals itself. This usually happens as you are planning the date. The guy will confess that he and the woman on the profile recently broke up, but he would still like to meet you guys. If you meet this guy, run, run as fast as you can.

So how to spot the “Chickless Couple” before you waste too much time?

1. The profile picture is a solo picture of the man: If the woman is not front and center, chances are there is no woman. The profile is advertising and the woman is the spokesperson and the bait.
2. The pictures of the woman looks very generic and vaguely familiar: That is because they have been lifted from someone else’s website or a swimsuit catalog. Heck, we all know how easy it is to save photos from blogs. How much harder is it to upload them to a profile? Not too hard.
3. The description of the woman is generic with no discussion about what she likes in the profile, but there is LOTS of information about the man.  Or, he says he has a female friend who likes to play as well.  Suuuuuure he does…
4. The woman is never around to webcam, or there is always issues why you can’t see them but they still want to see you.
5. You can never talk to the woman. It is a strict rule of ours that the ladies arrange the 1st meeting on the phone. That way, we can be sure there is a woman there. Unless the woman is deaf or mute you should be able to speak to her before you meet.

There is one “couple” that stands out as a prime example for us.  We have attempted to webcam with them several times, but there is always an issue on their end, they frequently request to trade pics but then send us the same ones we’ve already seen before, and when we attempted to jump start things by proposing an actual date we were met with silence.  Either there is actually not a woman there, or there are an example of Issue #2…

Issue #2: Couples that are flakier than a croissant factory

You can argue that we are amoral sluts headed straight for the lake of fire, but you cannot call us flaky. We respond promptly to emails, answer our chats and only cancel in an emergency. And if we’re not interested, for whatever, we will politely tell them so, rather than ignore them. Sadly, it appers that we are rare. How can you tell if you are dealing with a flake?

1. If they have had their profile up for awhile (at least a year) but claim to have never actually swapped, chances are they are not serious. Veronica has IM’ed with a woman who initiated contact with her. Her profile looking for a woman had been up for a year, and as a single, attractive, non-smoking woman, she claimed to have never so much as kissed another woman yet.
2. If after IM’ing and/or webcamming, complete with naughty talk and virtual sex, they do not ask to talk to you.
3. Or, you take the initiative and give them your phone number, and get nothing.

We rule out couples by offering them a solid date. We tell them, we have a sitter and plans to go out on a certain night and we invite them to join us. We give them about 5 days to a week’s notice. If they can’t come and don’t try to offer up a different night, chances are they are flaky. The only exception to this is if you have a couple with limited babysitting options. We have 4 girls who normally sit for us and can normally get one of them with 24 hours notice, sometimes less, especially since we don’t go out a lot on Saturdays. If the couple counters with, we have to check with the sitter and get back to you give them a chance to do so. If they don’t get back to you, even to say “sorry, perhaps another time” then they are flaky.

Matt and Lisa are a great example.  They state that they only allow themselves one date-night per month, and we first bagen corresponding with them in late October.  November didn’t work out, as Veronica was in Indianapolis meeting some other bloggers.  December, they told us they had plans to attend a house party and invited us to come along, to which we readily agreed.  We repeatedly inquire about the location and other details, to no avail.  The day before the party, they tell us the party is full and there is no room for more attendees, them included.  Huh?  So we try again in January, agreeing to meet at a hotel meet and greet.  This time, we both cancelled because of inclement weather.  Last weekend we were going out for a date, just the two of us.  What the hell, let’s give them one more chance.  Veronica tells him of our plans that morning, he says great, we’ll see if we can get out.  Nothing, not even a “hey, sorry, but it wasn’t enough notice” in reply.  Either they are world class flakes or there is no woman there, because we’ve never actually seen or heard her, despite Hubman’s repeated attempted to initiate contact with her.  We’re DONE with them.

The flakiest of all are single women. One of the reasons that Hubman and I relaxed our moral standards to include married women is that if we were waiting for a single woman, we would still be waiting.

Last summer Veronica made contact with a very attractive woman on AFF.  They exchanged naughty pictures, chatted on the phone a few times, and set a date to meet.  The woman cancelled.  They rescheduled, she cancelled again.  And again. Then Veronica was in her town for a conference, told her so, and suggested that she could meet for a quick dinner or something.  No response.

Its kind of like that whole “He’s just not that into you” concept. If a couple wants to meet, they will do their best to make it happen. When we hung out with Max and Irma, they told us that they did not have ready access to sitters, but we could come over to their house after 9pm when their kids were long in bed, which is what we did.

Within the flaky is a subset we call ‘collectors’. They like to collect naked pictures and are not into meeting. Set a limit with yourself that you will send no more than a certain number of photos. Then it’s meeting time. There are also people who just like to chat and webcam. After two sessions we tell the couple that we like them and want to meet. If they are not responsive, then we move on.

Also never send more than one photo without reciprocation. This is another good way to weed out the ‘no woman’ people.

Issues #3: The Couple is NOTHING like their profile.

Truth in advertising? Hah!

On several of the lifestyle sites, you put in your age instead of your birthday. The system then does not update your age. Many couples forget to do that. [Like Hubman.  Crap, I turned 39 a few weeks ago.  Better go check our profile...] So when gauging age you might want to add one year to the posted age for every year the profile is up.

Another issues is that people post photos of themselves…..from 5 years ago. Then you meet them and they look nothing like their photos. Look carefully at the non-naked photos. How old does the clothing they are wearing look? For example, just how crisp looking is that “Red Sox 2004 World Champions shirt? That can help you date the pictures. When swapping photos, I try to include at least one photo with a date stamp so the receiver knows it is recent. However, that is a tricky one to work with since it would be rude to ask for a date-stamped photo. That is when the webcam becomes your friend. That is also why we I like to go to parties. We can see people live and in person in a low pressure situation. If we know we are going to a party, we now ask the couple that we are courting if they are going as well and try to encourage them to go.

[Speaking of which, we're going to another party this weekend and have told a couple that contacted us that we'll be there.  We'll see what happens...]

Before our second meet and greet party, we contacted a couple or two on the lifestyle website that we found attractive and knew would be at the party, to let them know we where looking forward to meeting them.

Yikes!  On their profile they listed their ages in the early 40s and showed a few pictures, but no face pics.  After meeting them, there is no way in hell that either of them is a day under 50!  Old, old pictures!

We’re sure that some of our friends in the lifestyle have similar tales.  Or perhaps you disagree with our assessment of some of these couples.

But we *know* that there is at least one couple who reads here regularly and is considering the lifestyle, so we hope this post at least is helpful for them, if not for anyone else.