Swing Shift Volume 23- Keeping Secrets

At the beginning of last weeks post, I solicited comments on the following column suggestion from an anonymous reader:

How do you balance and/or separate your “everyday” life and your “swinger” life?

Obviously your non-swinging friends and family and co-workers don’t know about this other side of your life. And your swinging friends aren’t the ones you’d invite to a family barbecue with your folks. Or a playdate with the kids. Or would you? Do you ever feel like you are leading a double life? Do you keep the two areas compartmentalized? Or do they bleed over into each other?

I’m curious about how people might approach that aspect of discreet polyamory.

Playfully Yours responded with the following:

I truly believe that it is a double life!  Sometimes it was hard and other times it was so exciting.
The hard part was when husbands would try and hook-up or meet outside of the initial arrangement.

I even had some call me after the couple broke up and wanted to be with me as well.  I didn’t do it!  It was more because he could be a sarcastic butthole.  I know it was his personality but I don’t want to deal with that 24/7.

It was hard when I said to Vanilla friends and family that I had plans.  What made it hard was those inquiring about a NEW man for myself and not disclosing where I went and dodging that bullet.  I ultimately said I was staying home and watching a movie or not feeling great and wanted to veg.  It helped not having to deal with all the questions.  Sometimes I did say I had a booty-call.  People do understand that.

I did find my sexual equal for 6 months….I miss that.

All in all it was a great sexual experience and learning more about myself.

First of all, thanks to Playfully Yours for the comment, we appreciate it!  We don’t have any family within a 4 hr drive, and explaining what we’re doing when we go out is not an issue, so we consider ourselves fortunate in not having to deal with that.  If we did, we could easily explain some of our date nights- we have always believed that even in marriage you should never stop dating your spouse.  Even now, about once a month Veronica and I will get a sitter and go out, just the two of us.  Sometimes, we do wonder if the neighbors suspect anything.  Our friend next door has commented “what do you guys do when you go out so often?”  Of course, this is the same woman who seemingly hasn’t gone out on a date with her hubby in months, so she wouldn’t understand.  We’ve even offered to watch the kids so that they could go out, but they never take us up on the offer.

I can sympathize, I think, with the gay man or woman who is afraid of coming out of the closet.  [Yes, I realize that being gay or bi- is part of who someone is, it's not a choice, while swinging is a choice, something we could give up if we wanted or needed to.  So don't crucify me for that statement, okay?]  Part of me would like to be open about the lifestyle that we lead, that we enjoy sharing ourselves with other lovers and having group sex.  But the reality is that swinging is not acceptable to ‘mainstream’ society and there are possible personal and professional ramifications if certain people knew that Veronica and I are swingers, not to mention if they knew about this blog!!

Along those lines, several months ago Veronica and I created another blog, one that no one who reads this blog will ever know about.  We freely talk about blogging in front of the kids and they’ve obviously meet our blogger friends who have come to visit us.  To protect ourselves in case either of the kids mentions blogging in front of family or vanilla friends, we created that family blog. Which we even occasionally update with typical parents-bragging-about-the-kids kind of stuff!

Veronica:  I have to admit that it is fun having a sexy “secret identity”.  I like being an unassuming civil servant by day and a wanton wench by night. However it is challenging to maintain that secret identity.  I am very glad that I have mine and Hubman’s blogs so we have a place to tell our secrets.  Since all of our relatives live about four hours away, we are spared the issue of prying parents and siblings.  Still it can be challenging to make sure that Hubman and I have identical cover stories for who we are visiting and why, and coming up with a plausible explanation of our new found love of travel and going out.

Since the kids are younger, it is easier to hide where we are going and what (who) we are doing, but once DB stops falling asleep at 9:00pm, we will lose our ability to host and face some new challenges.

Then there are the friends.  The question of “What did you do this weekend?” is one to be dealt with.

We keep ourselves careful to have the “family” laptop and the “naughty” laptop, and never, ever let our family members see our phones.

In the beginning of our swinging we let people meet our children, but we have decided not to do that going forward unless we are very comfortable with them.  I don’t want the kids wondering why they meet people who are very friendly and then they *poof* out of our lives.   If we became friends with a couple we would probably be fine with inviting them to a ‘mixed’ party, as long  as we had a cover story of how we met organized before the party.

I think its possible to blend your two worlds, as long as you are careful about how you do it.

That was an interesting dinner that she’s referring to.  I had a conference in Seattle, Veronica came with me, and our blogger friends Emmy and Garbonzo came up from Portland to meet and spend a few days together.  The four of us ended up going out to dinner one night with my former office-wife Lisa from grad school and the research assistant/”mom” from the lab that Lisa and I trained in.  I really had to work to suppress a grin, looking across the table at one of best friends from my ‘vanilla’ life sitting right next to a very good friend from the ‘naughty’ side of my life.

In response to a tweet I left soliciting comments for this post, WeeBeeTweetin’ wrote to me

That’s a tough one! I can only have RL friends on Facebook, none of the REAL people I’ve met and become friends with from the net

I’m glad she made that comment, because I totally forgot about Facebook!  Veronica and I have perhaps a half-dozen or so bloggers that we’re also friends with on Facebook.  No one has ever said anything to us, but I do wonder if my mom or my sister looks at my Facebook page and wonders who Southern Vixen, M, Emmy, or Garbanzo are [under their real names, of course!].  For us, those are blogger friends that we trust implicitly, and if any family members would ask who they are, we’d use the ‘they’re just old college friends’ excuse.  Between moving around somewhat [7 residences in 4 states over 16 yrs], multiple colleges [5 degrees from 4 schools between the two of us], and my prior military service, it’s entirely plausible to have friends scattered about the country. So in certain instances, we’re comfortable with blog-life and real-life intersecting.  But we’re careful.

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How about you? Whether you’re a swinger, a cheating spouse, into BDSM, or concealing an aspect of your sexuality in any way, how do you keep your secrets? Or don’t you?  Have you ever ended up in an uncomfortable situation because your secret life was discovered?  We’d like to hear your stories, so please share them in the comments.

We’re running out of ideas for future Swing Shift columns.  PLEASE, if you have any questions about the lifestyle whatsoever, don’t be shy about asking us.  Otherwise, this will cease to be a regular weekly feature and we’ll only write   You can leave a comment on this post or e-mail me at hubman38 at gmail dot com.  As always, if you prefer to remain anonymous just let me know that in your e-mail and I’ll honor your request.

The always fabulous Amorous Rocker has come up with the idea of a blogger toy fundraiser, in support of Toys for Tots.  Veronica and I have already made a donation and we’re encouraging you to check out her post to learn more about it.

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