Jo and I are now both vaccinated against COVID-19!
To celebrate we are going to a house party on Saturday night. It will be the first one in over a year. We are really looking forward to it. As Jo told our hosts the other day:
Agreed on the night of wild fun. Or maybe a week of wild fun. Lots of wild fun to catch up on.
We have been invited to another house party the following weekend. We’re still thinking about it before we commit to going.
I wonder if this will affect the lifestyle:
Male sex robots with unstoppable bionic penises are coming this year
Up until now, it looked like women would be missing out on the exciting opportunity to make love to the cold, lifeless bodies of machines.
But don’t despair, ladies – RealDoll (maker of those alarming plastic sexbots for men) is making one for women too. And he’s quite a hunk (as well as coming with a bionic penis which never, ever tires), the makers promise.
It might be that people will be more likely to explore seeing their spouse with “someone” else and then “graduate” to the real thing. But there is also the possibility that people would see this as a safer alternative to “the real thing”.
My guess is that robots will be more of a “gateway” than an alternative to the lifestyle.
From Sex by the numbers – USA Swinger Statistics:
Our rankings are based on research conducted using the largest swingers dating site in the United States, AdultFriendFinder. We tabulated the total number of swingers, per state, seeking either a single male, single female, or couple. When then compared these results to the population of each state, resulting in a per capita ranking of each state.
…
Table: States ranked by number of swingers per
capita
Rank State Population AFF Swingers % or Population 1 Wyoming 586,107 5,786 0.99% 2 West Virginia 1,844,128 17,852 0.97% 3 Arkansas 2,978,204 28,040 0.94% 4 Oklahoma 3,911,338 36,522 0.93% 5 Alaska 738,432 6,866 0.93% 6 Nevada 2,890,845 26,423 0.91% 7 Maine 1,329,328 12,022 0.90% 8 Kentucky 4,425,092 39,237 0.89% 9 Missouri 6,083,672 53,782 0.88% 10 Indiana 6,619,680 55,698 0.84% 11 Montana 1,032,949 8,330 0.81% 12 Alabama 4,858,979 38,973 0.80% 13 Tennessee 6,600,299 52,573 0.80% 14 North Dakota 756,927 5,960 0.79% 15 Idaho 1,654,930 12,949 0.78% 16 Kansas 2,911,641 22,396 0.77% 17 New Hampshire 1,330,608 10,168 0.76% 18 Georgia 10,214,860 77,701 0.76% 19 Colorado 5,456,574 41,336 0.76% 20 Louisiana 4,670,724 34,462 0.74% 21 Oregon 4,028,977 29,606 0.73% 22 South Carolina 4,896,146 35,527 0.73% 23 Mississippi 2,992,333 21,697 0.73% 24 Florida 20,271,272 144,486 0.71% 25 Washington 7,170,351 51,008 0.71% 26 Michigan 9,922,576 70,076 0.71% 27 Ohio 11,613,423 82,010 0.71% 28 Vermont 626,042 4,406 0.70% 29 Arizona 6,828,065 47,608 0.70% 30 Iowa 3,123,899 21,648 0.69% 31 New
Mexico2,085,109 14,321 0.69% 32 North Carolina 10,042,802 68,732 0.68% 33 Texas 27,469,114 184,920 0.67% 34 Utah 2,995,919 19,210 0.64% 35 Nebraska 1,896,190 12,157 0.64% 36 South Dakota 858,469 5,388 0.63% 37 Delaware 945,934 5,922 0.63% 38 Virginia 8,382,993 51,793 0.62% 39 Rhode Island 1,056,298 6,403 0.61% 40 Pennsylvania 12,802,503 75,686 0.59% 41 Illinois 12,859,995 71,472 0.56% 42 Columbia 601,723 3,259 0.54% 43 Connecticut 3,590,886 19,387 0.54% 44 Hawaii 1,431,603 7,384 0.52% 45 California 39,144,818 201,275 0.51% 46 Minnesota 5,489,594 28,207 0.51% 47 Wisconsin 5,771,337 29,631 0.51% 48 Maryland 6,006,401 30,788 0.51% 49 New
York19,795,791 97,876 0.49% 50 Massachusetts 6,794,422 33,270 0.49% 51 New
Jersey8,958,013 41,561 0.46%
Obviously, this is not all the people who identity as swingers. Lots of people we know in the lifestyle don’t have an online presence. And many of those who do don’t have an AFF account.
It, almost for certain, includes some people who don’t identity as swingers. But it does give us a rough minimum of the numbers and perhaps some clues to the density. I’m suspicious of the density because more rural states are near the top and this could be because they have fewer clubs.
Still, it’s interesting.
Via Justin J. Lehmiller.
Interesting:
Relationship function, satisfaction, commitment, and passion were about the same in both consensually non-monogamous and monogamous relationships. Furthermore consensually non-monogamous couples had lower jealousy and higher trust.
But what about STIs?
STIs appear to be less frequent in consensually non-monogamous relationships than those which claim their relationship is monogamous. The suggestion in the video is that condom usage is more frequent and STI testing is more frequent in consensually non-monogamous couples and that this accounts for the less frequent STIs. I don’t have a data set of sufficient size without bias that could be useful in answering this question but I have a couple points that make me wonder.
A lifestyle woman in her 50’s told me that she estimated she has had sex with 600 men in her life. I asked about condoms usage and STIs. She claimed she didn’t use condoms and that the only vaginal infection she sometimes gets is bacterial vaginosis. But that she also sometimes gets this even when she has not had a different partner in quite some time. This website agrees, “Bacterial vaginosis is more common in women who are sexually active. But it can occur if you are not sexually active as well.”
Jo and I were somewhat shocked at this woman’s claim. A few months later a friend and I were discussing our mutual sexually prolific friend on a closely related topic and I mentioned the estimated 600 men. My friend said, “That’s nothing!” She went to suggest she herself had sex with far more than 600 in her ~65 years. I didn’t ask about STIs but she does have a condoms required policy.
Further personal research revealed other women with large numbers of partners, low condom usage, and STI infection rates that would appear to be similar to “monogamous” couples.
I could have a bias in my thinking because I’ve been reading An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases. This book claims that because we have created a much more sterile environment to live in than that which we were originally evolved we have a much higher rate of autoimmune disease. And in fact, infection with certain diseases at a relatively young age gives us immunity for dramatically different diseases much later in life. When infected with the same organism later in life the infection is quite detrimental.
The base hypothesis is that humans had a symbiotic relationship with parasites, bacteria, and viruses for 100s of thousands of years then in a (evolutionary) blink of the eye exterminated as many of them as possible. Some needed to be exterminated, such as small pox, but many, while exacting a cost, performed an important function. Minimizing contact with all microscopic organisms may not be the best game plan.
Could it be that somewhat frequent exposure to low levels of STIs, such as kissing and oral sex with a wide variety of people, cause an immunity to such bacteria and viruses?
I found this fascinating:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported on the lifetime prevalence of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, focusing for the first time on victimization by sexual orientation. In their study, there was a victimization prevalence of 43.8 percent for lesbians, which made it the second most affected group after bisexual women (61.1 percent), ahead of bisexual men (37.3 percent), heterosexual women (35 percent), heterosexual men (29 percent) and homosexual men (26 percent).
I find it odd that lesbian relationships have such a high rate of domestic violence. But that bi-sexual women have over a 60% incident rate is just mind boggling.
My impression of women in the lifestyle is that there is a very large population of bisexual (or at least “bi-situational”) women. My “pull a number out of the air” guess is something on the order of three fourths of the women enjoy playing with both men and women.
I have to wonder if permission, and even encouragement, to access both genders reduces the incidence of DV.
Last October Jo and I went on a lifestyle cruise and were somewhat surprised to see people who had to be in the 70s, and perhaps 80s.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised:
A 2007 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the majority of older people who were married or had intimate partners were sexually active well into their 80s.
Many of them reported having intercourse, oral sex and masturbating even in their 80s and 90s.
The Singles in America survey, funded by Match and conducted by Research Now, is the latest to prove sex isn’t just a young person’s game.
After my ex-wife and I decided we had enough children we both got sterilized. Condoms sometimes fail, we didn’t use them with all playmates, she was allergic to the spermicide used with diaphragms, she didn’t want to be taking hormones for another 20 years, and she was somewhat careless with birth control anyway. On my side I really didn’t want to risk getting some other woman pregnant.
For some reason I found it sexually exciting. After the surgery I was told, “No ejaculations for a week.” I could hardly wait. The frustration of that week was extreme. I thought about sex nearly constantly. “This is a little odd”, I thought.
That was nearly 30 years ago and I can still give myself an excitement boost by thinking about being sterile when I’m having sex. This is especially true if I know the woman is probably fertile and the only thing preventing her from getting pregnant is that I had a vasectomy.
My positive experience isn’t all that unusual:
Results revealed that of those men, 12.4 percent reported having sex more often after the vasectomy, while only 4.5 percent of men reported having sex less often. In addition, vasectomized men reported better erectile function, better orgasms, more sexual desire and overall more sexual satisfaction.
I may be a little weird but I’m also consistent. I also get excited knowing a woman has been sterilized and is having sex with a fertile man.
STIs are a major concern for many people in the lifestyle and HIV is probably the most feared. After several years in the lifestyle my ex-wife and I had our last sexual contact with others at a Memorial Day weekend party in 1983. We stopped because of the concern about HIV. Once or twice a year we cautiously, with condoms, played with others who had also “taken a break” for a long time. It wasn’t until 1995 that lifestyle things sort of returned to normal. Condoms were required except for “closed communities” of select couples who also restricted themselves to playing within our “community”.
Now there is some significant hope for a HIV vaccine and perhaps cure:
Scientists have engineered an antibody that attacks 99% of HIV strains and can prevent infection in primates.
It is built to attack three critical parts of the virus – making it harder for HIV to resist its effects.
The work is a collaboration between the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi.
The International Aids Society said it was an “exciting breakthrough”. Human trials will start in 2018 to see if it can prevent or treat infection.
If my recollection is correct the “had group sex” numbers are about the same as they were in the late 1970’s. Again, if I remember right, about 10% of the population had “tried swinging” and about 2% were active swingers at any one time.
One of the couples we know well attends a lot of club parties. They have been doing this for about 20 years and Jo and I started observing them in action. While they do interact with others as a couple while chatting they never play with just another couple in the same room at the same time and frequently don’t play with another couple. They do a lot of what Jo calls “free ranging” with frequent checks with their partner.
They end up playing with others far more frequently at clubs than we do. It sort of makes sense. Finding another couple where Jo likes the guy and I like the gal is more difficult than finding just a guy or gal that each of us like.
That is basically what we did at the house party a couple months ago. And a couple weeks Jo had a similar experience where there was a hot single guy who was interested in her and there weren’t any couple or single women available for us or me by myself. She had a great time with the young stud and then we had a great time together when she got home.
This free range then appears to improve our chances of getting some play time with other people. Jo had to “break some new ground” in regards to feeling comfortable with me being with another woman when she was without someone. She says she is entirely comfortable with it, so maybe learning from the pros is working.