Hey! Don’t Take It Personally.

Handling Rejection in the Swinger Lifestyle

IMAGE | Pexels

Based on emails we receive and our own experiences, two of the biggest fears new swingers have are (1) having to say “we’re not interested” to a couple, and (2) being told “we’re not interested” by another couple.

Rejection isn’t fun, no matter which end of it you’re on! But in the swinging lifestyle, rejection is part of the process. There are times a couple (or single) will not be into you. There are times you will not be into someone else. Whatever the reasons may be, sometimes a connection just doesn’t form, and we have to acknowledge that.

Let’s start with “We’re not interested.”

This is so difficult for some couples that they will opt to ignore warning signs and turn-offs. They go ahead and play with another couple rather than deliver the bad news. This rarely ends well. One listener told us they avoided the issue and talked themselves into following through playing with a couple despite all sorts of red flags by thinking, “It will be okay. It will get better. It won’t be as bad as I think.”

Nope.

Why Does This Happen? There might be any number of reasons we might hold our tongue and not pull the plug on a potential play date:

• We’re afraid to hurt someone’s feelings.
• We’re thinking it will get better if we just soldier through the rough beginning.
• This is our only night out for the next six weeks and, gosh darn it, we want this to happen even if it seems “off.”
• We’ve invested a lot of time online and/or by text already. We traveled here to meet these people. We don’t want that to have been a waste.
• We’ve been conditioned by family and/or society to people-please rather than look after our own best interests.
• We’re new at this and we don’t want to come across as “newbies” who don’t know what they are doing.
• We’re new at this and we haven’t perfected our communication skills with each other and other couples yet.

All of these are valid reasons that we can recognize in ourselves, but it’s best if we work on putting them aside and addressing the problem. Sometimes we imagine we will hurt feelings but because we are not honest we end up really hurting feelings. And, those hurt feelings may include our beloved partner as well as the other couple.

Okay let’s move along to being told “We’re not interested.”

Ouch, that really stings. We start to think things like, “Was it me? It can’t be my partner. Am I too old, too tall, too this or too that? It has to be me, right? Why don’t they like us? What’s wrong with us?”

The irony is that we don’t want to hurt others’ feelings but we tend to forget that when the bad news is coming our way. People also don’t want to hurt us either—that’s not their intention. If we realize that sometimes the connection needed to move forward with play just doesn’t happen, then we can also realize that the couple telling us “thanks but no thanks” (hopefully kinder than that) is doing the right thing by communicating it rather than ignoring it.

Connection Is Important

We are not in love with the other couples with whom we play, but we do need to feel connected socially and physically. There needs to be a certain “chemistry” at work for it to be enjoyable for everyone involved. And that’s the goal, right?

It may not be that any one tangible thing is “wrong.” It may be that the elusive 4-way connection just isn’t there. Maybe it’s temporary—the other couple is feeling off for some valid reason at this moment due to something not related to us at all. Maybe it’s that the two couples just don’t mesh in “real life” the way it seemed like we would when we were chatting online and by text. It seemed like there was a spark, but it’s more of a fizzle. We may know why, or we may not…but the feeling is unmistakable.

Honest communication delivered in a direct yet kind way rules the day!

We are human and this stuff is hard to do. But if we choose to send and receive honest, direct and respectful communication with others, over a period of time in the swinger lifestyle, our feelings get less hurt because we realize everyone is looking for the right connection to share their beds and their spouses—and that’s no small thing. We can respect someone else saying “let’s be clothes-on friends” because we know that sometimes we need to say the same thing to others. The connection we need isn’t there. The connection they need isn’t there. It’s okay.

Then we can move forward and focus our attention on other opportunities to meet that couple we will connect with instead of spending time, energy and emotions only to end up with hurt feelings and discouragement.

We can’t control how others respond to us and we can’t control what we feel when that happens, but we can control how we react and respond to that news and those feelings. It’s not personal unless we allow it to be personal.

If you’d like to hear us talk more about the idea of rejection and rejecting others in the swinger lifestyle, you may enjoy Episode 84: The Let Down.

We are Mr. & Mrs. Jones, swinger lifestyle podcasters. If you like what you read here and want to learn more about the swinger lifestyle and/or We Gotta Thing, you can find our podcast episodes and much more at WeGottaThing.com.

We love reading (and writing) about sex, sexuality, and the swinger lifestyle on Medium. It’s entirely worth the $5/month subscription. Care to join us?