Our Lifestyle Connection Deal Breakers, Part 1
Our most recent podcast episode focused on things we consider to be deal breakers when we’re looking to make a swinger connection with another couple. You may or may not share our particular deal breakers, and you may have some others of your own. But we’ve figured out over the years that there are several “no thank you” behaviors that put a couple on the WNF list for us. Today we’ll discuss just the first couple, but we’ll talk about the others in future articles.
You may have heard us talk about “red flags” in the swinger lifestyle previously. We should probably take a minute to explain what we see as the difference between a “red flag” and a “deal breaker.” We may, when interacting with a new couple, notice a warning that all is not great (a “red flag”), and if there are multiple red flags, we may decide not to move forward with a couple. A “deal breaker” is more or less an immediate NO.
Some red flags—or often a collection of red flags—become a deal breaker. But there are other things that are deal breakers in and of themselves. Number one on our list is couples who feel the need to talk about highly polarizing topics such as politics or religion in a social swinger setting. It’s closely related to number two: Being closed-minded.
Polarizing Topics Aren’t Generally Connecting Topics
It’s important for us to say this: It’s not holding strong opinions about potentially controversial topics that’s a deal breaker. It’s leading into a social conversation with those topics or feeling the need to express those opinions ad nauseam in a social setting that becomes a deal breaker.
In a lifestyle setting, people are looking for ways they might connect. Some couples feel as if the best way to do that is to enter a conversation by announcing their political affiliation early on, making jokes that reveal their strong biases about certain matters, or bringing up a controversial hot topic in conversation to see where others stand on it. To be fair, some people may just operate this way all the time in every setting and not realize that it’s off-putting in a social setting, but it is.
To us—and to a lot of others, we suspect—that kind of start is a deal breaker. It comes across as attempting to weed out those with opposing views. It comes across as trying to put down others with different ideas. It doesn’t seek to connect, it introduces dichotomy and seeks to separate. It makes conversation palpably uncomfortable. Even if we happen to agree with the couple’s take on the polarizing topic, we are turned off by this approach.
Maybe the couple doesn’t necessarily lead with strong ideas about topics that provoke controversy and emotion, but they eventually get there…and then don’t let it go. That’s also a deal breaker for us. It might be a minor red flag if a couple makes a small politically charged joke, but if they don’t let it drop when someone in the conversation steers things away to a different topic following the uncomfortable chuckle (or awkward silence) that follows their gaffe, the red flag quickly becomes a deal breaker.
Here’s the thing: It’s not likely that we’re going to see eye-to-eye on 100% of things with any couple. We aren’t looking to align perfectly in all aspects of life with people we’re considering as lifestyle friends and playmates. Over time, we are likely to figure out whether we have sufficient things in common with a couple to want to pursue a friendship. We’ll figure out if there’s a physical connection that makes us want to have sex with them. That friendship and sexiness is not dependent on their political or ideological stance matching our own.
Yucking Someone Else’s Yum is a Deal Breaker Too
In the lifestyle, as in broader society, people have a wide range of passions, fantasies, and tastes. People come in varied shapes, sizes, shades of color, genders, preferences, and backgrounds. Couples in the lifestyle engage with it in varied ways. We love this about the lifestyle. We love learning about others and making friends with people who are different than we are.
It would be pretty hypocritical for us to condemn or judge a couple that is different than us. We consider it a deal breaker when a couple we’re conversing with reveals those kind of biases against others. People who talk negatively about others that practice non-monogamy in ways that don’t appeal to them are not people we want to connect with.
Likewise, we are turned off by people who reveal their biases against people based on size, gender, race, age, sexual preferences, socio-economic status…or any number of other differences. Categorizing and judging people in negative ways is a deal breaker to us. We’ve been in the lifestyle long enough to have learned and expanded our ideas and we want to be with others who are open-minded.
On that note, we should mention that this may not be a permanent deal breaker. We know that our own minds and ideas expanded as we participated in the lifestyle over time. It would be wrong of us not to afford others the same possibility. Maybe today a couple expresses closed-minded ideas based on inexperience and ignorance. That constitutes a deal breaker for us right now, but a year or two from now we might run into them again and realize they have opened their minds and hearts to people different than themselves.
What we know is this: If we are in a social setting looking to make connections with other couples, we aren’t looking to talk about extremely polarizing, emotion-laden topics and we aren’t looking to engage in conversation that puts down or judges others who are different than we are. If those things happen, we aren’t going to pursue the folks talking to us and we aren’t going to respond favorably if they try to pursue us. It’s a deal breaker.
We are Mr. & Mrs. Jones, swinger lifestyle podcasters. If you like what you read here, please give us some claps and share with others! If you 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.
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