Our family hosted the a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Wonderful and family this weekend. As has proven true in previous blogs, a visit from the Wonderfuls always stretches my conceptions of the lifestyle. The good part about their visits is that they always seem to cause Mr. Doubleplay and I to have some honest conversations about our vision of our marriage. The bad part is that these conversations seem to arise because the Wonderfuls stir emotions that I didn't know I had. And they aren't always positive emotions. Instead they tend to make me feel twisty and perplexed.
This visit from the Wonderfuls was vanilla – at least in terms of physical activities. Prior to arriving, Mr. Wonderful alerted us in a brief Facebook exchange that they are taking a break from swinging for a while. They wanted to warn us up front so that we didn't have any misunderstandings.
Under what circumstances do couples take a break, I discussed one evening with Mr. D?
- Pregnancy was Mr. Doubleplay's first response. And I guess other medical conditions would fall under here.
- The fundamental bond between a couple gets jiggled too much and the couple needs to focus on themselves. Perhaps a trust has been broken. Or a couple realizes that they have different goals for lifestyle activities and they need to work through their own rules and boundaries for a while.
- The logistical difficulties of the lifestyle began to outweigh the fun. I have blogged on this issue myself. The difficulties of meeting people in the lifestyle is a common problem. For every date or plan made with another couple, maybe half will actually come through and, of those, maybe half will be a compatible fit. The emails, the exchanges, the scoping out people at clubs can feel tiresome and frustrating at times.
- Perhaps the Wonderfuls were not really taking a break from swinging, but just weren't interested in playing with US anymore!
Out of curiosity sake, I will stop my blog here and throw this question out to our readers. What other reasons might a couple stop swinging? We were totally surprised by the answer the Wonderfuls gave us. So surprised that I literally almost fell out of my chair.
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My wife and I are on a small sabbatical mostly because of #3 (life happens, family life at that) and partially because we tend to be a bit discriminating about who we’d like to spend what little spare time we have. The online service we’re using doesn’t seem to be returning any interesting prospects lately, at least not within our immediate city, which is arguably a smaller one within the state. It has provided
Out of curiosity, what reason did the Wonderfuls provide?
My next blog will tell you all about it! And I have to agree that we are experiencing number three as well,lately, but not by choice. There is very little going on in December in our region and we are very disappointed about it since we will have a four month hiatus coming up very soon due to my work schedule. The Lifestyle seems way too ordinary during such times!