You’re Not Owed Sex

A Common ENM / Swinging / Cuckolding / Poly Problem

There’s a guy in our local recovery / sober circle who Kate and I have known since we each walked thru the doors of our fellowship for the first time. He’s absoloutely one of the local patriarchs. We’ll call him Bob S.

It’s interesting, and consistent; I’ve been to meetings all over the country and the world, and every group has a patriarch and a matriarch. These folks have typically been sober more or less since Christ was a Corporal. They have an ability to distil (pun intended) multiple decades worth of experience being sober into folksy, suscinct sentences.

These folks, the patriarchs and matriarchs, tend to be in one of a couple broad categories. The gruff exterior (sometimes interior as well) hard ass type that are fairly rigid would be one. The more hippy woo-woo Yoda peace love and happiness type is the other.

My sponsor is 100% on the Yoda spectrum. Bob S is one of his oldest sober buddies and Bob is more Oscar The Grouch. They’ve both been sober a long time, each are in their 5th decade of sobriety. Both of these guys are on the sober Mount Rushmore for Kate and me.

Like all great sober patriarchs, Bob has a way of taking in what people share in meetings both that day and over the breadth of time and relating back to it in his own story. When he shares, it’s never a lecture, it’s delivered from his lived experience. It’s such an interesting dynamic and he’s a master of subtlety.

“I feasted at the banquet of my consequnces” was something he shared recently, and any alcoholic who’s sober for a little while has no trouble identifying with that, shit, anyone who’s been alive for a little while can see that point.

If you’re reading us for the first time……Kate and I are a married couple in our 50’s whose relationship is Ethically Non-Monogamous (ENM). We’re swingers, our marriage is open; we have sex with other people. We’re in a committed relationship, and somewhere on the polyamorous and cuckold spectrums; Kate has a boyfriend (or two) and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met in a 12 step meeting; we’re each more than a decade sober now. If you’re curious about how this all works, we talk about our relationship in varying degrees of depth in other posts. We have an email address listed in our “about” page if you would like to contact us.

I’ve plugged into Reddit over the last few months. Reddit’s been on my radar for a while, but I never really got it until recently. It kindof overlapped with a pullback on socials from anything having to do with Meta.

In many ways Reddit is the opposite of Facebook. Instead of having family and people you know talking about random things, Reddit is random people talking about specific things. Nothing wrong with either method, my issues with Meta are much more with their values as a company.

What brought me into the Reddit fold at last was the “Cuckold Psychology” sub-reddit. I’m pretty sure The Gaelic Traveler on Medium mentioned this subreddit in a comment on a post some time ago. It’s a fairly active place, there’s 152K members as of right now. Every other cuckold subreddit I’ve seen has nothing but porn; it’s not allowed in the CP sub. By way of comparison the Ethical Non Monogamy subreddit has 25K members; Swingers has 529K. Bigfoot, because, well, Bigfoot, has 232K members.

It’s easy-ish for me to see something someone posts and say, oh yeah, that’s a REALLY bad idea; been there done that sorta thing. I suppose it’s like how a former smoker can smell smoke much more acutely than someone who’s never smoked. Also, I’m much closer to dead (age wise) than most of the people on Reddit and have already done a LOT of learning from hard experience and mistakes. Mistakes made when I was more in line with the age of the “typical” Reddit user.

There’s no shortage of people on the various cuck / poly / ENM subreddits that are feasting at their own consequences banquets. This seems to come from two broad places; one being the problem, the other being part of the solution.

First are people who come across as feeling they’re owed whatever floats their sexual boats.

Second, and this is related to the first, are people who just don’t know how to relate to or communicate effectively with another human being about much.

The biggest offenders seem to be fellow travelers on the cuckold spectrum.

You’ll see words and phrases like “convince” and “talk into” in all of the lifestyle and lifestyle adjacent spaces, but they’re more pronounced in the cuckosphere.

It almost goes without saying, but these seem to be more male issues than female. I suppose the far side of this would be the incel folks. Far as I can tell, there’s no real equivalent among females. If there’s anyone who considers themselves an incel, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this (or any) post.

I get it. I’ve been bitten by the cuck bug. I’ve gone thru (and can still go to) all of the angsty needy cuck energy places. More than any other sexual urge or desire I’ve experienced, this can block out pretty much everything else. I’m not alone with this, it’s damn near universal it seems with fellow cucks. Kate and I as individuals and as a couple are pretty well regulated emotionally; my cuck energy can burn thru that and cause issues.

If fairness, so could my swinger energy when we were more intentional about that phase.

Again, I think this more a male than female tendency. It seems the various ENM activities tend to focus the testosterone more. Given there’s more of it, with less experience managing it, it tends to be more pronounced with younger guys as well.

This energy all too frequently ends up being a self licking ice cream cone. The guy is terribly horny and thinks the desire to bust a nut in the manner that’s most gratifying for him is the center of the universe. That focus on self ends up pushing potential and actual partners and mates away. This rejection mixes with the testosterone and quickly turns into rage which blots out reason and sense. As a result, the sexual need isn’t met which leads back to being terribly horny with the need to bust a nut in the manner that’s most gratifying to him. Lather, rinse, Repeat. The wheels on the bus go round and round…..

So what’s the fix? If you’re a guy, or know a guy who’s going thru this, what can you do?

Well, as mentioned earlier, communication is a big part of the solution. This includes communicating with yourself as well as partners.

The biggest thing to realize is that at no point, like ever, will you be more important than anyone else. Your wants, needs, and desires are just that; yours. A good partner (like Kate for example) will work with you to meet your needs in a way that respects their own boundaries. It’s 100% unreasonable and unrealistic to expect more than that from anyone.

I’d love to say we have a sure fire strategy to pass on for communicating our sexual wants needs and desires. Honestly, I wish someone would tell me theirs.

What we’ve learned is that there are a few things that are hugely important when communicating these things:

Ya gotta be honest about what you want / need / desire. To your partner AND yourself.
Don’t be fake, authenticity is huge. Be your real self, don’t be afraid to let your colors fly.
Go to Uncomfortable Island; be vulnerable. The how’s and why’s; what makes you tick.
Don’t use a $5 word when a $2 word will suffice. I can hear Kate’s eyes roll over as she reads this (I’m expert at making a 2 minute talk into 5); be clear.
Leave fear behind. Ya gotta be ballsy at times. Skillful, but ballsy.

Clifford and I have big plans for this weekend. Some yard work mixed with random ball throwing for starts. There’s going to be a bath, perhaps some time in the creek (for her, damn sure not me) and a run in the woods looking for deer, or “friends” as Clifford knows them. Kate will be off doing Kate things, and well, not to put too fine a point on it, James too.

Not sure yet if there’s going to be a post next week, we’re off to Vegas for a family visit…..we’ll see.

Thanks for reading! Be kind to yourself and others,

Sam & Kate