SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND - SWINGING WASN'T THE PROBLEM. THE PEOPLE WERE.

We Weren't Trying To Swing, We Were Trying To Stay Together. I think, in some strange and slightly fucked up and desperate way, we were just trying to stay married. Trying to stay lovers. Trying not to become one of those couples who only discuss bin night, blood pressure medication and why the bloody internet isn't working again. We called it adventure ... growth. ... We called it exploration. But if I'm honest, underneath all the sexy vocabulary and coconut oil, I think we were simply trying to find each other again. Human beings can take any idea, no matter how noble, enlightened, or enthusiastically lubricated, and turn it into a complete fucking circus. Swinging , I found , is no exception. And before anyone starts typing furiously while adjusting their leather wristbands, let me be clear ... I've met some lovely swingers. Genuinely kind people. Honest people. People with better communication skills than most married couples I've encountered, which admittedly isn't a particularly high bar. I've also met people who could turn a trip to Aldi into a trauma response. The problem was never the swinging. The problem is that wherever you go, there you are. And you brought your entire childhood with you. The first swingers party I attended felt less like a sexual gathering and more like a corporate networking event organised by people who'd recently discovered coconut oil. Everyone was smiling. Everyone looked relaxed, pretending not to be scanning the room like airport security. Men trying very hard to appear casual. Women trying very hard to appear casual. Nobody casual. Every man in the room was secretly wondering whether he should've maybe actually gone to the gym. Every woman in the room already knew which men had. Human beings are adorable when they're terrified. Including me. Look, I've survived cancer twice. Three marriages. Years of therapy, meditation and men's work. And there I was conducting a full psychological audit of my own masculinity ... Did I suddenly have weird shoulders? ... Was my stomach always like that? ... Why did Darren seem so relaxed? Darren wasn't even particularly impressive. Which somehow made it worse. Nobody tells you how quickly sexual liberation can turn into an internal performance review. One minute you're imagining yourself as some kind of mature, sexually evolved man. International man of mystery. The next you're silently comparing yourself to Darren like you're both livestock at the Annual Show. I was in my fifties, for Christ's sake. I had cancer in the rear view mirror, a lower back that occasionally negotiated its own terms and conditions, and enough life experience to know better. Yet somehow part of me was still the seventeen year old boy in the school changing rooms hoping nobody noticed he wasn't nearly as confident as he was pretending to be. The ego, I've discovered, doesn't age. It just develops reading glasses. Besides, there is something deeply humbling about discovering that after decades of spiritual work, your self esteem can still be temporarily derailed by a bloke called Darren from Ipswich who owns three polo shirts and says ... "Mate, we're just here for the connection." Nobody tells you how quickly sexual liberation turns into an internal performance review. There was perfume. Coconut oil. Nervous sweat. Scented candles working overtime like underpaid public servants. If anxiety had a smell, it would probably smell like vanilla and poor decision making. People carried drinks they weren't drinking. Laughed too loudly. Said things like: "We've done a lot of work on jealousy." Which, translated into English, means ... "We've had seventeen arguments about jealousy and agreed to stop counting." Then somebody disappears into another room. And suddenly you're standing beside a bowl of guacamole holding a warm beer while your belief system quietly rearranges itself four metres away. You can hear it. Everybody can hear it. Nobody is acknowledging that everybody can hear it. The sounds are specific. Enthusiastic. Unmistakable. And everybody at the guacamole is wearing the facial expression of people waiting for a delayed train. Human beings will normalise absolutely anything if enough other people are doing it ... The fantasy is Eyes Wide Shut. The reality is considerably more human ... Someone's looking for their glasses. Someone's discussing gluten. Someone else is explaining cryptocurrency because apparently there is no environment on Earth where a middle aged man won't eventually start talking about crypto. At one point I found myself squeezed between a bowl of hummus and what appeared to be an unfolding orgy. Which wasn't remotely how I'd imagined middle age. And here's the thing nobody tells you. From certain angles an orgy looks significantly less like erotic fantasy and considerably more like a rugby scrum with communication issues. Everyone appears deeply committed. Nobody seems entirely sure where they should be positioning. At one point someone's elbow was doing most of the work and I genuinely couldn't tell if it was intentional or just enthusiasm without a plan. Human bodies are beautiful. Human bodies in large groups are occasionally confusing. At one point I genuinely lost track of whose leg belonged to whom. I genuinely didn't know where to put my hands. Which, under the circumstances, felt like useful information to have. Then the watching begins ... And this is where it gets genuinely strange. Because at some point you're standing there watching another man have sex with your partner. Not in a dream. Not in a fantasy. In a room in a new build, on a Saturday night with carpet you wouldn't want to look at too closely. And the strange part , the part not even yourself really prepares you for , is that you're turned on. Genuinely, confusingly, inconveniently turned on. Which raises questions about yourself you weren't entirely ready to answer. Meanwhile some guys wife is doing something extraordinarily generous in your general direction. And you're expected to be present for that. Which you are. Mostly. Except part of your brain is watching your partner. And part of your brain is watching yourself watch your partner. And another part , the part that apparently never fully switches off , is wondering if you remembered to lock the car.And whether you paid the electricity bill. And if that weird noise the hot water system was making was something serious or could probably wait until Monday. This is not how the brochure describes it. The brochure describes transcendence. What you actually have is four human beings in various states of undress doing their sincere best, while the part of your nervous system designed for genuine danger tries desperately to categorise what the fuck is happening. There's an intimacy to it that nobody mentions. Not the sexy kind. The other kind. The kind where you make eye contact with your wife across a room in circumstances that defy every previous reference point you have for what eye contact with your wife means. And something passes between you. Something that isn't quite lust and isn't quite love and isn't quite terror. All three, maybe. Pressed together. Like the room itself. Then comes the real surprise. Not the sex ... The connection. Men think they'll struggle with the sex. Watching her get hammered by some dude named Darren. Turns out it's the laughing that gets them. Nobody warns you about the laughing. And nobody , absolutely nobody , warns you that the man your partner is laughing with might be Darren. Darren from Ipswich. Three polo shirts. "We're just here for the connection, mate." Darren. Most men imagine jealousy arriving dressed as sex. It usually arrives dressed as connection. Nobody loses sleep imagining their partner having an orgasm. They lose sleep imagining their partner being understood. That's the bit nobody puts on the brochure. Funny how quickly enlightenment leaves the building. What surprised me most wasn't the sex. It was how many people were using the lifestyle to avoid the exact thing they claimed to be seeking. Intimacy. Now before the comments fill with people explaining that swinging saved their marriage, let me say this. I believe them. I've seen couples genuinely become closer. Rediscover playfulness. Remember they were lovers and not just exhausted co managers of a domestic logistics company. The healthiest couples I met didn't seem to need swinging. They simply enjoyed it. The least healthy couples needed it desperately. One group brought abundance. The other brought a shopping list. And looking back now, I think a lot of us were there for reasons we'd never admit out loud. We were terrified of becoming boring ... of becoming roommates. Terrified of losing the spark. Maybe we were trying to save our relationshits in the strangest fucking way imaginable. Standing in a room full of strangers hoping we'd somehow find each other again. Which sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. And yet there was something heartbreakingly human about it. Because underneath all the bullshit bravado, all the workshops, all the boundaries and all the coconut oil, most people weren't looking for another partner. They were looking for their own partner. Again. What I eventually realised was that swinging doesn't create relationship problems. It turns the lights on ... And some couples discover they weren't afraid of the dark. They were afraid of what was already in the room. After all the workshops. After all the rules, all the guacamole, all the freedom . Most of us were still trying to solve the same problem. The distance between ourselves and the person we came with. Because eventually every relationship arrives at the same place. Not another partner. Not another experience. Not another weekend retreat with Sky and Moonbeam in Byron. Just two people sitting across from each other with nowhere left to hide. Which is unfortunate. Because that was the room most of us were trying to avoid all along. Swinging wasn't the problem. The people were. Including me. © Zen Prem 2026