What are the odds that in a period of two weeks, two of your friends openly inform you of their swinging lifestyles?
Emma was the first. She spoke of her past in an almost lamenting tone. And after recounting how it had started, it seems she wanted an opinion. Or was it absolution or acceptance. Who knows, I am the least qualified to give it. Apart from an initial mild curiosity about the dynamics, the lifestyle has no appeal to me. I told her that there was no point regretting the past and beating herself over it. But later I sensed it was more than my acceptance that she was after. It was a longing to return to it.
Tamara was more direct and to the point. “Do you think I’m a slut?” she asked while puffing on her second cigarette, angry that a guy she had recently met had intimated such a thought. She then told me about her recent past, that it was a phase that she had enjoyed but had definitely put behind her.
The coincidence that both women chose to reveal a similar past to me was more perplexing than the disclosure that they had been swingers. Like the things in life in which I do not partake, I have an open mind to listen and learn, even though I do not share the interest.
The intimate knowledge has not changed the way I feel about either Emma or Tamara. My friendship with them has nothing to do with their choice. As I am not in the habit of imagining friends having sex with their partners, I choose not to imagine either one in their swinging lifestyle. After all, are we to judge our friends by their sex lives, or lack thereof, or the way we relate to them?
Would you have reacted any differently? Your opinion…
