Given we'd plunged into the "lifestyle", we decided to open an account at one of the swing websites. We weren't really sure what we wanted, but we were willing to give it a shot and see what happened. To those that are not familiar with such sites, new meat on the market is always in demand. Within a day, we had tons of flirts and emails and such. Given we were totally new to this, we were suitably impressed with ourselves. I'll talk about two specific encounters that I felt were very good learning experiences for me and my wife.
One couple that got in touch with us, let's call them the farmers. They wrote us, invited us to see their pictures, we showed them our faces - y'know, the usual online dance. We then decided to meet them, they seemed nice enough, and the pictures, though grainy, indicated a reasonably attractive couple. As we walk into the restaurant, we look around for them. Our eyes scan the entire restaurant, and we find no-one that looks like them. So, we decide to just walk around, just to be sure. As we do, we notice a couple in a booth waving at us. To say that this couple had a passing resemblance to what were expecting would probably be an overstatement. Both of us were shocked - I mean these guys weren't hideous or anything, but they looked old , tired and very very unattractive. But we decided to do the polite thing and talk to them. And boy, was that a fun experience. These guys were farmers and horse ranchers from the south of Seattle and had many an interesting tale to tell us about horses and cougars and floods and rivers! That said, we knew we were never going to meet them again, they'd been deceptive and we don't do deception. Within an hour or two, we made some excuse and left. As we did, they indicated a strong desire to meet again and we made some noises about definitely doing so and left.
Now, another couple - the Framers as we'll call them here. These guys too reached out to us, and given they lived really close to us, we made a coffee date to meet them. The dude was a framer (hence the framers), the lady used to be a dental assistant ( met more than one dental assistant in our "travels" , which is interesting in itself). We had a good chat, and then decided to go get dinner. Unfortunately, we picked a Mandarin Chinese restaurant nearby. Now, I'm not sure if you are aware, but these restaurants are more about the boiled stuff than the fried stuff. Didn't know that. They are also about a lot of very raw looking sea food. And we are vegetarian. The couple we were with, ordered the Sunday evening special, which came with lots and lots of sea-food. And as we sat there, gagging on our food, the sight of the dude picking bits of sea-food from his mouth was , shall we say, less than appealing ? We left soon after, but we chatted online with them off and on for a while. In the course of these chats, a feeling in the back of our minds became clearer and clearer. The guy was a nut. An angry nut. His wife was terrified of him. And we were terrified of going anywhere near him!
These two, among other experiences, taught us quite a bit. First, we stopped trusting people to be honest about themselves. Rather unfortunate, because we normally like to take people at face value. But, when sex is involved (or money I guess), people reach levels of desperation that causes them to lie. Further, we realized that we had to pay a lot of attention to the dynamic between the couple. It was not enough to see if we liked them, it was important to see if they liked EACH OTHER! We did not want to add to an already dysfunctional dynamic. And lastly, we never, ever go for dinner with people we meet on these sites. We don't really mind that they eat meat and sea-food, but kissing someone after you've seen stringy bits of dead flesh in their mouth is a gross thought - to us.
One couple that got in touch with us, let's call them the farmers. They wrote us, invited us to see their pictures, we showed them our faces - y'know, the usual online dance. We then decided to meet them, they seemed nice enough, and the pictures, though grainy, indicated a reasonably attractive couple. As we walk into the restaurant, we look around for them. Our eyes scan the entire restaurant, and we find no-one that looks like them. So, we decide to just walk around, just to be sure. As we do, we notice a couple in a booth waving at us. To say that this couple had a passing resemblance to what were expecting would probably be an overstatement. Both of us were shocked - I mean these guys weren't hideous or anything, but they looked old , tired and very very unattractive. But we decided to do the polite thing and talk to them. And boy, was that a fun experience. These guys were farmers and horse ranchers from the south of Seattle and had many an interesting tale to tell us about horses and cougars and floods and rivers! That said, we knew we were never going to meet them again, they'd been deceptive and we don't do deception. Within an hour or two, we made some excuse and left. As we did, they indicated a strong desire to meet again and we made some noises about definitely doing so and left.
Now, another couple - the Framers as we'll call them here. These guys too reached out to us, and given they lived really close to us, we made a coffee date to meet them. The dude was a framer (hence the framers), the lady used to be a dental assistant ( met more than one dental assistant in our "travels" , which is interesting in itself). We had a good chat, and then decided to go get dinner. Unfortunately, we picked a Mandarin Chinese restaurant nearby. Now, I'm not sure if you are aware, but these restaurants are more about the boiled stuff than the fried stuff. Didn't know that. They are also about a lot of very raw looking sea food. And we are vegetarian. The couple we were with, ordered the Sunday evening special, which came with lots and lots of sea-food. And as we sat there, gagging on our food, the sight of the dude picking bits of sea-food from his mouth was , shall we say, less than appealing ? We left soon after, but we chatted online with them off and on for a while. In the course of these chats, a feeling in the back of our minds became clearer and clearer. The guy was a nut. An angry nut. His wife was terrified of him. And we were terrified of going anywhere near him!
These two, among other experiences, taught us quite a bit. First, we stopped trusting people to be honest about themselves. Rather unfortunate, because we normally like to take people at face value. But, when sex is involved (or money I guess), people reach levels of desperation that causes them to lie. Further, we realized that we had to pay a lot of attention to the dynamic between the couple. It was not enough to see if we liked them, it was important to see if they liked EACH OTHER! We did not want to add to an already dysfunctional dynamic. And lastly, we never, ever go for dinner with people we meet on these sites. We don't really mind that they eat meat and sea-food, but kissing someone after you've seen stringy bits of dead flesh in their mouth is a gross thought - to us.
