Advice column: poly for swingers

American Chronicle

"Ask Dan and Jennifer," an online newsmagazine's relationship-advice column, takes up the poly-vs-swinging discussion. Before you roll your eyes again, consider that there are (by my best estimate) roughly 50 self-identified swingers in the U.S. for every one self-identified poly, and that many of the people who discover polyamory do so by the swinging route. This is an important audience to reach, so that they understand the options and can weigh them for themselves.

So you’ve been enjoying the swinging lifestyle for a few years, and are having a blast.

But what if it starts growing into more than just sex with friends — or friends with benefits? What if your husband or wife starts developing romantic (a.k.a. love) feelings for your playmates? Dare we call it polyamory?

...The swinging lifestyle is typically about sex! You get together, you play, and then you go home. That's kind of what it's about. But polyamory takes it to a new level and, what I would consider, a much more enlightened level where you are actually in love relationships with multiple partners. It's a true and total sharing of one another and not many couples (or individuals) are able to do that....

Read the whole article.

Incidentally, while we're on the topic, Reid Mihalko posted this a few weeks ago:

Just wanted to alert you all, if you haven't heard already, that CBS has a mid-season [mid- 2007-08 season] replacement called "Swingtown," a show about the Lifestyle (swinging) in 1970's Chicago. The pilot script ain't half bad and I'm very interested in how the show is going to do and its impact on prime-time TV.

I'm the creator of a show on Polyamory called "Polly and Marie" that's being shopped around Hollywood at the moment, so "Swingtown" is of interest to me. You can check out the Polly and Marie trailer by going to tribes.tribe.net/pollyandmarie

Here's the Swingtown official website, and here's a summary and review. Here's our past coverage of Polly & Marie.