EP 69 We Were Outed as Swingers

​Although so many people are in the lifestyle, it's still not widely accepted so the fear of being found out is felt by almost everyone, and the threat is real. Scott and April talk about how they were outed by someone who belonged to their gym, how it affected their families and even their livelihood. They run an online fitness training program called NaughtGym.com.

EP 69 We Were Outed as Swingers
Transcription:

Leyna 0:01
Are you bisexual? 

Guest 0:03
Um, well, that's a tough question.

Leyna 0:06
I love it when people can't answer.

Guest 0:10
I'm kind of open to experimenting with whatever. I've never really found myself attracted to a man but if you know we're in an a play session and things happen, then things happen. Yeah, the toughest part though is things like walking into the kids school or a football game, you know that my boys are playing at. That's been the toughest because I know the parents are talking and they know the parents are talking. Well, I have never shared this publicly. So congratulations on somehow extracting this from me.

Guest 0:43
We live in small town Alabama, and you know, on the ranking of things that would get you banished from your community. That's gonna be right there with being atheist. 

Leyna 0:55
So let's get to it.

(Podcast Show Open)

Leyna 1:31
Hi, everyone. Reminder that I'm re launching my other podcast called Leyna Ngyen Unscripted, where we have conversations about other topics. Some of it's on sexuality, but we're also talking about other issues like career changes, office politics, online dating kind of everything goes our latest episode is with Jamie Kennedy. I am starting to do new interviews. So if you have an idea for a guest or an issue, please find me on Twitter and let me know about it. I'm @Leynanguyentv again. That's my other podcast called Leyna Nguyen Unscripted. I've added a link in show notes.

Leyna 2:06
My guest today are April and Scott. She's 43. He's 49. They own a CrossFit gym together and they also have this really cool online training community called Naughtygym.com. We're going to talk about that later. They've been together for about six years have known each other for about 10 years, they actually started the relationship in the lifestyle. What does that actually mean? Did you both have lifestyle experiences before this? 

Guest 2:33
In my previous marriage, we had dabbled our toes in it but never actually had any experience with other people we had just been to some salacious events, but never actually really got into the lifestyle. 

Leyna 2:46
All right, April?

Guest 2:47
Yeah. So in my past life, I was pretty sexually open. I just didn't know what that was called.

Guest 2:55
And then I was in a marriage that was basically sexless for about 17 years. And so when I met Scott, and we just started talking openly about sex. He told me about some things that him and his ex wife had done some places and I was immediately like, let's go let's do it. 

Leyna 3:18
Then I don't we don't have to go through the you know, how did you broach the subject? Because you were both pretty open to it. How do you form a relationship with each other when you started open? Do you know what I'm asking? 

Guest 3:29
Yeah, so we were best friends before we even really got romantically involved. He communicates so beautifully, that it was so refreshing. I'd never been in relationship with a man that communicated so well. My ex wife would disagree I think well, you weren't a fit for her. You're a fit for me. But in so it was kind of an easy thing to go into, because we openly communicated about our fears, any reservations that we had, and there was so much trust there already, and that it was safe. I knew if there was something I was uncomfortable with. It wasn't going to be an issue in our argument or anything like that it was going to be received lovingly and we would communicate through it. We talked about everything. And there were never you know, a lot of times when couples don't have the ability to talk about all their sexual desires and fantasies and that sort of thing. And that just came very easy for us, which made the transition into the lifestyle much easier. 

Leyna 4:32
What were your fantasies? 

Guest 4:33
Oh, I think Well, I think I can speak for both of us when I say that they've probably evolved. I don't know that we ever had talk of a lot of specific fantasies that we wanted to go after, as much as we talked at length about what things we weren't comfortable with. Even when we would have a bad experience. We would just, you know, regroup, talk about it afterwards and go okay, well, that's probably not for us and it became so natural and easy for us that our line has continued to evolve and move and now where we weren't comfortable with very much at all to begin with now it's it's a lot I don't know Freer Yeah, it started simple. It started with let's go to this place and just be naked in front of people. And then that was exciting and it gets you kind of sexually charged and then the next time it was let's maybe have sex in front of people. And so it has it's just kind of evolved through time. 

Leyna 5:33
Okay, now, do you guys have that thing where you get turned on watching your partner with other people? 

Guest 5:36
Yes. Well, I do. Yeah, he does. I don't necessarily I'm not at a place where I think I would just want to sit in the corner of the room and watch him have sex with someone. I enjoy, like the togetherness of everybody doing it and we're kind of all sharing, but yeah, I don't want to just watch him have sex with someone without me being involved. Is that what you meant Leyna? Because I don't really I don't really enjoy that as much either. I could do it, I guess. But no, I like to be involved. But if she's next to me with somebody else, and I'm next to her and I'm either with somebody else or involved with her and the other person it does turn me on to see her with that other person. Yeah, yeah. 

Leyna 6:16
Okay. If you were to describe your play style right now, what is it?

Guest 6:21
April? What we would describe it as 

Leyna 6:26
What are you into? What what do you look for what you enjoy?

Guest 6:30
Um, we like, we would say situational full swap. Situational. We are in the same room always. We never we don't play separate. And I'm bisexual. So if we're with a woman together, or we're with another couple together, yeah, it's really situational. It sometimes I surprise myself. We'll go to an event and I'm like, I'm definitely not doing this tonight. How many times have I said that? It's almost that's almost a surefire way to guarantee we're gonna do that exact thing.

Leyna 7:04
And how about how about you? Are you Scott, are you 

Guest 7:08
April sometimes seems to be uncomfortable answering that question. I'm kind of open for whatever at this point. I feel like our relationship is so strong that even if I go into a situation and an opportunity comes up that we have in the past not said we were interested in. If I get an inkling that she's interested, then I'm okay with it. And then after it's over, if we enjoyed it great we've got a new, you know, a new thing that we like, if not, we just move on and say well, hey, that's probably not for us next time. So yeah, we're I'm open to full swaps all swap, you know, groups, individuals, whatever. 

Leyna 7:42
Are you bisexual?

Guest 7:45
Well, that's a tough question.

Leyna 7:48
I love it when people can't answer.

Guest 7:50
It's interesting in the lifestyle that this should be a you expect that the community itself is going to be incredibly open minded and accepting of all varieties of sexual play styles and preferences, but it isn't that way. Always. There is still a bit of a stigma about bisexuality when it comes to men. Not with everybody, of course, but there's still a little bit of that uncomfortable nature evidenced by the fact that everybody on their dating profile says the man is straight until you meet them and get into some deep conversations or in a in a play session. And you realize, Well, that wasn't exactly the full picture because people still hide it. Right? I'm kind of open to experimenting with whatever. I've never really found myself attracted to a man but if you know we're in a play session and things happen, then things happen.

Leyna 8:44
But when they're happening, are you letting it happen just to be active, or it does it turn you on? Is it pleasurable? 

Guest 8:53
It does turn me on, which is interesting and that and it really turns me on Oh yeah, it's it's a it's a big thing for her to watch. But once you're in a play session, and the energy and everything starts happening, and it gets you're in a very sexually charged environment, things become erotic for you that maybe out by the pool and conversation isn't erotic or it's not the same for me. To see a guy walked by with his clothes off as it is to see a woman walk by, but I guess Gosh, I'm sweating, I guess. I guess in an actual sexual situation. It kind of all does it for me.

Leyna 9:34
Can I get personal? 

Guest 9:36
God dang? Yeah. All right.

Leyna 9:40
Scott, I want you to take a deep breath. What kind of bisexual activities have you done that you enjoy? 

Guest 9:50
Well, it's only been oral and very brief.

Leyna 9:54
giving or receiving both. And so and you're okay with it. It's sexy in the moment. 

Guest 9:59
Yes. Yeah. And again, it's odd. It's not something I go chasing, or I see somebody and think well, I'd like to have oral sex with that guy. In fact, it's never even anything close to that. It's just in the moment in the bedroom, so to speak. It becomes attractive. Yeah. And I think part of that too, is he knows how much it turns me on. That gets…

Leyna 10:21
You like to see… what what is it? 

Guest 10:22
I think it's just that there's no lines. Uh huh. When you're in a play session like that, you're so comfortable with the other couple that there's just no walls and it's just about feeling good and pleasure. There's no shame or guilt or you're just free. And I That to me is sexy. 

(Commercial)

Leyna 11:32
Okay, but that's different different than watching him say go down on another woman. 

Guest 11:37
Yeah, I guess because 

Leyna 11:38
You’re kind of watching the same thing but it's their added taboo like, wow, he's gonna go there that sexy, 

Guest 11:45
Right? It's that it? Is it because it's taboo because it's not something that most men would talk about or be comfortable with. Right? And it's interesting depending on the group Well, I have never shared this publicly. So congratulations on somehow extracting this from me. The uncomfortability would not be with people in the lifestyle. I would have this conversation. The uncomfortability is we live in small town Alabama. And you know on the ranking of things that would get you banished from your community. That's gonna be right there with being atheist. 

Leyna 12:19
Right, right. Well, thank you, because I think it's really important. I know that you guys not too long ago, had a situation where you were outed Can you talk to me about that? Because I know that that's a fear for I mean, probably 100% of the people in the lifestyle when they first got in, right. 

Guest 12:35
Right. Yeah, so that happened back in May. We had just come back actually from a lifestyle event. And we have a commercial gym in our town. That we run and one of our members had somehow come across our Twitter feed, and even though I spent hours blocking everybody, like extensive blocking, our Twitter account just started making its way through our small town. And so we decided to be proactive as far as talking to our family and kids. We wanted them to hear it from us before they heard it from the rumor mill. And so it actually turned out to be a kind of good thing as far as our family goes. I have older boys and they don't want to say they weren't surprised, because I've always talked very openly sexual about sexuality with them, but they were they felt protective of me and angry that people would say ugly things and so that it was well received by them. And our family as well as Scotts mom was just the cutest. She's just like, I don't care what you do in your private life.

Leyna 13:01
Just don't tell me about it. 

Guest 13:51
Right. I don't want to hear I'm not gonna ask questions, but I don't care. I love you. So it was that was freeing because now we're at a place where it's like, well, they know and you know we don't want to flaunt it in especially our members. We try to be protective of them because we do live in a small town that is in the heart of the Bible Belt, and we don't want them to get backlash for being associated with us. 

Leyna 14:12
Yeah, I totally understand that. So family wise, it turned out to be a good thing. But what about your public lives? 

Guest 14:19
Well, our business our commercial gym business has taken a hit. It's hard for us to directly measure how much of the hit and of course we were scared of that. But the last few months have been two or three of the worst months we've had and the business is still in good shape. And it's not like we're in jeopardy of losing it and that's comfortable knowing that we feel like we've kind of weathered this and not lost the commercial gym because that was actually a fear of mine that it could be such a scandal that people left in mass and we lose the gym. April was never scared that that would be that bad. But we have had an impact negatively from it. And I think we're on the other side of that at this point. I think we've kind of reached the bottom of that barrel. But yeah, it definitely impacted us. Yeah, the toughest part though, is things like walking into the kids school or a football game, you know, that my boys are playing at. That's been the toughest because I know the parents are talking and they know the parents are talking. And so that's probably been the toughest part, 

Leyna 15:25
But I'm a little sad. I mean you know, everyone's got something they're hiding right? And for someone to take any pleasure in outing someone or you know talking behind your back or just taking pleasure in gossiping and and making something that's so wonderful for you guys bad I just that that really gets me. Yeah, yeah. So what happens if a person found you did they confront you? 

Guest 15:52
Oh, no, we didn't. We didn't find out actually, who started until probably about a month after it all got started. And it was a member at our gym who tried to get our coaches to leave and I mean, just started a big uproar and was successful in recruiting some members away from our gym to another one. Yeah, 

Leyna 16:16
 Ug that’s awful. Now, your Twitter did you have your faces on there? 

Guest 16:21
No, we didn't. And we have did this person I have no idea. I mean, they I heard like, why are you so obsessed with us?

Leyna 16:28
They really had to do some digging to find it. We still aren't sure how they found it. We don't show our faces. And really anything you find on our Twitter is not pornographic when we first started I said you know I'm not going to show nudity on our public profiles just because I in case something like this happened. So there's nothing you're not going to see on like the cover of Maxim or you know, a fitness magazine, something like that. The content might be a little bit different, but I'm not ashamed of any of the pictures or anything like that, that we posted on there. So I'm like, good. I hope they continue to watch it because 

Leyna 17:05
Oh, whoever it is, is really familiar with your abs. Right. Right. Like, recognized up anywhere. Yeah.

Guest 17:15
Well, and you know, stuff like because they don't understand what the lifestyle is. We've had a member leave because his wife was afraid I was going to try to sleep with him and I'm like, Look, you've been here for four years. Don't flatter yourself. I'm not going after your husband's and raised in this town. You know, I've lived in this city my entire life. I understand where they're coming from because right I used to be incredibly conservative right wing Republicans super conservative religiously, and all that comes with that and had this kind of thing happened to somebody else when I was that person. I would have had, unfortunately the exact same responses that the people around us have had. So I get it. I don't like it. And I hate that I used to be that way. But that's why it was such a big fear for us to get out. And such a huge relief to know that the world didn't stop spinning once we did right. 

Leyna 18:14
That’s awesome. Um, let's talk about this naughtygym.com thing. Is that something that you started later or when did that come about? 


Guest 18:21
That came about during COVID We had to shut down our commercial gym for about two and a half months and during that time, we moved all of our members to online training. We had two gyms at that time Scott had one and I had one. And when we shut down for COVID we were then stuck in the house for 24/7 with each other and we absolutely loved it. We love working together and we work so well together. And so when they told us we could reopen and Scott kind of had a crisis and went to the bathtub, which is his thinking place, it takes very long baths and made the decision that he was going to sell his gym so that we could work the other gym together full time. It was like a weird dread when we when they announced that we could open back up we should have been excited. But I realized well this just means we're going back to our separate somewhat separate lives that we had been leading where you know in the morning we get up I go to one city she stays in our city and we see each other later that night and I didn't want to go back to it. So we made the decision to sell it.

Leyna 19:30
So but this but why is it naughty gym dot? I'm wondering where the naughty came from. 

Guest 19:34
So since we learned to coach people online, because we were forced to during the quarantine, we had built the systems and platform to do it with our commercial gym members. We thought well maybe we can continue to train people virtually as an extra revenue source since we're losing my salary from the other gym that we're selling. But everybody's trying that everybody wants to coach and train online. It's just hard to find a niche or to distinguish yourself unless you're a big name personality. And we aren't. So we started thinking about well how can we create our own niche and one of the problems we'd always had with having two gyms is that we were so busy, we never got to do anything and the last so we say we've been kind of dabbling in the lifestyle for six years. But that meant maybe once a year, maybe twice a year we got to go to a party or some sort of hotel takeover or something so not very frequently. Then the idea came up that well if we're going to train people remotely, could we target the sex positive community because one they should want to look and feel their best and be as healthy as possible to be able to enjoy that type of lifestyle, two. They tend to skew a little older in that they're not a bunch of teenagers and 20 year olds, there are people with that have jobs. Usually they have a little more discretionary income than most because to participate in the lifestyle usually means a lot of travel. And it just seemed like a great demographic, and it allowed us to kind of give back and be involved in the community more often where we hadn't been able to in the past.

Leyna 21:06
My conversation with Scott and April continues with more on their naughty gym and keeping fit and sexy as you age that content is coming soon for our members. Check out buymeacoffee.com/leynanguyen for more info, and you can find them at Naughtygym.com Okay, next time on consenting adults, a couple who's in what's called a total power exchange relationship talks about how BDSM activities can lead to mind blowing orgasms.
Guest 21:34
Sometimes when I'm flogging her. She orgasms so frequently that by the time I roll her over, she's just dripping like literally the fluids are just running down her legs. Oh, 

Leyna 21:50
That’s next time on consenting adults.