Ep 17 Monogamish Marriage

Liam and Kate met at church and started a non-monogamous relationship from the beginning. They are documenting their experiences in a blog called The Monogamish Marriage where they talk openly not just about the WHAT but also the HOW and sometimes even the WHY.  Kate doesn't normally watch porn but when she does, she enjoys gay porn and that's something they've been able to explore in the lifestyle as they learn to shed fear and shame.

EP 17 – Monogamish Marriage
Transcription :

0:00
Leyna: Hi everyone, it is Thanksgiving week 2020 Boy, the year really has gone by fast. I know that a lot of people can't get together with their extended families like we normally do on Thanksgiving so I hope you're still able to enjoy it and to help you along. I've got a couple of fun Thanksgiving facts that you can share with your family over zoom, or however you're going to do it this trip. All right. Did you know that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is known as drinks giving. I'm seriously not making this up. In some places is known as Black Wednesday. It is the booziest day of the year, bars in the past have reported a boom, the night before Thanksgiving, and then businesses like Uber, have often offered free rides on the night before Thanksgiving, Black Friday. We of course know about that the Friday after Thanksgiving the busiest shopping day of the year. Did you know it's also the busiest day of the year for plumbers, I'd let your mind run wild, but I don't want that to happen, it is because of all the food that ends up in the drain system, you know whether your garbage disposal isn't working right or you're actually putting it down the wrong side of the drain. That's the busiest day for plumbers. And speaking of food. If you've been on my twitter you know that I am not, not a huge fan of green bean casserole. Maybe I just haven't had the right one yet but you Gross is a family, you know, traditional holiday side dish for a lot of families did you know it was actually created by Campbell's Soup Company. They're not stupid, a woman by the name of Dorcas Riley, I wish I made that up but I didn't, who used to work in the Campbell Soup Home Economics Department created this recipe, it was originally called green bean bake, and then it became a sensation when the company started printing it on the back of its cream of mushroom soup cans, so thank you Campbell's, and then a nod to my home state of Minnesota. Did you know that Minnesota produces more turkeys than anywhere else in the United States. That's right, the land of 10,000, lakes, and more. Also, the land of many, many more turkeys than anywhere else. So anyway, hope you guys are able to enjoy your Thanksgiving. Okay. Today's guests are a lovely couple who are documenting their experiences in the lifestyle, and many of them do. However, unlike the other podcast that you're going to find, and it's mostly like erotica people just talking about their sexy experiences, they really wanted to delve into what happens when people get into the lifestyle, much the way we approach it on this podcast, although for them it's a blog, and they're doing it from the point of view of someone who is in the lifestyle.

2:51
Guest: It's not just the he wants to watch me with another man he gets a little erotic thrill out of having, you know, helping guide the man's cock into me or you know for trying some acrobatic double penetration, you having their, you know cost close together and feeling the rubbing so I mean he's low level bisexual, but I really am enthusiastic about that and want to encourage that exploration to continue so I find it very hard to get ready. This is consenting adults.

(Podcast Show Open)

Leyna: My guest today are a married couple, who've been together for nine years married for five years, met 12 years ago, and they've been in this non monogamous relationship from the beginning. They're a sexy couple wait until you see their pictures. He's 58, lamb is an entrepreneur. She is 44 She's an author, and they met at church. That's the best part of all of this. So you guys have been non monogamous from the beginning. Were you in non-monogamous lifestyles before meeting each other then?

4:40
Guest: I got into having threesomes with my best friend who is a female with my previous husband, and when the marriage broke up. I continued to have sex with her. And so when Liam and I got together, I basically said on our first date. I like having sex with my best friend I don't really want to stop so if you're okay with that will probably be a good match. I think most men would be okay with that. He was alright with it to my knee and propose that that moment. How about you, Liam, were you in a monogamous relationship.

5:20
I was in a long, long under sex 26 year marriage before I met Kate, so her free sexuality was like a revelation to me. But as for non-monogamous experience it was zero.

5:35
Leyna:     But isn't there a difference between, you know, meeting this beautiful lady and she's saying hey, if you're okay having sex with me, and moving this with this other one, isn't there a difference between that and actually non-monogamy, meaning having sex with other people as well, because the situation you're describing Kate sounds like a dream to most guys, right,

5:57
Guest:     right. Yeah, for me it happened very spontaneously in our relationship so it's one thing to say over lunch. I've had sex with my best friend and we'd like to continue doing that. It's another thing for it to actually happen and the way it happened in our relationship was so organic it just arose out of a conversation over body image, Of all things, and then some clothes came off and then more clothes came off, and there was some hugging and it just went from there and it became the model of non-monogamy for us which we didn't even know the term non monogamy at that point we were just following something that felt very right in the moment but we were basically having sex together because we loved each other, and then we included someone else can we also loved and cared for.
Leyna:     Okay and then at what point did it move beyond that, or has it.
6:48
Guest:     Yes. So, we, I guess for about a year we had threesomes with her. And then we started exploring other non-monogamous outlets so we found a sex club, Toronto has five different swingers clubs, so we checked out those, We went to hedonism in Jamaica, and we found online dating sites so we started to look into, you know the different avenues we could follow. And when my best friend found a serious boyfriend and he was not into sharing, we started looking at involving other people and that first happened with an ex-boyfriend of mine, so our model had been three phones with people we care about. We weren't into, you know, fucking strangers. We like to have sex in public the exhibitionism was really fun, but when we went to clubs we never hooked up with other people. Yeah, so we went from threesomes with another woman to threesomes, with another man and that lasted for about 18 months. And, yeah, and then, now we've done everything.
Leyna:     Well, what's everything.
Guest:     Oh, we've, you know, we've had orgies and double penetration, and we host Big house parties, we've gone on vacation with people we just came back from a week in wine country where we rented a house with four couples, and basically had sex every night with those couples normal vacation middle class things during the daytime.

8:26
Yeah. The only lesson is, we feel very connected to the people we have sex with so we like to think of ourselves as social swingers. It's kind of a friends with benefits situation where we need to feel comfortable and feel like there's a connection on an intellectual and social and spiritual level before we feel comfortable enough to have sex, so we're not just randomly hooking up with strangers, which is unfortunately what most people picture when they think of Swingers, for I really want to feel, you know, a connectedness and and our relationships have gone on for years.

9:04
Leyna:     Right, so it's like everything else, it there's a spectrum, right. Let's talk about the spectrum everything from what to what are there Swingers, who don't have sex with other people.
9:17
Guest:     Yeah, so we, we regularly see people when we go to clubs or even when we go on vacation, who are at a sex club or a swinger resort. But you never see them participating in the sex side of it so they just like the energy that comes in what we call the lifestyle. And so you see them for example at a sex club on the dance floor, and people start filtering to the back where the beds and play rooms are to have sex and then when it, when we're finished, we come out and there's those same couples on the dance floor apparently not having moved in the two hours since we left them, and in the lifestyle they are, they are involved in participating, but in their own way and their own way doesn't involve me taking off their clothes and getting together with other people so I actually like that I think it's great that people find their own way to connect and don't feel pressure to adhere to some program that doesn't feel right to them.
Leyna:     And then that goes all the way up to what

10:17
Guest:     people who just have random hookups, in the back room so at one of the clubs we go to frequently in Toronto. There's an area called the big bed, and people will go back to the big bed area, and it's just, you know, kind of fair game. They're open to whomever wants to do whatever they want. Often, you know it'll be a situation where they don't even necessarily know the names of the other people. I mean that's that's extreme. Most Swingers, do not do that, but we've definitely seen it happen where people who have never spoken before end up fucking and that's cool if they're comfortable with that, but that's not our comfort level.
11:04
And we have a good friend who went to a club that has a DTF night which is down to fuck night, and she told us that she was at that club last year, she had anal sex with nine men she had never met before.
Leyna:  Really,
Guest:      and she's a medical doctor, she's like a very serious smart, wonderful, lovely person. But that was her idea of fun on that particular night so not ours, I would say I haven't checked with Kate lately.

11:35
Leyna:     Wow. All right, so there is a wide spectrum of activity, and, you know, whatever, whatever, the turn ons and the kinks are for everyone in the lifestyle. Now what I find interesting about You two in particular, when I started looking into the different lifestyles are the different types of lifestyles people live, researching it looking for people to talk to, of course, You go to Twitter, you can find anything right. And some of it is really I mean there are a lot of if you look up swingers or lifestyle, you will find a ton of accounts you don't see their faces, and it's pretty much porn. Right, right, they're just posting hardcore stuff. Right. And then I saw you guys, and it's, it's like art, I mean, you know it's just like quickly, you know, scrolling through your Twitter feed. I see, like, really tasteful pictures that are very sexy, and I see you guys run a blog, and you seem to approach it from a very, I mean I don't want us to say intellectual because that could sound boring, but you approach it in a very like non hardcore way, if that makes sense,

12:49
Guest:    right at the beginning of our, our forays into the lifestyle once we got past the threesome stage, we started researching because we are intellectuals we are readers and we found two broad groups of people who were writing about non monogamy. One was the clinical side, you know, people who were studying swingers as if they were rats in a lab. And then there were the people who were basically writing erotica so they were just telling sexy stories and they made it all sound a little bit scary, but what we wanted was to hear what real people experienced, you know, how did it feel physically and emotionally in the moment to watch your spouse with someone else. How did it feel after, you know what were the ramifications of this, if any, and so we found there was a gap in the market so five years ago we started writing this blog to try and address that, you know, The idea with us was that we would do. You know we would write about our sex experiences but we really wanted to have kind of a debriefing after effect kind of conversation like how did you feel what was going on in your mind at that point, and really be brutally, brutally honest and some of our some of our things have been very revealing of our guarantees and our fears and our jealousy, which is not not huge but you know

14:15
it exists. And the whole idea being if there was some tears shed, we want to talk about that, and if there was an erection that failed, we want to talk about that. So, yes, there's lots of good times, that's why we're in it, but if you read some people's approaches, it's just like bounding from one Olympian experience to another to another to another, and it doesn't didn't resonate with us as real human beings and we didn't think would resonate with too many people either, so that's our coaches to be honest and along the way we ended up learning a lot about ourselves as we began the process of dissecting our experiences so it's been fun but also really educational for us as well and hopefully for other people.
Leyna:     Okay, you're clearly bisexual.
Guest:     Yes.
Leyna:     How about you, Liam.
Guest:      Yeah, it's, that's definitely part of my journey, because my approach is you know so many men get hung up on labels and say, you know, you'll hear the question, if I do this or if I like that does that make me gay. So I hate that approach, I just think I'm in this for as much pleasure, as I can experience. And so it seems crazy that within the lifestyle I would guess 90% of women, describe themselves as bisexual and 2% of men do. And so, I've been looking to make that part of our explorations and it's helped enormously by the fact that almost nothing turns Kate on more than seeing a guy with another guy. So,
15:54
Leyna:     well then that's a first for my guests, because it's normally the other way around, Kate, can you talk more about that. Did you know that turns you on.

16:04
Guest:     Oh yeah, yeah I I've never been a huge fan of porn but if anything is going to work for me, It would be bisexual or gay male porn. So I've always known that about my eroticism, when Liam and I talk about having another male involved in our threesomes. It's not just that he wants to watch me with another man he gets a little erotic thrill out of having, you know, helping guide the man's cock into me, or, you know for trying some acrobatic double penetration, you know, having their, their, you know cost close together and feeling the rubbing so I mean he's low level bisexual, but I really am enthusiastic about that and want to encourage that exploration to continue so I find it very hard.

16:59
Leyna:     Well, and, and Liam you're saying. So what I'm, I guess what I'm trying to find out is, is that something that you discovered only after you got into the lifestyle or is it anything that interested you before.

17:11
Guest:     Well I think like a lot of men, you might look back on your teenage masturbation fantasies and say, Oh yeah there was that one scenario I used to think about with another guy but it was, You know, one of those fantasies for 99 fantasies that involve females, but there was, that means that thread was always there, and it came up at different times but I just never had the avenue because I didn't consider myself. I had nothing against say pursuing gay sex, Except it just, it doesn't turn me on, it's not something, per se, that I went after but in the lifestyle, suddenly you have all these options on that spectrum that you're talking about me say, Oh, just because I perhaps don't want to have anal intercourse with another man. Does that mean it's all or nothing, or are these other steps so Kate was just describing a situation where, say, another guy is fucking her. And so he's his penis is in her vagina and, but my hand is on her clit. And so they're very close, and part of the fun is also making contact with his cock, and not worrying about what does that mean or what does it imply in terms of what I might like with this guy, it's just, they're good sensations, and we're just following them where they take us.
Leyna:Are you open with your family and friends. Do they know?

18:39
Guest:     No. Well actually, some so my siblings know my parents do not and must never know. Almost all of our friends are, are in the lifestyle, and the you know the couple of close non-lifestyle friends we have day certainly no. So I guess really it's only my parents who don't know, and my colleagues
19:02
and my family, the family I grew up in the word sex was never mentioned except one time my dad talked about during the war traveling through Middlesex in England.

19:13
Leyna:    I get it with the family. I checked out your blog and you spoke to something that I think I'm hearing bits and pieces of, and that is shame. Can you talk about getting rid of Shame, shame, in the lifestyle shame in everyone's lives and how it affects our sexuality?

19:35
Guest:     Yeah, I think, you know, both of us grew up in the church, so you would expect there to be a lot of built-in shame, given that upbringing. But I think we somehow avoided that. Because, for me anyway I always thought if something was, was good for, for you and the people you were involved with. If everyone was having fun and everyone is consenting, no one was being hurt. Everyone was being loving and respectful, then there really can't be anything wrong with that. So, I get that society would from the outside, have lots of things to say. But in the moment if it feels healthy, and if it feels loving, then I don't think, I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of.
20:27
But I do get why we need to keep it a secret because not everyone agrees. Yeah, the other thing too is that you can start with this surface level and say, You know I don't experience shame but we have a situation recently in our own lives, So I thought, I feel no shame towards Kate, we've done everything but, actually, of course we haven't done everything sex is like an unending buffet. And so, oh, recently, we had the idea of getting her a strap on so a dildo, and a strap on harness initially so she could have sex penetrative sex with other women. But of course another use of those that equipment is for her to have sex with me. And all of a sudden, that's no longer that heroic male vision of a man's role in sex, it's very much passive role, and I felt embarrassed by how much I wanted it not because other people knew was my own wife, with whom I shared everything. So, that idea of shame, at some level, we might say we move past it but there's, I think in every one there's always going to be a level where you encounter it. As you continue to explore further afield from the, from the role that you've played up until that point so that was certainly the case with me.

21:52
Leyna:   Have you. Well, you've already answered the question I, I always love finding out from couples who haven't been in the lifestyle before getting together as. Did you find anything that really turns you on, that you didn't think turns you on, or maybe that you thought for sure would turn you off.
Guest:     How much time do you have.
Leyna:     So you found a lot, a lot of stuff that you like that you didn't know you liked.

22:18
Guest:     Yeah well that's, that's the amazing thing so I'll give one example. I always, I grew up with the idea that most people grew up with, which was the worst thing that can happen to a man is to see his woman with another man. So that's like isn't that 60% of country songs are basically scenario, right, and, and then one day I heard this story about a man who set up his wife to have sex with another man, and it was like it was a totally terrible story in many ways, but it introduced an idea to me about seeing Kate with another man and all of a sudden, I could think of nothing else. And so we found a way to do that as Kate alluded to earlier, we made an arrangement with her ex-boyfriend who turned out to be the perfect partner for that exploration, and he had sex with her. And then the next day. We're
Leyna:  Wait. a second, no no no no, he had sex with her. What did you do. Where were you,
Guest:     um, I was there and watching. Can you describe what that was like I mean this is the first time you're seeing it right. Yeah, so I can see it, this is, this is what I was getting into the next day but I will leap back in time. So, in the moment.
23:38
I actually was observing, like a scientist would like, Oh, I didn't really have a clipboard, but I was taking in all the information maybe that's the artist side of me so seeing their bodies together his cock entering her giving him, oral sex him touching her in different ways, him moving in different ways, but it was very clinical, and then the next day we're out by our pool and relaxing, and I am on fire with dessert we're just having sex, almost continuously in the backyard and I'm just thinking oh it's just must be one of those days until Kate said, Do you think this has something to do with what happened last night and immediately became obvious that I had been taking in all this information on an intellectual level, but at a visceral level, it was having a deep profound effect on my libido. So, in the other thing is that not only was I on fire sexually but I was so deeply in love. I was experiencing those feelings in a different way so someone had come to me before we tried anything and said, You want to feel the most in love. The most attracted to your wife. Here's some advice and if they said letter fuck another man. Just watch. Yeah, I would have said, That's ridiculous.
25:03
And to tie you in 98% of the population right
25:07
when I'm telling you that's what happened and not in a little way where you say, oh, yeah, I think that had a positive effect. It was an overwhelming tsunami of emotion, and, and turn on that I suppose from that thing that you would expect would cause the exact opposite.

25:25
Leyna:     Wow, Kate. How about you, okay, you've you've always been a really sexual person right I can tell

25:30
Guest:    ya, yes. I think for me, and maybe it's kind of coming from the same place so for both of us, I think, a real source of turn on is flirting with the thing that you don't want to have happen or the thing that you're most afraid of. So, for Liam and maybe for many men, seeing your wife with another man would be the most humiliating most anger inducing thing you can imagine, but that turns him on for me and I think probably for many women the most dangerous thing you can imagine, is being raped, being tied down and forced to have sex against your will. So for me the surprising turn on has been bondage. So I really love being tied up or strapped down and flogged and spanked and fucked. In fact, yes.

26:29
Leyna:    Don't forget that part. Now, wow. Yeah, if you were to give advice to people who are not in the lifestyle, people who thought the same things, you guys might have thought a long time ago. What would your advice be as far as kind of dipping your toes. I mean if you have no experience in any kind of non-monogamous relationships, how do you get started without blowing up your life.

27:01
Guest:     Well I'd say it has to start in the bedroom between you. So sharing your fantasies, maybe talking in just theoretical terms about what would turn you on maybe seeing your partner with someone else or imagining an orgy or a gang bang or some sort of hot wife situation where the wife gets sent out to have sex with another man, so just talking those things through. In theory, with no particular target for those fantasies. I think that's a good way to, to just kind of mentally work through the process of, you know, what would turn me on and maybe what would my hangups be what am I afraid of when we, when we talk about these things. What makes me uncomfortable when we go there. I think that's a good place to start. and I also love lifestyle vacations, so desire in Mexico and hedonism in Jamaica, are beautiful places to go if you want to sit on the beach and drink. You know my ties and, you know, go to Hot tubs. You don't have to do anything with anyone else there you can just have a lovely vacation, but you can also watch other people from a safe distance, you can get as involved as you want to but you don't have to. And I think that's a really good way if you're feeling like, yes, we've already talked it through, we want to dip our toes in, but we don't want to commit to anything going on that kind of vacation is a really good way to be exposed to lots of things and you can choose what you want to participate in and if you participate in nothing. You're still going to have a fantastic vacation and see some sexy people walking around naked.

28:43
The other thing is, you're going to meet more people than you ever have on a beach, beach vacation however there's something about lifestyle resorts where people spend much of the time naked, that when they're not having sex just meeting at the buffet in the evening watching the entertainment. There's just an openness that you don't get in any other setting. So, whenever we've gone to a resort from the first time to the most recent time we meet so many new people, and we've done the other resorts before we've done the sandals and the light, you come home and maybe you met one couple and you say, we'll keep in touch and and in at a lifestyle resort you're easily going to come home with 10 names 20 names of people who said hey here's our email address just chat if you're in the neighborhood, let us know. It's remarkable.

29:32
Leyna:     Have you ever talked to anyone who who dipped their toes who, you know, tried the lifestyle and, and it's just not for them and they, like, you know, It didn't last.

29:42
Guest:     Yeah we we've absolutely had seen that happen so we have very good friends. In fact, the friend that Kate's best friend who she had threesomes with and, and sex one on one with early on in that relationship that we talked about her new boyfriend and later husband wasn't enthusiastic, but he heard her stories was an uncharged mental forward thinking person and he decided to give it a try, and it we thought that it might be a good thing for them in terms of exploring their sexuality, outside of the hothouse have their own intense personal relationship, but it didn't work out that way. There were too many unresolved issues within the relationship in terms of hurts and jealousies and resentments and the lifestyle is not a place to work through those issues with your partner, it will exacerbate them so they will take a strong relationship, and multiply it by 10 which was our case, but it will take a weak relationship, and just batter it against the rocks.

30:53
Leyna:     I think some people who are not familiar with the lifestyle, and, you know, now it looks like there's more talk of it. I have heard people say, oh my god you know is those liberal people. Can you talk about the people you've met in the lifestyle. Are they all these left leaning liberal people who don't care about anything and they're just out to have sex with a bunch of strangers, or are we talking about a better representation of the general public. 

31:22
Guest:    Oh, the general public is definitely represented mean, you can find every kind of person every age, every body type every religious and political affiliation. There are people from every stream of society represented for sure. The people we tend to gravitate toward are generally people who are professionals with advanced degrees, because we like to have those intellectual conversations. And so we have lots of friends who are professors and doctors and engineers and business owners and. And those are the people who stimulate us intellectually but you can certainly find all walks of life, and all you know members of society. In in swinging for sure.
32:13
Well we had an experience with a couple of one of our very first trips to hedonism to Jamaica. We met a couple, and he was a new york city policeman, and she was working in the health care field, and we had connection with them on our very last day ended up having sex with them in our room and it was really wonderful. They were lovely people they had a great story in terms of how they had met and blended their families together, But when we got back we connected on Facebook and he was a person, although this was not a factor in 2013 when we met them. He's a Trump supporter. So, it was actually illuminating we didn't discuss politics, and we would be the opposite of Trump supporters as people, but we got to see someone who maybe we would never connect with in any other sphere of life, up close and see that they too were lovely people who had a great relationship deeply cared about each other, and just as it turned out happened to have different political inclinations than we did.

33:15
Leyna:    I've heard a lot, that there are people in the lifestyle who are professionals who have high standing in their communities, and they're all in the shadows, because of where they are because of how successful they are, and because they're worried about the fallout. Would you say that that's pretty much the case and and why people aren't open about it.

33:37
Guest:     Yeah, definitely. I think you know within, within your closed lifestyle circle, you're gonna find lots of people who are, you know, open minded and, you know, very solid normal individuals with good jobs and kids and you know, running around to soccer games on weekends and, you know, we're all very normal within the lifestyle. But there's a perception from the outside, that you know that we are degenerates or that we are dangerous or we are going to, you know, take their husbands away. So I think, you know, while there's no shame within the lifestyle. There's a lot of concern about the misunderstandings of the people outside it so I think if you were to come in from the outside. And even you know just come to one of our parties you would see so much goodwill and friendship and very normal people having very normal conversations. And we also, you know, kiss and touch and sometimes have sex with each other, but it's, you know, something you have to experience in order in order to fully understand and most people are not willing to experience it so they're just going to come to it with misconceptions and that's what feels dangerous to us.

34:59
We have two friends, two of our closest friends are both professors, and they teach at the university level in the educational field, and they both supervise PhD candidates and lead departments, and it's important for them, that this secret doesn't get out, not because they're ashamed at all, but because they're worried about it affecting their relationships with the people who report to them and that they introduce that it might introduce maybe an uncomfortable layer of sexuality to what otherwise is an important mentorship relationship.

35:38
Leyna:     That's unfortunate. Don't you think that we still live in a society where something that brings people so much joy and happiness and pleasure, still has to be kept behind closed doors.

35:50
Guest:     Well, I see that a lot in relation to my kids, so my kids don't know, and, and there are many reasons behind that, but I often think you know our big job as parents is to prepare our kids for a lifetime of work and to prepare our kids for lifetime relationships, and what we've discovered in the lifestyle is not a trivial enhancement to what we have, But an unbelievable explosion of possibility, that we've entered on. And so to not share that with my kids to say, I've discovered something that can bring enormous amounts of happiness, but I can't tell you about it feels wrong, that's something that we're working through I assume I'll tell them at some point, but up to now, we've not had not felt comfortable doing that. How old are they 31-27 and also their their adult, and you still don't feel comfortable. Yes and it has to do it well maybe I'll let Kate describe.
36:53
Amazing. Well, I mean, I would just feel more comfortable telling my own son who's 20, but I don't feel comfortable with Liam telling his kids, because I'm the evil stepmother right so I don't want to give them more reason to be suspicious of me or to reawaken some of their feelings about, you know, Liam's divorce from their mother and why that might have happened so I just I want to be very cautious not to hurt anyone against us.
37:36
Leyna:     It comes from everyone else not having the kind of understanding that you do. Right, so you can tell people about it, you can tell people how great it is and how happy you are. But because of their own beliefs. They may refuse to believe that you're happy, they may refuse to believe that this is a good thing.

37:57
Guest:     Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that's part of why we write the blog because we have learned all these lessons and had all these insights, and we are desperate to share them with people because we see how much it's improved our life and we know how much it could potentially improve other people's lives. If it were normalized for them. And so because we don't feel comfortable telling people in our immediate sphere or, you know, our children, we feel like we can at least reach out to whatever anonymous strangers want to follow us online and read our stories and maybe those people will hear something that will encourage them to try it and maybe their lives can be made better

38:42
Leyna:     for the person sitting at home who, okay, this doesn't sound so weird, but it does sound dangerous especially if you've got a professional job and an image and a family and a community right, and they want to find out more about it, it still feels really unsafe, like, what if someone finds out. Is there any kind of code in the lifestyle or is there a way to do it where you won't be found out.

39:10
Guest:      You have to assume that it could get out and you know we're putting ourselves at extra risk by having, you know the blog and then Twitter accounts and doing these interviews, but they're the vast majority of people in lifestyle have kept it a secret, some of them for 20 plus years. If you are cautious people with an the lifestyle, they're not going to outdo you. Right. It's the people who don't understand and who are judgmental and, you know, shocked by this. So you have to be very cautious about who you tell outside of the lifestyle, circles, but I think discretion is, you know, top priority for most people within it. So, for example, we saw a person that I work with at a lifestyle event so we walked into this weekend long hotel takeover, and there were two of my colleagues, set up signs, and I immediately turned around and walked right out of the hotel, because I was freaked out. But then we came back together and we had a conversation, and you know we it's kind of Mutually Assured Destruction, so I'm not going to tell on you. You're not going to tell on me because neither one of us wants our secret to be out. So, you know, within the closed circle it feels quite safe.
40:26
Guest:      But I often think you know that we are in the lifestyle very much where gay people were prior to Stonewall, so they had a secret a secret that they felt enriched their lives was for to their identity, but that wouldn't be accepted by others stop and think, you know, that would still perhaps be the case, or people in same sex relationships, except for some brave people decided that they would not act to shame and stay in hiding but come out of the closet. And so, I think, you know we're trying in our own way to make our little ventures outside of our safety bubble. And I think that's happening among many other couples as well, but we need to actually do, as, as people in the non-monogamy world as swingers to use that term, what gay people did a generation before, which is to be open about something, not because we are exhibitionist at heart, although we kind of are exhibitionist, at heart, but because there's some great information that we've come into contact with that more people need to know about.

Leyna:      To follow along on their journey, you can find this lovely couple at the monogamishmarriage.com All right, next time on consenting adults, a newbies first trip to a BDSM club, opens the door to a new career.
Guest:      I'll never forget it, there's this eight foot high tube Crucifix with a woman suspended in it, and there's a guy in high heels, a mohawk in stockings show to you this woman with his high heels installed in our throat, then he takes out the ribs and he starts whipping around, I thought to myself, I could do this. 
Leyna:      That's next time, on Consenting Adults.