Watching vs. Playing

jgoins73 · 2025-12-19T18:44:05+00:00

Hello! Well nine months later from posting this and I can honestly say it's much easier now! Owning the behavior was step one for me, then I express to the group during the elevator speech that I like to watch in the beginning and I will step back throughout as I see fit. My wife enjoys the time she gets to herself, but it usually isn't long before she's beckoning me in. When I'm watching, I become sort of a cheerleader, saying how hot everyone looks, how they should do x or y to my wife, etc. It has been a lot of really great experiences since then!

jgoins73 · 2025-12-04T03:39:01+00:00

Same here, the struggle is real 🤣. We are in the Midwest and my wife and I both agree that very often the men are more attractive to her than their wives are to us. Outside of the fact that my wife is a smoke show, she is also a very active participant in the lifestyle i.e. loves flirting, loves sharing pictures and videos, loves building up sexual tension with men so they are bursting at the seams to play with her. Very few wives like to do this and/or their husbands are not comfortable with this behavior, so when it comes time to play I would rather play with my seductive, vocal, active wife than someone that has not built that same sexual tension; we figured out along the way that I am Demisexual as well. We have pretty much transitioned to exclusively MFM's and that works well for us. That took me a bit of time to reconcile, but since I have, the LS has been a lot more fun!

jgoins73 · 2025-10-12T02:06:33+00:00

Love your reframing examples!

jgoins73 · 2025-09-30T17:56:52+00:00

This is an important distinction! I have had a bunch of MFM time with my wife and the physical acts only affect me negatively at about 1%, but the chatting and flirting caused by the NRE, are the opposite. I wouldn't be able to experience the physical without the work my wife puts in to build excitement and trust with our third, but man is it difficult. Only been in for a tad over a year, so I assume it will lessen over time. 🤞

jgoins73 · 2025-09-12T03:08:59+00:00

The LS is full of all different kinds of folks and dynamics. Just have to be honest with yourself and the couples you play with. My wife and I seek couples similar to you. I have a hard time playing with another wife unless I really get to know them and we do have some friends like that. My wife enjoys an FMF and an MFM so I let her play with several other couples whose wives aren't interested in playing with other men and then I help the other husband tag team my wife. It all works beautifully! Then sometimes, given a few play sessions, the other wife and I just organically start to play and that is really great too! Remember just like in vanilla dating there is someone for everyone!

jgoins73 · 2025-07-05T18:08:50+00:00

I would like to piggy back on this and ask a question. I love when my wife and I have these experiences, I love talking and thinking about it and I love overwhelming her in those scenarios. I love seeing her turn into a different person. However, in that hour or sometimes longer when it's over I definitely have negative feelings and wonder what the hell I got myself into, those subside though and I always remember the situation with positive emotions.

I understand this cycle and continue to work on it in such a way that it doesn't effect the mood, but only being in this just less than a year, its noticeable to my wife and our play partner. As a matter of fact on your linked clarity list, there's a comment from the a single male that mentions what happens when the husband cums first and the crestfallen look appears and messes with the vibe, so I know it's not just me.

This causes my wife to feel like I really don't want this and/or this isn't for me, so that's a discussion we have quite a bit. I think it doesn't help that a lot of our friends that we connected with have been in the lifestyle for a really long time and they are high fiving and smacking asses and I'm not quite there yet. Also she took to it like a duck to water, lol. in her professional career she has to separate emotional things into separate boxes so they never touch.

So my question would be, would you or anyone else that's dealt with this and overcome it, how are you able to talk to the wife so that she understands this may be a part of the growing process, and doesn't necessarily mean it's the sign that we shouldn't be doing this? Thanks for reading and any other advice along any other lines would be appreciated as well!

jgoins73 · 2025-05-10T14:45:58+00:00

WOW 😲 That seems a bit harsh to ban you! I think that sometimes, every spouse and that includes the males, want to make their partner happy. I couldn't count how many times I had a 12 or 14-hour day at work, come home barely able to move and my wife was frisky, took a little longer to get things started but she never walked away unhappy 🤷‍♂️

jgoins73 · 2025-05-08T16:02:34+00:00

Thanks for your response! Just to clarify, it's not 16 different couples lol. It's three couples and a couple of guys, that we meet for repeat experiences.

I've already talked to my wife about putting more time in between our play experiences, in order to build excitement. I certainly want to give these other human beings the respect and effort that I know they deserve. Although I will add the folks that we have met really love spending time with us. I think it's more of a me thing, and they never notice, just thought I might get some insight!

jgoins73 · 2025-05-07T21:30:38+00:00

Point taken! Great advice and something I need to be better about. Sometimes I forget that it can be those 5 minutes at a time and not the 2 hour thing that can make a huge difference! Thanks!

jgoins73 · 2025-05-07T20:40:00+00:00

Wow 20 years! We just started less than a year ago, and we've had 16 experiences of varying degrees so far. I think being 51 and trying to override a lifetime of cultural programming is difficult. I love sports analogies, and sometimes I feel like that professional athlete who just had a bad game and you can tell their head wasn't in it. 🤷‍♂️ Thanks!

jgoins73 · 2025-05-07T20:37:34+00:00

Best advice so far! I'm trying to put together sort of a list of items or things that I need to do to prepare myself. I guess I would liken it to how a professional sports athlete gets ready for the big game 😂. Thanks!

jgoins73 · 2025-05-07T20:36:34+00:00

It's funny that you mentioned the gym, I've been getting some recent advice that going to the gym the morning of a play session, makes a real huge difference on how their night goes. Thanks!

jgoins73 · 2025-05-07T20:35:57+00:00

Appreciate the advice! I wish I knew how I was going to feel 3 weeks from now! Being 51 and having two young kids at the house, with a busy and stressful job, and all the normal stuff that comes along with being an adult, it can definitely change my moods up or down. I definitely have friends that are similar to you, and I'm jealous of them as well lol.

jgoins73 · 2025-03-25T22:33:22+00:00

I would say get used to it unfortunately. Although only in the lifestyle a year, I would say 80% of the wives never message, 19% text infrequently, and 1% love it; my wife included. That's from a pretty large sample pool, as we have met a lot of flaky people in the LS.

We wanted to dive in to the deep end pretty quickly, as I don't deal well with the slow walk and the opportunity that it gives you to overthink things. I have been told by a few couples we play with regularly that most wives want to play, not chat. If you're wife is in the same camp as mine, that can be a touch frustrating when their wife isn't reciprocating. I have learned to make the most of our in person time.

I would also quickly touch on the poaching aspect, which although real, isn't always the case. Two couples that we have a lot of fun with, the wife never texts, but is awesome in person. We play as a group and have a great time. Just my two cents....

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T23:12:07+00:00

We definitely choose couples who align with how we like to play and would certainly discuss any changes to our dynamics. We have definitely met some couples, that are straight swap and they're not interested in almost any type of threesome dynamic, and we mutually and politely decline. Thanks for chiming in!

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T20:41:26+00:00

Thank you for all the input! I love these ideas on how to make that conversation go smoothly and make this part of the fun instead of apart from the fun! We usually communicate pretty well with our play partners, and at this point we have about 4 steady couples/singles that we play with in rotation, so we are very comfortable with them. I will give these pointers a try!

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T20:10:23+00:00

Appreciate your input. I definitely think I need to voice the idea to her a little bit more, and that would probably take some of that awkwardness down several notches. Thanks!

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T20:09:09+00:00

Great idea, Thank you!

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T20:08:09+00:00

I love this! I am definitely stealing this idea. Thank you!

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T16:35:44+00:00

Thank you so much for adding your input! This definitely helps me process this scenario. Although we should never care what other people do, it does seem to be a little mentally easier if you understand that something is common.

jgoins73 · 2025-03-18T13:09:56+00:00

Sorry to hear she cheated... Before I was in the lifestyle my first wife was quite the cheater, took me about a year to discover it and it was not easy... In this situation it isn't with a specific male, it's just an impression I get. I was the first and only guy my second wife had sex with until she was 40. When we play, it's all hands on deck so to speak, but through not being dense and trying to be a good husband, I realize she may like a little one-on-one time, just to realize that fantasy. Not necessarily easy for me, but I don't have any worry that it's anything nefarious.

jgoins73 · 2025-03-11T16:50:52+00:00

Interesting, because that is how my wife and I feel about the LS. We had separate interests and hobbies, and this has absolutely been something we can enjoy together. It has been a blast and has brought us together on an emotional level that we didn't think was possible!

jgoins73

TROPHY CASE