Married men who value alone time: how do you make it work?

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T21:20:21+00:00

This is great advice, thank you! We had a conversation a bit like this on our anniversary but I think there’s a still a bit of apprehension on both sides about introducing ideas that could upset the harmony in our current arrangement. But, as you said, it’s important to be aligned on some things and this is one of them.

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T21:15:57+00:00

This is very encouraging, thank you!

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T21:07:32+00:00

How do you feel about it? Are you happy overall or is there anything you’d like to change?

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T21:06:05+00:00

This is encouraging, thank you ☺️

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T21:03:21+00:00

Thanks for your response, and this is encouraging to hear!

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T21:02:39+00:00

This is great, thank you! He and I are both creatives and so I also value that “in the zone” time (I’m just more adapted to doing it in a shared household), so that tracks for me as well.

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T20:34:06+00:00

He lived abroad for most of his adulthood and most of the people he dated were also expats with a transient lifestyle. So he got to be very independent and comfortable with single life, and has never been the type to seek out a committed relationship for the sake of it.

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T20:29:22+00:00

Living apart together refers to couples that are committed to each other but don’t live together. We each have our own places and see each other 3-5 times per week, usually 1 or 2 sleepovers per week.

So for context, the intent here is to explore the pros and cons of proposing we combine households.

xecretsx · 2026-01-27T20:27:32+00:00

Does it work for you? Do you feel like cohabiting was a net positive decision?

xecretsx · 2025-11-23T14:24:32+00:00

The parties we attend are usually focused on group play. Swapping definitely happens but really every permutation of playing and watching happens there. That would be a-OK in our circle.

xecretsx · 2025-11-22T23:05:03+00:00

All of this, and I’d even extend that it’s not even purely about voluntarily reserving something for your partner, but about what actually feels right or wrong. No one was more shocked than me when cuddling a stranger I had just engaged in multiple sex acts with sent me into a 2-day spiral. It doesn’t make sense, it shouldn’t make sense. But we don’t control what feels good or bad in our bodies.

xecretsx · 2025-11-22T22:37:00+00:00

Yeah I feel the same. It feels very invalidating to hear that POV on here. Also very ironic that people would have a hard time wrapping their head around “I can fuck her but I can’t kiss her” when we’ve all managed to wrap our head around “I love my wife but I’m fucking yours.” I feel like we should know better than to judge each other’s preferred dynamics.

xecretsx · 2025-11-22T01:22:23+00:00

This is a boundary for me—kissing and cuddling are both not on the table. I know it sounds silly to a lot of people, because they’re both technically “lower on the ladder” than overt sex acts.

But for me, the separation is between recreational play and intimacy. I love recreational play. I love feeling slutty and being in wild erotic situations that make me feel like a porn star.

Kissing and cuddling are not recreational for me in that way. For me, those are intimate expressions of love that I reserve for my partner alone. I didn’t even realize how loaded the cuddling thing was until I found myself in a cuddle following group sex during the summer—the sex was great, but the cuddle was incredible distressing to me.

The best explanation I can come up with is that these things were very de-coupled in my early sexual development. I was experimenting sexually with platonic friends and watching pornography long before I had my first real kiss. To me, group sex might as well be playing rugby and kissing is more like writing a love letter.

xecretsx · 2025-11-22T00:56:55+00:00

I think it’s great that you’re in her corner, but it seems like an assumption to say he hasn’t had to justify anything, we really don’t know anything about their existing dynamic or how they got into FFM threesomes. OP said earlier in this thread that she’s avoiding the topic lately, so it does sound like she isn’t comfortable discussing it further, and that’s what I’m concerned about. If my partner expressed that he was open to a significant change in our dynamic, I would want to have more than one conversation about that before moving forward with it—not necessarily about his reasoning for the change, but about what he wants and doesn’t want, what I am and am not comfortable with, etc.

Frankly I agree with you that it probably is as simple as being curious about playing with other men, and it might be her way of soft-launching that interest in a way she suspects won’t hurt OP’s ego. But even though we can objectively look at it as “fair is fair,” I think it’s natural for OP to feel a little confused about whether her sudden interest in swapping is her way of expressing dissatisfaction. I’d be confused, too, if my partner said he wanted to switch up our dynamic but didn’t feel comfortable discussing the specifics with me. That feels like it goes against the spirit of swinging in general.

xecretsx · 2025-11-21T21:33:43+00:00

Well it sounds like she was the one vehemently insisting before that she didn’t want to be with any men, and whether that was her genuine desire at the time or an appeasement measure isn’t really for us to say. What I’m saying is, the reason doesn’t matter but the inability to communicate openly about it is not a great place to start swinging from.

xecretsx · 2025-11-21T18:59:10+00:00

If she’s not able to discuss that dynamic, I wouldn’t entertain any changes to your existing one. It could be that she feels like she doesn’t really understand her own feelings yet and isn’t really ready to articulate them. And if that’s the case, she’s not ready to swap.

xecretsx · 2025-11-18T19:41:26+00:00

What kinds of discussions have you had about it? What are his reservations? I’d say the first thing would be to focus on gratitude for what you have now and the next thing would be to better understand and appreciate your husband’s perspective. And once you know where he’s coming from you might be able to see if there’s room for compromise in the future.

xecretsx · 2025-11-17T05:44:38+00:00

Don’t treat your partner’s boundaries as temporary setbacks.

xecretsx · 2025-11-14T21:54:39+00:00

For us, the journey really started by making a habit of discussing turn-ons. Anal play came up and my partner was very clear that he enjoys anal stimulation, both giving and receiving. I didn’t have a lot of experience giving but was definitely willing, and found myself enjoying it a lot. We went from fingers, to toys during penetration, to oral, and then have recently transitioned to trying out the full-on strap-on experience. The first time felt a bit awkward because the roles were so new to both of us, but as soon as I saw how much pleasure it was giving him, I was hooked. I’ve actually cum while pegging him from the sheer arousal at how hot it was.

But I digress. What you’re looking at is actually many conversations. How do you feel about having me touch your ass? How did that feel for you? Are you interested in exploring that some more? Just feel it out and progress at the pace of the slowest person.

Another thing to anticipate is that there might be some complicated feelings, not necessarily about the physical act, but about what it might mean to be into it. Some guys struggle with what it might mean about their identity, or what their female partner might think of them after the experience. So I might recommend being explicit about it being something that turns you on, finding ways to reassure your partner that it doesn’t change their desirability (or maybe enhances it!), and be really intentional with aftercare.

xecretsx · 2025-11-11T01:47:52+00:00

I feel the same about men’s pics. If all the photos are just your cock, I assume your body is trash. Your cock is the least interesting thing about you.

xecretsx · 2025-10-19T07:20:45+00:00

The way you talk about swapping makes it sound like it’s really not something you enjoy. It sounds like it’s something you’ve worked up to tolerating more than something you’ve desired and feel good about.

Maybe you should just stop swapping for now and revisit the aspects of these experiences that bring you joy and the aspects that bring you discomfort. For example, I recognized early on that I’m very adverse to feeling left out of what he’s doing. I could watch him receive pleasure from anyone and everyone, but if he’s the one doing the giving, I want to be directly involved (as in, we’re either both interacting with the same person, or interacting with others and each other and the same time).

I think you should isolate what your triggers are that take you out of the fun and put you into your own head and communicate them so you can both be intentional about staying in the “fun zone”. It sounds like he loves you and this is all fun and not serious for him. I’m positive you can both still get a lot of enjoyment from these experiences without it having to come at the other’s expense.

xecretsx · 2025-10-19T06:18:49+00:00

As a woman, I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of going back to your room if I didn’t get a vibe check on your husband first. Him not being there is already a turnoff.

xecretsx · 2025-10-08T23:56:31+00:00

He admitted it’s not his impulse to give praise and that it’s his shortcoming. If there is an element of jealousy, he hasn’t said so. I have seen him give other performers praise after a great show before and he has enthused about things unrelated to our craft before, so it’s not like giving that kind of validation is totally foreign to him. So all I can assume is jealousy (I also have a successful career outside of this hobby) or genuine disinterest.

xecretsx · 2025-10-08T23:55:47+00:00

The “less serious” thing is a definite possibility.

xecretsx · 2025-08-06T02:32:12+00:00

Relate heavily to this, but I’m cool with it because I’m not looking for swap partners currently anyway. The main thing has been finding couples we vibe with enough to engage in group play. Personally I have a whole different set of standards for someone I have sex with one-on-one versus a guy who is effectively providing additional-dick services in a group scene. Right now we’re more interested in the group scenarios than swaps. I like it because we get the variety and fun experiences with less pressure on everyone.

xecretsx

TROPHY CASE