Episode 61 – Safety and Security in the lifestyle

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are I hope you have blue skies. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle podcast. I am your host Jayson, leave Vanilla behind as we talk about safety in the Lifestyle.

This podcast is for adults only. We’ll be diving into adult and sexual topics with plenty of colorful language, so it’s not safe for work. If you’re under 18, this isn’t the place for you. This show is all about exploring the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy, and it’s open to everyone no matter your background, gender identity, expression, or personal truth. While I do my best to use inclusive language, you might hear terms like husband, wife, or partner for simplicity’s sake. This show is for everyone, lifestyle, vanilla, or the curious.

Want to connect? Send me an email to host@thatotherlifestyle.com, visit my website at thatotherlifestyle.com, and check out my favorite lifestyle product recommendations at benable.com/thatotherlifestyle. Everyone is welcome here because the lifestyle is about so much more than you think.

I want to talk about safety and security in the Lifestyle. How do you manage your personal safety? Your spouse’s safety? Your relationship’s safety? Not just physically, mentally and socially too.

This will be a heavy topic, but I am happy to say it was not inspired by any event that happened. I realized that I have sprinkled safety advice throughout all my past episodes, and I figure it would be good, especially for newbies to condense all this information into one place, one episode.

The Lifestyle is fun. There is a saying I heard growing up that trouble always starts with fun. That quote is attributed to an advice columnist according to the internet. It is a way for super uptight people to soothe their miserable souls by warning people away from having fun. It conjures images of all social gatherings, feeling like everyone is waiting at a doctor’s office. No one talks or mingles for fear of that pesky fun goblin showing up.

Does trouble always follow fun? Hell no. Yes, it is possible to have a really fun, memorable night of nudity and shenanigans without trouble popping up the next day.

This episode is not a condemnation of the lifestyle. I would never do that. I will be honest with you though about factors and steps you need to take to be safe out there. It’s a wild world.

I ain’t here to scare anyone. I want to empower you to have more fun by feeling more secure in the moment and yourself. Let’s be honest. This is the moment where I pull out a folding chair, put my leg up to really wrap with everyone. If you want to have fun and avoid trouble, it’s time to get into the real talk.

The Lifestyle is risky. We can do actions to mitigate the risks which I want to share today. And to address the doom and gloom crowd right now, no I have never heard of an incident going so sideways that it caused physical or mental harm to anyone. Never heard of the cops getting involved. We are adults who handle our business appropriately. I have personally thrown house parties and never had an incident. Get that out the way at the top.

Anyway, The Lifestyle can be risky. Living is risky though. Want existential dread? Right now, above your head, in the vastness of space are giant asteroids floating happily along in the void. Two hundred million years ago, two of those rocks collided and now one of them could be on a collision course with your house, right now. You would have no idea and no way to mitigate that risk at the fuck all. That is an example of fuck me can’t do anything about that category.

The lifestyle is not in that category. The lifestyle is in the “be smart, be safe, be cautious” category.

Do not take needless or stupid risks in the Lifestyle. This advice runs the gamut from not using protection to popping out titties in a waterpark surrounded by families. Popping out titties. That is a good segue.

I have seen it where we are out with a big group of people and one person drinks a handful too many white claws and decides that this bar we are at, all these nice vanilla people need to see her titties. This is colossally stupid. Now everyone in the bar is staring at the titties, wondering who this woman is and more importantly who is this woman with? Compound that with her yelling out she was a swinger and looking to fuck someone’s husband. Now the whole bar got the memo what the fuck is going on. This is stupid. This is stupidity that is now affecting other people.

The lady from my story is taking a needless, pointless risk with herself that is impacting other people around her because her husband didn’t know when to cut her off.

Extreme example right there. Give a better more subtle example. A couple starts chatting with another couple online. Without verifying pictures or who they are, these four agree to meet in a hotel room. This is a stupid risk as well. Not as public, much more potential to go sideways.

People in the lifestyle are the most genuine, best humans I have ever met. Does not mean all of them are. Does not mean they are all your besties from go. First point to note. Assume everyone is a stranger until they are a friend. I don’t know how you personally measure that, but I want to know some shit before we agree to meet in private or even consider having relations with these people.

My wife put it best. Use Tinder date Rules. We are meeting in public the first time we hang out. We are verifying personal details. Does this couple look like their pictures? Is the conversation going well? Any disturbing comments? We don’t go into dates with any sense of obligation on our souls that this interaction will progress to sex. For us, we want to hang out a couple of times before we consider physical relations. Why? So, we have plenty of time to let the crazy come out.

Look if the other couple is hiding their crazy, they can’t keep that mask up forever. It will crack. And with repeated interactions are hard to maintain that mask.

What do I mean by crazy? There are generally agreed upon criteria and then specifics we look for. Weird vibes. You can’t define this in a useful way, but you know it when you see it or feel it. Maybe the couple insults each other, not in a playful way. Maybe the husband is too forward. Maybe the wife wants to take the dynamic into a direction you are not comfortable with.

Maybe the couple gets into a straight up fight during a group chat. Had that happen. What else? I did a whole episode on red flags, go listen to that. To me the biggest sign of crazy is if they grossly misrepresent who they are. Pictures don’t match. Bad vibes, bad interaction. Being pushy. That sort of thing.

I say use Tinder date rules. Here’s a weird nuance though. If a couple has been married for 20 years, they completely missed online dating. Totally not a consideration at any point in the past 20 years, so they may not know about how fucking weird online dating can get.

A lot of times that is what we doing, online dating. Yes, we can meet people at parties or events which is my preferred method of meeting people, when you start out though, you don’t know about parties or clubs or events.

Logically you will start your lifestyle journey on a website, scrolling through profiles. Some sites do an excellent job of weeding out fakes and some sites do not. Some sites have a person dedicated to hunting down scammers and fakes. That’s their full time job. I know this. Other sites don’t give two flaming shits, as long as a person pays their money, they are in.

The weirdest scam I got via a dating site was a person reaching out to support their GoFundMe for a funeral or something. Like something fucked up to be trolling around a dating site asking for help. I reported them. And you should too. Scammy profiles and trolls and fakes. Report them.

In general, assume everyone is a stranger until they are a friend. First date, we always meet in public. Even if they are friends of friends or seem really cool in text messages. A coffee date is way cheaper than bail money. People may offer meeting for the first time at their homes. I don’t like this. The idea of going into their space, not neutral territory until I am completely comfortable with these people. Nope don’t like that. Save the going to people’s houses for the third or fourth date. Any public space works could even be a sex club or a house party where lots of other people will be there.

Other basic considerations. Keep your phone charged. Know your exits. Park smart. Have code phrases to get out of bad situations. Look for red flags. Do not dismiss red flags as just human nature. If someone makes you or your spouse uncomfortable in any way, investigate. Could be the other person is very socially inept, or they could be crazy.

One other piece of advice. Chat groups and tribes and social circles exist. However, they are organized, be it through messenger apps or social media. Never assume that someone who is in the same group as you is safe or that by their participation in this group there is a free ticket to bypass your safety protocols. Still ask for testing results, still follow tinder rules. Vet these people and don’t make assumptions.

There is no transitive property in the Lifestyle. Just because a friend is really cool with a couple, doesn’t mean you will be. Or that you will click with them either. We are all unique adults looking for our own unique people.

Physical safety and security. My wife is the most precious person, light of my life, the other half of my soul and I will never knowingly put her into a dangerous situation. That is the attitude everyone in the Lifestyle should have. We should protect our spouses as best we can at all times.

This includes if we are out in a vanilla space like a nightclub, I am hovering. She can go dancing and mingle but I am watching. Not so much what she is doing but other people around her. Watching for vanilla guys coming around.

That’s the physical safety piece. Knowing where your spouse is, what they are doing, who is around. Not trying to be doom and gloom here, basic safety procedures.

The most valuable asset you have is your Spidey Sense. Diving into the nerd lore. Spiderman, the comic book hero, webs, red costume, has Spidey sense. He intuitively knows when danger is coming, or he is under attack. Gives him a split second to react to trouble. Its represented in the comics by lightning bolts around his head. Everyone has this. We all have intuition that a situation or a person or a date or a couple is not safe.

Listen to your fucking intuition. The world has a nasty way of making us question our natural intuition or write it off or logic it away. No. Listen to the little voice in your stomach or head or heart, wherever that voice is located, listen to it.

Let’s say you want to ride an elevator. Press the button and the door opens. Inside the elevator, four open buckets of gasoline and a dude randomly flicking a lighter. Are you going to say, oh this is fine and get on that elevator? No. Your brain assesses the situation, realizes this is a bad fucking idea and you wait for the next elevator.

Another example, the worst job I ever had. In college, I worked for a company that changed air filters in air conditioners. Sounds tame right. No. Because in some buildings, like high school gyms, those fucking AC units on attached to the ceiling, 30 feet up in the air. To access the unit, you have to climb straight up a rickety ladder, then crawl out onto a beam 20 feet, climb inside the AC and then do all that in reverse.

My boss told me to go up the ladder. I asked for a safety harness. Apparently, safety harnesses and following government safety regulations made me less of a man which he loudly told me. And I loudly told him no. And that was my last day working for that rat bastard. My Spidey sense said this was a dumb, stupid idea and I should probably not do it.

Intuition keeps us safe. Yes, it may limit our fun. I know examples in my life where my intuition said, don’t do that or go there. Turns out nothing happened. Everyone else had a blast and I went home. I still can’t shake the feeling though that I am happy I listened to my gut.

Swinging all this back to swinging. Listen to your gut on situations. Do not go into private residences or hotel rooms with people that you do not know or trust. This sounds like basic advice, but I am willing to bet every experienced Lifestyle person out there has a story where shit went sideways because they went into a private residence or hotel room with people they did not know or trust.

Want to know when you are the most vulnerable? When you are butt naked with a hard on in a hotel room with another couple, your wife is naked, they are naked, and the other husband doesn’t seem to want to listen to your stern guidance on not choking your wife. For clarity, it hasn’t happened to me. I can see this situation happening.

Or if the other husband can’t get his dick hard. I need to get my sexism hat real quick. After much input from the ladies I know, women know that men can be dangerous. Yes, other women can be dangerous too. Stick with me. Men can get dangerous when they are upset or angry. What can piss off a dude? If his dick is not working. This ain’t the only trigger out there. It’s a simple example to follow along.

So, to you, Mr. lifestyle dude listening to this, you are in a hotel room, you and your wife are naked and vulnerable, and this other husband flips out. Yelling and screaming and unable to control his emotions. What do you do? Get the fuck out of there. If someone wants to display rage and anger and bad vibes in the LS, time to bounce out.

Am I being extreme, a little but not by much. It’s all about situational awareness. Be aware of your surroundings. Be aware of exits. Have a plan in your head of what you will do, and this is for the wife and the husband and other parts of the relationship.

Your physical safety is important. Don’t take chances. Don’t take risks. Remember just because you want to fuck someone does not make that person safe, I say with quote marks in the air.

For the most part, people in the lifestyle are calm and rational human beings. The crazy ones, the creepers, the rage filled jackasses, tend to wash themselves out of this pretty quick.

Under the banner of physical safety is testing. I talk about testing all the time because it is important. Testing for STIs is one of the methods we use to keep our physical person safe from infections. I recommend STDhero.com. My promo code is TOL15 for 15% off your order. Testing should be part of your standard operating procedure now. Even for newbies. This is your reminder to go get tested this week. STDHero.com.

To answer a random question that popped into my head. Okay, Jason, you say all this is so dangerous, should I carry mace or how to protect myself?

Bail. Get the fuck out of the situation as fast and calmly as possible. Don’t try to calm them down. Don’t try to fight them if it comes to that. You can’t fight crazy. Run. Leave. Get your stuff and go. There is nothing to be gained by going through that with another person.

And another fucking thing. Know your limits. Specifically talking about alcohol though this could apply to all illicit substances. Know your limits. Do not drink to excess if you plan on doing the horizontal cardio with another couple. More importantly, know your spouse’s limits too.

Do not be afraid to cut your spouse off. Do not be afraid to remove them from a situation if they are drunk or fucked up. Going back to me gushing over my wife. My wife is the most important person to me on this planet. I am going to look out for her, I am going to watch how much she drinks and if I think she has had enough I will step. And she would do the same for me. We have done this for each other many times.

Practical advice for parties or events. Take turns. This party, know that your spouse is allowed to get drunk and you stay sober. Next time, switch. If you are both drunk, that’s when bad decisions happen. Having one person stay sober means there is at least one responsible person your team watching and listening to their Spidey sense.

Plus, it gives me reassure that yeah if I want to indulge, I know there is a person watching out for me. Yes, other people at a party will step in if needed. My spouse though, she knows when it is time to call it a night, and I listen to her. No arguing. Just a simple womp womp okay and we leave.

That means me and my wife have worked it out. We have discussed all this ahead of time and we trust each other that maintaining our physical safety with mental safety. Our mental safety is set and locked down because we communicate, we walk through situations, we talk through situations. Your mental health and I will rebrand it to mental safety, so it fits with the theme, takes work and takes a team.

The lifestyle can be stressful. I have seen it eat up people. I have seen people become consumed by the lifestyle until their entire world closes in around them and all they can see if the next sex conquest, nude, text messages. I have warned before that the lifestyle can be addictive.

I recommend unplugging. Take time off from dating and texting and websites. Reconnect with your spouse. As humans, we only have so much mental bandwidth and if you are dedicating 100% of that bandwidth to other people, to the lifestyle, your marriage will suffer.

Stress on a marriage is the exact opposite of why we do this. This is not about fulfillment but enhancement. Expansion, not replacement. Keep your marriage at the center of you and your partner’s lifestyle experience, together, as one.

Not to say that all this is a direct threat to your mental wellbeing, it could be though. There is a toxic nature to the lifestyle. What! For shame Jason phrasing it like that. Yeah, I mean toxic in that same way that too much water can be toxic. Too much sunshine. Too much of anything can become toxic if it overwhelms the body or mind in this case.

Moderation. Keep your participation in the lifestyle in moderation, whatever that looks like for a couple or a single person. Find the balance. While the Lifestyle could be toxic, there are toxic people out there that are straight poison.

There are few kinds of toxic people to keep on the lookout for. Couples who are not a right fit for the Lifestyle. They might be doing this to fix their marriage or make amends for past infidelity. And they are treating other couples as the medicine that their marriage needs. And that is wrong. Swinging will not fix your marriage. Therapy will. Swinging and therapy are not the same thing.

Another kind of toxic couple is the dominators. Those that want to dominate you as a person and dominate your experience in the Lifestyle. They want to control who you interact with or have sex with. Or want to limit your ability to enjoy the lifestyle.

We are all free to interact with whomever we want. Yes, there may be couples that you prefer over other people. This is normal. There are couples you will make genuine friendships with. This is normal. No one should try to limit who you interact with though. True friends in the LS celebrate all your adventures with you. They cheer you on.

Dominators, it gets so bad you can’t even share that you were with another couple without a lecture or controlling behavior. Stay away from them, stay away from any couples that tells you that you can’t go fuck another couple this weekend or you have to limit your activities in order to continue interacting with them. See the control aspect coming out.

One more kind of toxic person in the Lifestyle. The poachers. This is where one half of the couple tries to poach your spouse. It can start innocently enough. Maybe a separate chat, just them two, maybe a few comments on emotional connection. Then shit gets weird. Then you are cut out of the discussions. Then it escalates into very bad territory. Like making plans without you, just your spouse.

Yes, you can develop real friendships in this. We know couples that we have deep true good friendships with. But that’s it. It is a friendship. Yes, I have seen their buttholes, but they are not a replacement for my spouse. I share with my wife a special kind of love that is reserved only for her and I don’t want to share that, replace that, expand that particular love to someone else. Especially not someone else’s wife. That’s the line we all need to respect.

Yeah, keep your mental health in check. Take breaks if you need to. Do a dopamine detox. Avoid toxic people. Wait. I need to share one more kind of toxic person and I don’t’ feel like editing the script to incorporate them smoothly. Bullies. Fucking bullies. These are jackass grownups who want to push around other people. They exclude people from gatherings or events or cliques based on their demented criteria. Or they make people participate in activities that they are not comfortable with.

Same kind of energy as when you were a kid and dealt with a bully. Someone who wants to push around other people because their own life is devoid of emotional stability and meaning. Yeah, they exist everywhere, even in the lifestyle. I would say the best way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them but in the adult world, usually the solution is to walk away and avoid them.

Social safety. Throwing a curveball here. Keeping your social life safe, as in your job, family relations, social standing, is a legitimate concern in the Lifestyle. What we do is not socially acceptable and there is a price that could be paid if your social circle finds out about your interest in ethical non-monogamy.

Right off, practice good online hygiene. Assume everyone is a stranger until they are friends. Do not share personal details. I can get a pretty good assessment of you as a person and my attraction to you without knowing where you work, what high school you went to, your address, fuck even your phone number.

I know people, I have known them for years and I either don’t know their real names or certainly don’t know their last names. That’s okay. We are connecting as people, as humans, not the labels society gives us.

If you are a doctor for instance. I don’t need to know where you a doctor. I don’t need to know your specialty, how long you have been practicing, none of that. All I will think is oh cool we have a medical person around. That’s it. It doesn’t influence my opinion of you at all.

Decide with your spouse what personal details you are comfortable sharing and not sharing. Create your discretion plan now. Granted people may push back. Especially newbies. They don’t know the ropes yet, so I give them grace. Newbies, stop asking so many damn personal questions. You don’t need to know all that. No one’s job makes them more attractive. Not even strippers.

Newbies, there is a concept to learn real quick. Guilty by association. I can rattle off real life examples of this one. Generic example though to illustrate my point. A group of swingers goes out to a bar. 30 people. A random vanilla person notices this group and asks what is the purpose of everyone being together at this moment. 29 people could say something innocent, friends birthday party or bowling club. The 30th person, one flaming jackass will yell out, we all swingers. That one person saying one dumb sentence, now all 29 other people are labeled swingers.

Doesn’t matter if you are full swap, no swap, bdsm, or stumbled through everyone on the way to the bathroom. That vanilla person now knows, all these people are in the lifestyle. Guilty by association. Not a damn thing to do about this one except be smart.

Have a cover story. Make sure everyone has the same cover story. Don’t offer details. That’s easy enough right. Going a step further, stop waving around the pineapples. Vanilla people know about the pineapples. If they see a gaggle of 30 drunk people and everyone is wearing pineapples, they will make assumptions that are fucking correct. Even if everyone stays on the same page, same cover story, nope.

Be careful with the lifestyle clothes. Yes, a shirt that says “your husband is my cardio” is funny in the right context, in the right spaces. Not at a chain restaurant on a Thursday night.

I want to caution everyone about group photos. Big group photos. Oh, we have 40 people together in this bar, let’s commemorate this night with a big group photo. Want to know what that picture is called? Evidence. By being in that picture, everyone there is now guilty by association. All it takes is one person to post that picture on Facebook and now everyone in that picture is outed. If a vanilla person looks real close and realizes oh hey, I know that guy and that guy says he is a swinger, then they will assume that everyone else in the picture is a full blown swinger too. Be careful with these group photos. They can escape.

Speaking of escaping, I need to talk about nudes. As I write and record this, I realize all these little topics could be full blown episodes in the future. Nudes. It is a very common practice to send nudes to other people in the lifestyle. Showing boobies or peckers. Everyday, I get nudes. I see nudes from people. I may have blown a vanilla person’s mind right there. Yes, we freely share naked pictures all the time, with people we trust.

I know a couple of people who have been outed in the lifestyle. Every single one of their stories starts with a picture. A nude escaping the lifestyle ecosystem. It could be accident, could be intentional, whatever the reason, those nudes escaped, and people saw them. People started asking questions.

My recommendation for nudes. Only share with people you trust. Trust is of vital importance in this regard. All it takes is one picture for vanilla people to start asking questions. Plan on sharing a sexy nude with a group of people, keep your face and identifying marks like tattoos out of it. Plausible deniability.

Pic collectors. I need to mention them a lot. These are people, usually dudes, who as soon as you start a conversation will send over a nude of a woman. HI my name is Jerry here’s my wife’s butthole. So, you think, oh I have to reciprocate, and you send back a nude. And back and forth. No real conversation, just nudes flying across the internet.

Here’s the deal. This is called a pic collector. All they want to do is gather up naked pictures. Probably to masturbate with. They have no intention of participating in the lifestyle community. No intention of meeting up. No intention beyond gathering nudes. They might use the excuse, oh well we aren’t ready to meet anyone right now.

Putting on our critical thinking hats. That nude they sent over, you have no verification that is their wife or spouse. Could be a picture they got off the internet or could be a nude from the last person they tricked. There is deceit going on there. They could be gathering those pictures to put on their own website or catfish people.

Remember you are under none, zero obligation to ever share a nude. Ever. No matter how they beg, cajole, instigate, or push your buttons. And I have encountered desperate pic collectors. They tried to use the argument that I had to share something out of moral duty. I had to share a nude since they shared an unrequested picture with me. Same concept as dudes who send out dick pics all day.

You never have to reciprocate. We have gone as far as putting on our profile that we will not share explicit or nude photos until we have met in person. Putting that disclaimer out there has significantly cut down on the number of people that reach out to us. Which is fine. Better to warn them away than deal with their bullshit. Guess I need to do an episode about nudes now.

I don’t want to scare anyone away from the Lifestyle. I want people to be safe, be smart. We are all living in a crazy world and a little precaution, forethought and preparedness goes a long way.

I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me at host@thatotherlifestyle.com. My website is thatotherlifestyle.com.

My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone, sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and please join us for the next episode. Remember STI testing is important and takes a community to make a difference.  Go to STDHero.com and use my promo code TOL10 for 10% your order.

Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.