The element of excitement, of novelty and exploration will be a driving force throughout anyone’s life journey; the only difference is where we find it.

With some couples they find it in the playground of the swinger’s world or the lifestyle.

Opening your relationship to this lifestyle will bring along challenges, one such challenge is learning how jealousy fits into this kind of relationship.
If you’re going to be in the lifestyle, you have to figure out how you’re going to deal with this strong emotion out in the open. Once you learn how to deal with it, it will make your connection stronger.

Everyone deals with it differently, but the most important and freeing factor about dealing with this emotion is the evolution it allows you to experience. From jealous, turbulent feelings you progress into compersion.

Below are the 6 steps of this development.

1.  Almost everyone gets jealous in various degrees – It’s really ok!

Jealousy is that heavy feeling that grabs you when you think about your partner getting frisky or sharing a connection with someone else other than you. It’s an emotion not strange to the majority of us. There are some people who claim to not feeling jealousy, but for the majority of us, jealousy is an emotion we are all too familiar with.

Jealousy is good. Jealousy means you care. It’s not about whether you feel jealous, but how you channel that feeling.
Some channel it into anger, some feel resentful, and some lucky ones feel excited.
To keep this emotion in check, you first need to recognise and admit that you feel jealous, so it doesn’t sneak up on you at the worst time.
Ironically, a small part of jealousy sits comfortably with feelings of excitement. It reiterates those feelings you had before you settled down, the sweat-bitter feeling that you might lose your love interest to another. The driving force to keep you on your toes and try your best to prove you are the ‘better choice’. In a nutshell, the conquest game all over again, hence the appeal of the lifestyle.

2.  Darker side of jealousy is often hiding other bigger issues

Take time to assess why you are feeling jealous. The problem with jealousy is that it masks other feelings and attitudes that are even more hurtful to us and those closest to us. Jealousy can be shielding deep-seated feelings of possessiveness, insecurity or shame formed by bad experiences in the past.
Being able to recognise these in yourself can help you work through feelings of jealousy when they do arise. Understanding the roots, triggers and reasons for our feelings of jealousy is an important part of maintaining a healthy relationship, monogamous or not.

We can act against the thoughts that tell us to be suspicious, mistrusting and accusatory and in the long run it will strengthen you as an individual and improve your trust and communication with your partner.
3. Do you get turned-on by watching your partner with someone else?

    Apparently, there’s a term for it, it’s called COMPERSION.

Compersion is such a new concept, that it needs explaining…

Compersion means the feeling of being turned-on or excited for your partner when they have a good time with someone else other than you.

Yep, it’s a real thing!

Most people don’t feel compersion automatically, because we are just not conditioned for it, it’s not something we’re socialized to feel. We are taught that jealousy is a natural response of loving someone and possession is an expression of passion.

Compersion is contrary to how we view relationships and expect to operate in them. We are raised to believe that when we are one half of a couple, we should derive all our happiness and pleasure from that single partner and only experience it together with that partner. Compersion challenges this ideology.

Compersion is about acknowledging your partner’s separate needs, desires and sexual experiences. This will strengthen your relationship. Prehaps, a vast majority of you have experienced compersion many times and it’s a great feeling. This amazing feeling could possibly explain why so many couples are into hotwife and cuckold fantasies.

4.   Can anyone attain compersion?

It’s not for everyone, but most people can have that feeling if they communicate properly.

It’s a gradual process, with lots of honest and open communication with your partner.

First identify why you feel jealous. What are its roots and triggers. Once you identified them you can stop them from taking control. Most importantly, keep communicating with each other. Express your feelings and tell them when you are feeling jealous. Expressing your feeling of jealousy early is better than letting them fester. An understanding partner knows that compersion is achieved through time and lots of talk. By giving it a go, you could open your heart to many happy and interesting possibilities.

5.    Expect a fluctuation between Jealousy and compersion

Just because you felt compersion once, it doesn’t mean you have melted away feelings of jealousy forever. It takes time; you need to feel confident in yourself and your relationship. It’s important to remember that this is a journey and not a race.

It’s important to remember this, if you are feeling something that means it’s real, it doesn’t mean you’re allowed to act however you want. Bursts of jealous rage, or any other unacceptable behaviour in front of other people who are not at fault is not acceptable.

6.    Communication invalidates jealousy

Communication is the premise of non-monogamous relationships, in part because if there isn’t transparency in these relationships it will head to collision.
If you start feeling jealous communicate this to your partner so it doesn’t fester into bigger emotions of resentment and anger.
Also in conjunction to expressing yourself in a relationship is listening, actively and openly, without judgement or interruption.

How do you deal with your feelings of jealousy? Please share with us in the comments section below.

Hotwifing

A “hotwife” refers to a woman in a partnered couple who has sexual encounters with other men. At times this encounter might happen in the presence of her partner. Other times in his absence followed with a retelling of the events. The male partner in this relationship is turned on by his partner sexual escapades, and derives pleasure and arousal from her exercising her sexual autonomy.

Cuckolding

A “cuckold” is a man that enjoys the dominance/submission power relationship with his female partner. Often, the cuckold likes to be belittled, humiliated, or otherwise made to feel powerless. To capitalize on this power dynamic, the female partner has sexual encounters with other men. The male partner’s pleasure and satisfaction comes from the power dynamic between himself and his partner.

Thus, “cuckolding” is more about the power exchange (as in other kinds of BDSM relationships) while “hotwifing” in general often lacks this element. A man may derive intense sexual satisfaction from his partner having independent sexual escapades, but be completely uninterested with the idea of being humiliated by his female partner and/or bull. However, another man may only enjoy such escapades if he is also humiliated, forced to “clean up” the woman after her sexual encounter, or otherwise made to feel inferior to the bull.

A “bull” is the term commonly ascribed to the other man in the scenario, the person that the hotwife has the sexual encounter with.

Why has hotwifing become such a popular fantasy among couples? The main reason is to fulfill the desire of almost every man to see his beautiful wife interacting with another man.
Other reasons come to mind, the explosion of Internet facilitated the fantasy, women are more comfortable with their sexual desires and are not afraid to voice it and act on it, and last people have come to understand that fantasies are a healthy way to explore one’s sexuality and beneficial way to bond.

Hotwifing, might just be what you were looking for at this point of your relationship. Read the benefits below:

1. Freedom

Most women secretly desire this, the freedom to enjoy another man’s company and to explore their sexuality guilt free. When a man encourages his woman to enjoy other man’s company, she gets to enjoy and exercise her sexual autonomy and to express freely her sexual desires.

2. A huge turn on.

Hotwifing is a sexual fantasy that can take your relationship to the next level. It’s a way of women expressing themselves and a huge turn on for their partners. Many women are getting into exhibitionism. They love their partner watching them have sex. For the partner who wants to show off his hotwife, it’s a huge turn on to watch another man enjoy his sexy hotwife. Watching your wife/partner with another man is like watching a hot porno, with her as the main star.

3. Free from the shackles of jealousy

Jealousy is the main reason many relationships fail to work. It contributes to disagreements and sometimes breakups. Hotwifing can help the men overcome most feelings of jealousy and insecurities. This kind of relationship can make your partnership more trusting and open. There is a difference between sex and a loving relationship, your partner knows this, and the steamy encounter is only SEX.

4. Increased Trust and Communication

A strong relationship is built on trust and good communication. Healthy relationships are not about the things a couple does together but about how they communicate together, how they treat each other, and how they work together to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship. Hotwifing will not increase these aspects in a relationship if they don’t exist already. They must exist before you embark in this fantasy.

5. Look Better

To continue being the desirable to men, a hotwife will be motivated you to stay fit, eat healthy, look sexy and stay young both mentally and physically.

6. Increase and improve intimacy

Your relationship and especially sex life will absolutely improve. The physical and emotional intimacy associated with hotwifing is intense. The feeling of seeing a wife with another man will just turn any man on making the sex life better and more frequent.

7. Boost confidence and self-esteem

The esteem of both parties involved will increase and this is great for having a healthy relationship. A confident man is also what a woman wants and what better way to show how confident you are than letting your wife get out there with other men.

The benefits of hotwifing are many and there are many adventurous couples that indulge in this fantasy. However, every couple has a different dynamic, and as such, hotwifing might not be your fantasy. As a couple it is best to go with what works best for you.

Rach Wilson and her husband Kerry are in a successful open relationship. They’ve been married for 11 years and seeing other people for eight years.

The Melbourne couple, both 38, have a 9-year-old daughter together and Rach has a 16-year-old from a previous relationship.

Rach says infidelity and divorce rates could be slashed if people were more open-minded about different types of relationships.

I would call myself ‘biflexible’ or ‘heteroflexible’. I believe that some people are naturally not monogamous. It’s like the bell curve. You’ve got the extremes, and then every other person lands in different places.

There are some people that are absolutely suited to monogamy. They need consistency and routine, but there are a bunch of people that need variety.

They can love more than one person at a time. But our arrangement is that my husband is my primary lover.

There is not one box that all of us can fit into. A lot of society in terms of religion and the media, propagate the idea that monogamy is the way it should be. It creates a struggle for some people.

I think infidelity and divorce rates could be reduced significantly if education and communication about different styles of relationships, and how to make them work successfully, was made more available.

When I got into this relationship, I said, ‘I’m not going to be who you want me to be, I’m going to be who I want to be’.

I’ve been married once before and one of the things that I wish I had done was been myself more. I completely lost who I was because I picked up all of his interests and hobbies.

When Kerry and I first got together, I said to him, ‘I’m a flirtatious, social kind of person and I want to be able to be that person. If you can’t handle that, then there’s going to be an issue.’

And he was relieved, because he was exactly the same.

Both of us in our previous relationships had very jealous partners, and we’d shut that part of us down because we didn’t want to cause pain to our partners.

But in doing that, the second you start to repress or hide who you are, a part of you dies.

Because we were so open and honest in those first few weeks of dating, when the opportunity [to see other people] came up, it was easier to have that conversation and explore the idea.

But it was still a very hard question to put out there. It was me that wanted to open up our relationship. Initially Kerry wasn’t 100 per cent comfortable with it.

I was away at a personal development workshop and I felt a real attraction to one of the other people I was in the group with.

I said, ‘I’d really love us to talk about opening up our relationship because I’d like to be able to experience these things, and I’d like you to be able to experience them too’.

We sat down and said, ‘How are we going to do this?’

We’re only human. We had all the usual fears.

We discussed boundaries and we would do a little debrief after each experience — to share what we liked and what we didn’t like and to be able to discuss that further so that both of us were comfortable.

Clearly an open relationship requires a bit more emotional intelligence for it to be a success. It really does hinge on how good you are at communicating.

If one of us is feeling not right about something, then it’s up to us to bring it up and talk about it. You have to speak up if you’re not feeling comfortable.

When impromptu opportunities come up, we just say, ‘Hey babe, I’d really love to do this. It this OK?’

If the other person is OK with it, then great. If not, we have a discussion.

We could work out a compromise — ‘Could you please be home by a certain hour?’, or ‘Could you please do this nice thing for me?’

Both of us want each other to do what makes them happy, but not at the expense of our own happiness.

It’s a delicate balance. The whole thing is about collaborating with your partner and being flexible with what you want and what they want to do.”

The most difficult time is when both of us are feeling a bit precious and our ability to communicate isn’t as good.

Because we’re human and we don’t get it right all the time. Sometimes we overreact like any normal couple, but most of the time we get it pretty right.

Sometimes we go to parties, or other people’s houses, or swinger’s events. We’ll go to those types of events and end up at an after party.

It depends. There have been times where we’ve had a dinner party, we get the kids baby sat away from the house, and we have the whole house to ourselves.

People think it’s this sordid thing, but it’s just like going back onto the singles dating scene, but this time you’re going it as a couple.

I’m always saying things like, ‘Oh no babe, you can’t wear that shirt! Make sure you put the sexy underwear on. Make sure you put the cologne on. You want to smell good’.

Life doesn’t have to be so serious.

We told my oldest daughter [about our open relationship] a few years ago. We had a great conversation. Now that she’s 16 she’s making choices for herself.

We told her knowing full well she was starting to form her own opinions and we wanted to explain things to her before people’s negative opinions got to her first.

She thanked me for telling her about different kinds of relationships because she feels like now she can make a really conscious choice for herself. And she’s not weirded-out if she wants something different in life.

She loves that she can see we’re extremely happy and we’re extremely connected. What she’s getting to experience is a very happy and healthy relationship.

Some people can be a bit judgmental. Most of the time it’s people questioning the values I’m teaching my child. It’s all a bit too much for some people.

But most people are curious more than anything.

They ask questions like, ‘How does that work? How do you negotiate things as a couple?’. Because I’ve been so open about my life, it’s opened up the door for a lot of other people to explore different types of relationships.

Have you experienced an open relationship? Would you like to try it? Let us know what you think below!

Source: news.com.au

The story begins when Hill meets Dino, a single man with rock-star looks, a fetish for shiny clothing and terrible mood swings. The two begin a tumultuous relationship where they decide to try negotiated fidelity for the first time i.e. both partners are allowed to have sexual relationships with others that they negotiate as a couple, with full disclosure but no emotional connections (for example, spending the night cuddling) allowed.

While in theory it sounds perfect – they both can have their cake and eat it too – the reality of the emotional repercussions that such an arrangement has, leads Hill to discover many new truths about herself, as well as about her lover.

At times, I found the story very relatable, and it was comforting to hear an intelligent 40-something year-old woman grappling with many of the emotional issues that I had experienced myself in past relationships (and present). On the other hand, I found Holly’s inability to stand up for herself and allowing herself to be treated as a doormat at times frustrating. Again though, this was relatable, because what woman hasn’t let her judgment by clouded by love at one time or another?

As well as the exploration of her relationship with Dino, there are a few side stories that give the memoir depth and help to remind you that this isn’t just a sordid tale of sexy adventures, but a real person’s life, with all that that entails – including dealing with morality and even euthanasia.

Having not yet read the other two stories – you can be sure I’ll now be rushing to the bookstore to get my hands on a copy on them – in the trilogy of Holly Hill’s memoirs, I can’t say how they stack up. I can, however, safely say that The Velvet Pouch is a worthwhile read purely on its own merits.

Personally, not only could I agree with and relate to the principles that Hill expressed, but I wanted to stand up and applaud her for her forward-thinking ways. Some have criticized her and labeled her an anti-feminist for saying that to keep their men women must be willing to let them stray. From where I sit, Hill does the opposite: she empowers women to take back control by “taking back the fucking,” and to feel proud of not denying their baser urges by crossing their legs and ignoring what is – arguably –basic human nature and biologically natural. Bravo, Holly Hill!

Interview with Holly Hill – Author of The Velvet Pouch

Given what you have learnt about negotiated fidelity, how would you go about entering into that kind of relationship again?

Now that I have perfected the negotiated fidelity recipe, I wouldn’t enter a relationship WITHOUT negotiated fidelity. It is simply risk management. If I really loved my partner, a relationship without negotiated fidelity would be like buying a Ferrari and not insuring it.

Sexual Health Australia estimates that 70% of marriages experience an affair. And the University of Washington says if you are under 30, that statistic increases by 20% for wives and 45% for husbands.

The Men’s Rights Agency claim up to 30% of men in Australia are living with a child they mistakenly believe is their biological offspring.

That means putting up your hand and saying to your wife or your boyfriend or your same sex partner or WHOEVER you have a substantial investment in and saying, “Darling, I’m not getting enough” or “Sweetie, I’ve got this weird fetish that needs to be scratched” or “Honey, sometimes I need to have sex merely for sex’s sake.”

If we love our partners and we want to keep them, we need to start negotiating our fidelity, defining our weaknesses and posing solutions BEFORE things go pear-shaped.

You say in The Velvet Pouch that “Women have to take the fucking back…Then we can have anything we want.” Do you think that this will ever happen, or are men and women too rooted in their traditional gender and sexual roles?

The progression to our type of lifestyle follows models of social change. In times gone by, swingers and the fetish community might have been regarded as “those freaks who thought the world was round”, yet social change models would merely describe us as innovators or early adopters and we make up about 16% of the world’s population. Celebrities, many highly successful business people and the well educated are also there. Behind us comes the early majority (34%) with the remaining 50% being the late majority and laggards. Right now the early majority are reading 50 Shades. The late majority might think it should be kept under the counter and the laggards are probably praying to God that He directs His wrath upon the demonic temptress author and evil booksellers that are subverting poor innocents.

Part of that social progression is women becoming more risqué. It is now becoming okay for women – the innovators and early adopters we spoke about above – plus teenagers and 20-something’s – to be high sexed and not caged by exclusivity. As I say in The Velvet Pouch, if women were (proudly!) promiscuous, we would rule a world full of happy men.

What is the most valuable lesson that you’ve taken away from your experiences over the course of your three memoirs?

That both men and women are hardwired to be multifarious and if we don’t risk manage those primordial inclinations, our marriages will continue to fail and our families will continue to be ripped apart.

The Velvet Pouch was the third in a trilogy of very personal memoirs for you, what’s next for Holly Hill?

I’m becoming more generalized, instead of advocating for sexual freedoms, same sex marriage, euthanasia, surrogacy rights, and so on, I’m going to start fighting for the human right to full self ownership. As long as we are of legal age and sound mind and it doesn’t hurt anybody else, people ought to be able to do what they like with their own bodies. It’s my new passion – stay tuned!

Interested in winning yourself a copy of The Velvet Pouch?

We’ve got 3 copies to give away! Enter here!