Swinging has been the topic of some steamy conversation recently, following Channel 4’s new series, The Couple Next Door.
But the lifestyle isn’t just a thing of TV drama, as 35-year-old Rosie Kay from Sheffield , has revealed.
Rosie has been living the lifestyle for 12 years, since visiting her first swinger’ club in London. And she has now given up her career as a chef to coach people interested in getting involved in “ethical non-monogamy”.
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Rosie explained to The Mirror : “Monogamous relationships are two people of any orientation or gender coming together to be exclusive to each other. Non-monogamy is the opposite of that. And ethical non-monogamy is when you decide to open up your relationship in any form but it’s done with consideration. It’s a joint decision.”
Swinging has always had an image problem, though. The Couple Next Door, with its seething passions and roused jealousies, is only the latest example.
“Everybody wants a horror story,” Rosie sighed. “People don’t often ask what’s the best thing about the lifestyle or what memorable experiences you have had. They all want the negatives because sometimes people want that confirmation of, ‘You can’t have it that good!’.”
To most of us, swinging calls to mind suburban parties with keys chucked into a bowl, then fished out to claim someone else’s wife. It’s pampas grass, which myth holds is the swingers’ secret signal, standing swishy in gardens. Or not very glamorous middle-aged couples escaping threadbare marriages by diving into a bit of debauchery on a wipe-clean surface.
Right? Wrong, says Rosie. Not any more. Or, at least, not only that. Swinging has moved on.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
Rosie is a poster girl. She was in her early 20s and in a steady relationship with a man when she dipped a terrified toe into the scene. “I’ve always identified as bisexual,” she said. “And I’d confided in him but I didn’t want to leave him for a woman.”
Her partner suggested visiting a swingers’ club to satisfy that need. “It seemed that opening things up was a way that I could do it and keep my existing relationship intact,” she says.
But could she actually go through with it? “The thought of going to a club, swapping with a couple and seeing him with another woman, was scary and confusing,” she admits. “I was frightened. At the same time, I wanted to explore and I knew that to do that, he would also be intimate and it wasn’t fair to say, ‘I can explore and you’re not allowed’.”
She says a swinger website pointed them to the club, continuing: “After a few months of shall-we-shan’t-we, we got the courage and went. It was terrifying and I got so many things wrong but it was liberating as well to actually go.”
They “played” – swapped – that very first night. “I realised a lot of my worries were hyped up in my own mind,” she says. “A lot of people think that the minute they see their partner with someone else, the minute they go to a club, everything is going to come crashing down, because that’s where minds go. But the world kept turning, everything’s fine, we got to enjoy something fun together.”
Rosie got dressed up for the night, like Joan Collins in The Stud. “I got what I wore very wrong,” she admits. “I was very conscious I had to be sexy and wore the stereotypical stockings and things. I didn’t realise that, actually, you can wear what you want, as long as it sticks to the dress code.”
Now when she goes swinging, she wears leather-look leggings, a sheer blouse with a black bra underneath and stilettos. And she soon started making a living helping others navigate the unwritten rules, much like in any dating scene.
Rosie said: “When you’re being approached by people, when you are approaching couples, you’re… ‘Am I expected to do something?’, ‘Does it mean that I have to play with them if they buy me a drink?’. Then there is fear of rejection. Everybody gets rejected. You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.”
Rosie still feels the stigma of the lifestyle and gets trolled online – but she is proud of who she is. She explained: “Part of my blog, thiskindagirl.co.uk, is I wanted to tell people what it was really like as we still get those connotations of ‘keys in a bowl’. It’s very much an identity and it is part of you, you can’t turn it on and off.”
She has noticed more and more young people entering the lifestyle. “I’m seeing 40 and under parties, which was never a thing when I started,” she explained.
Rosie has swung as a couple and also as a single woman – known as Unicorns on the scene. It hasn’t all been rainbows, though. “There’s been times when couples have perhaps not been as secure as they’ve made out,” she admitted.
“They’ve argued or someone’s got very upset because another wife’s been having too much fun. And, yeah, of course there’s jealousy and times when people feel insecure – but it’s part of life.”
Rosie insists there is nothing special or unusual about her, saying: “There’s nothing in my DNA that makes me some swinger superwoman, I’m very normal!” And she dispenses her advice to people of mixed ages. Couples in their early 20s and 50s. A lot of Americans.
“I always tell people, swinging should only add to your existing relationship, never replace it,” she says. “I teach the dangers of not reconnecting afterwards, the dangers of not voicing their feelings.” Seems like someone needs to tell The Couple Next Door…
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