Lesson #4: Safe words

Finally he saw how unhappy I was.  So, my man took one for the team...sort of.  He faked an orgasm and said he was done.

One done, all done.

That was their rule and though they looked incredibly disappointed, they followed it.  And it was over.  I have never dressed so fast or picked up so efficiently in all my life.  That's saying something.

We headed out to the car.  And as we walked he tried to talk to me.

man: Lexi?  Lexi say something.

me: Don't talk to me.

I needed time to collect myself.  I needed time to hash through it all.  And we did.  We talked the whole way home.  And we agreed on some key points.

We were never ever ever going to full swap again.  And he was going to follow through with my main sticking point, making stupid crazy mad passionate love to me at home so that I'd be reassured we were okay.

We stopped at a bar to get a night cap.  And I just wanted to go.  There were only chicks in there.  Chick behind the bar.  Chicks sitting at the bar.

In an effort to acquire our shots, he had to keep leaning over this one chick.  And she was smiling and chatting with him.  And I was completely over any female being near my man.  My jealous nature was in over-drive.  I very nearly lost it.

He pulled me to an out of the way table to sit and talk.

me: Why here?

man: I thought I might be getting yelled at.

I smiled.

me: You thought right.

And I finally was able to calmly explain why I was so very upset.  He never looked at me and told me he loved me.  He was way too into her.  It hurt.

Soon he was holding his head in shame.

man: Lexi, I am so sorry. I forgot.  She was so aggressive.  I just forgot.

me: Just take me home and make me forget.  I'll be fine.

man: Next time...we keep to our rules.  Next time...we have a safe word.

me: Ice cream.  Our safe word...is ice cream.

Our ground rules

Every game has rules.  Every player knows not to break them.  This is what we came up with to keep it right between us.  It's all about respecting our relationship and each other.

1. Our bed is sacred.  At no point in time did I want to be in our bed picturing him there with someone else.  I wanted our bed to be just for us.  We could go out, have our fun, and come home and snuggle together in our space.
2. Our home is off limits to strangers.  I didn't know exactly how we were going to find our future partners, but I did know that I wasn't keen on having any of them know where we live.  We have neighbors.  Nosy neighbors.  Often intrusive neighbors.  And I didn't want our business to be all over the neighborhood.  Sure, they wouldn't necessarily know what was going on behind closed doors, but there could be speculation.
3. He is not to be in any vag but mine.  For me, sex is special.  At the same time, I recognize that it is only as special as the person/people you are sharing it with.  And since I was sharing it with my man, I wanted it to be special despite the fact that we weren't alone. 
4. We only do this together.  Alone is cheating.  I would not be meeting people outside of our arrangement, and neither would he.  This was something that we were using to spice up our sex life, not instead of having a sex life together.
5. We don't swing.  Since there was no other vag for him, there would be no other penis for me.  It seemed more than fair.  It wasn't that I was dying to have another penis.  I was very happy with his.  I wasn't looking to replace it or trade it in or even rent another one temporarily.
6. We weren't looking for a relationship.  Our plan was to simply find someone to have some fun with and then be on our way.  We didn't need a new friend.  We have friends.  We didn't want a lot of excess contact.  We weren't trying to build a bond with anyone else.  This was just about us, spicing up our sex life, and then getting back to us.

Thinking threesome

Naturally, he thought the way to solve all of our problems was to invite another woman into our bed.  I thought that would create a whole new set of problems, since I didn't want to share my bed or my man.  So, I tried to figure out how this could possibly work.

And we found ourselves once again exploring the question of how two people who loved each other simply couldn't make it work.  There had to be a way around that.  There had to be a place to meet in the middle, a place where we could find happiness together without hurting one another.

The secret is always in balance, finding a way to stay true to yourself while bending some to the other person's needs.  This was what I knew: he was used to variety, lots of different women all the damn time before me.  He wanted to be faithful.  He didn't want to hide his interest in porn.  He wanted me forever, but he wanted some spice, too.

It became a question of what I could live with and what I couldn't live without.  I didn't want to be without him.  We would have to find a middle ground.  And that meant being open and honest and addressing some tough questions.

me: If we had a threesome, what would you want to do?

man: Everything.

And that's where we hit our first snafoo.  Remember: I don't like sharing.  It would be hard enough to watch him touching another woman in front of me.  It would be hard enough to have him be fondled and all that by another woman.

In the end, we came to a few agreements.  We set up our own ground rules.  We decided to explore this alternate lifestyle that could save our relationship.  Only there was so much more to it than that.

me: I don't want this new part of our lives to just be about another woman.  I want toys and games and fun and things that are just for us, too.

That's how I managed to entice a man who was once so against toys to suddenly see the fun and value in them.  It was all about baby steps.  I was meeting in the middle about threesomes, he was willing to explore the fun stuff I wanted to, as well.

It's all about negotiation knowing the boundaries, and trusting your partner to stick to the agreements.