Theres a lot to be said for taking longer to get to know someone first.
i think its lack of experience which causes people to turn into something quite different for a planned meet.
i think a lot of people have taken something, got drunk or gone ahead at the wrong time. all of which suggests a good deal of stress.
out of interest, how much pre meeting exchange went on?
I agree that swinging can be injurious to both mental and physical well being regardless of ones initial state.
Just as let downs and put downs can magnify the effect of depression for instance, attention and socialising and copious amounts of sex can magnify the effects of elevated mood. On the other hand anybody with a modicum of understanding of these matters would point out that social withdrawal is one of the most debilitating aspects of such distress.
I have recently gone off the phrase "mental health" as I believe it medicalises the matter.
I agree with vamp that taking a while to get to know folk is a sensible path. Of course that all goes out the window in the middle of a club orgy.
I don't think a disclosure of physical or mental health history on profiles would work. I don't think any of us is qualified to judge if anyone else is well enough to make themselves available to swing. I do think we all have a choice as to who we choose to play with.
In my experience you don't have to look very far to find people who are pretty fucked up spiritually/mentally or emotionally in this community or any other. That's what makes me sad.
Meeting anyone from a swingers site who possibly has mental health issues, I can imagine can be a minefield of problems.
Luckily for us all the people barring two couples were rather normal everyday people, just like us.
We did meet a couple once where the woman did all the talking, and he did not say three words. Both me and Mrs777 are very chatty sociable people, but this meet was definatly three way. He may well of been off with the fairies, we did not find anything out about him to fully understand.
What was really funny about the whole episode was that me and mrs777 had come to the conclusion that nothing was going to happen from this meet, and that was without us saying anything to each other.
We parted company and left the pub, only to get home to find that we had a pm. The pm basically said that they did not want to take things any further as the male half had decided that Mrs777 did not talk to him.:shock:
We still laugh about that meet on occasion and decided that on reflection he did have some kind of mental illness, and should never have been out wasting other peoples time, who were looking for genuine meets. They never had any intention of meeting for sex, it was purely in our opinion an excuse to get out and meet others purely on a social level.
That is fine but that was certainly not the intention they gave us when we chatted on the phone....to her of course obviously.
He definatly has issues of which she admitted, but did not hang around long enough to find out exactly what they were. We want fun out of this not to sit there for two hours trying to get someone to talk, that looked like he was not even in the same room as everyone else.
the thing is though, how do you find out how honest and accurate people are trying to be?
i think the best thing is to get talking asap and have a go at a conversation. and find out about how well they respond. try as many topics as poss and see if there is anything that isn't right.
also people don't realise how much swnging can affect your inner balance. quite often by the time the meet arrives people can run their health down to a low level.
again its just a lot of experience needed to do it all like its normal. and most of us don't ge that experience.
Sometimes when I meet people, they make my flesh crawl. When that happens I withdraw into myself. i could easily be mistaken for being in distress when I choose to do that but I am quite healthy.
Bloke are you telling me you know shrinks who think socialising online or in person is bad for folk in distress?
also to be fair, how much can someone expect that people be honest and accurate. i look at profiles and adverts and sometimes there isn't much between them. some are almost identical in the language used.
so for such profiles i would not rely on them as having a lot of veracity. as a result i have less expectation as to the people and the possibilities at an encounter. but still open to a pleasant surprise.
Sounds like dangerous supposition and projection to me bloke do you think these professionals will research the issue one day?
We dont do the meet for drinks thing before we play so it wouldnt become apparent to us until we met to play ... but if we're not happy, we wont play.
Some close friends of ours had a bad expereince recently when a couple contacted them last minute for a meet to which they agreed. While they were playing, it became apparent that the male was just testing the female to see if she would sleep with someone else and ended in huge arguements .... our friends were very upset and angry about the whole experience ... it was totally out of order!!
Not sure how to avoid it ... shit happens, we just have to put bad experiences behind us I suppose and hope that it doesnt put us off meeting genuine people in the future.
I dont need to know someone's medical or personal history to shag them ... if they have problems, whether that is with their mental health or their relationship then they shouldnt be doing this!!
Yeah I understand the communication theories i have read a few.
What concerns me is the professionals giving advice based on supposition. After all its been all of ten years since the interwebnet became common and that's an awfully short time to be able to conclude that it has an impact on mood.
I am only challenging the views put forward because I believe them to be thoroughly dangerous and divisive, particularly in a community such as this. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother. I can see that you stand by your " I know what I am talking about" principle and that's fine but i would like to reassure any forum readers who are concerned about their internet usage as a result of your posts that it really isn't usually a problem honestly. Furthermore fucking for fun isn't on anybody's no no''s either. Just for balance you understand.
I think it's less an issue of depression, and more about people being generally honest about their reasons for being on the site.
People are disingenuous about all sorts of things, not just their state of mind.
Rob, I have sufficient experience of all the subjects on which I express a firm opinion and assume this goes for other posters too.
If you google mind and read some of the family support materials im sure your fears will be allayed and words like psychotic wont be quite so intimidating.
Yes Nola honesty is good but I think its fair to say that prejudices can exist and need to be explored as do "expert" opinions on acceptable behaviour by site users who may or may not have distress issues.
It's usually easy to spot on here when people are looking for affirmation for the wrong reasons, well I think so and tend to run the opposite way.
