‘Informer’ reveals ‘dark side of swinging’ that people don’t see

An informer speaking about their experience of the swinging scene in London opened up about the 'dark side' of the lifestyle and how people can have bad experiences.

Speaking to Vice, they said many orgies and parties would have staff who would watch out for rule breaking, a job they didn't envy, but warned that things could still go wrong with the swinger lifestyle.

They warned people that the lifestyle 'can be open to coercive and abusive relationships', recalling that they'd once been in a 'very demeaning and very difficult' relationship that in hindsight only continued as it gave their partner access to the swinging lifestyle.

"It was way too much, I wasn't allowed to play with anyone who wasn't someone that he found attractive and female," the informant said.

"I think when you're very sexually open you see it as, 'oh my partner wants this', like that's chill, 'I'm chill with this' but in reality it's like a loss of control over time."

The informer said the swinging lifestyle was full of people having a great time, but it wasn't immune from bad things happening (Getty Stock Photo)

Speaking about some of the things they'd seen at swinging parties that made them 'really uncomfortable', they mentioned being in 'a pile' several years ago where they saw a woman they'd been playing with who was 'super uncomfortable' that her male partner was 'next to her playing with someone else'.

They said: "There's also a lot of pressure to perform.

"If you go to a party and it's a really exclusive one and the tickets were like £200 per person for example and you don't have sex with someone and your male partner's paid for the whole thing you'll feel a certain type of way.

"You'll feel, you know, like you let them down or whatever so you end up in these situations where you're kind of having sex with people you don't necessarily want to have sex with people to justify the ticket price."

The informant said they believed a lot of people were 'sexually open' and made it clear a lot of what happened in the swinging lifestyle was 'people having a great time expressing themselves', but warned some folks appeared to them to 'want to believe that a lot of what's happened to them is consensual'.

They went on to say that they'd not heard of people going to the police over things, and also people in the lifestyle 'don't want the club shut down'.

The informer said they knew some clubs were more on the ball about banning people than others, saying they'd once emailed organisers at one venue to say someone had been abusive to them and was 'not a safe person'.

In their message they'd not asked for the person to be banned, only to be notified if they were going to an event so they could miss it and avoid them, but said the club replied and told them 'we don't get involved in domestics'.

According to the informer generally the 'straighter clubs take it less seriously' while 'the kinkier and queerer clubs' were more likely to ban people quickly.

On top of that they warned prospective swingers that there were 'definitely people who join the community for bad reasons', including people who were 'sexually sadistic' and enjoyed 'hurting people in a way that they don't enjoy'.

They warned that sometimes swinging could be 'a space where a lot of people can convince themselves they're okay with things they're not'.