I'm a Big Whiny Baby

EPISODE 8: How to stay engaged in the lifestyle when you're a big whiny baby and shit isn't going your way.

Welcome to the eighth episode of the May Wyld West Show. 

Guess what? It's time again for the Mae Wild West Show Notes 

Now let's full send into today's episode. So guess what I did? Wallowed in self-pity.

I’ve been sick for the last week. I thought I was better about Thursday so I went and did a bunch and then ended up sick again all weekend. I have been exhausted, my house is a mess and nothing seems to be going my way. We had plans to possibly go and play with a single gentleman friend Friday night and on top of everything else going on I got my period, so “Boo, my life sucks.”  

Every spring, I go through this because life starts happening faster and faster when you have kids and jobs and everything else. Leaving town is more difficult because of the weather, and for some reason, spring is always the time of year when money is short. Soon scheduling playtime becomes damn near impossible and every year I get discouraged to the point that I don’t even see the point in scheduling anything or even talking to new people because it's just not going to work out, or at least that's how it feels. 

Here's the thing. It honestly hasn't been that long since we had a playdate, maybe a month. Currently, in my phone, I have several people who would be a good time and we could have a lot of fun. 

Just off the top of my head, I can think of Mr. Gun Tattoos, who has those gun tattoos that are down by the hip bone with the V thing. Oh yeah, super fucking hot. Then there is Mr. Bull Rider and you know, I'm a country girl so I have a soft spot for those. Then there is Mr. Irish who we've had fun with a couple of times this spring. And no we have a new Mr. Oilfield, who I'm kind of excited to meet. Next is Mr. Bear, who I haven't met yet, but kind of looks like a silver fox. The for couples there is Mrs. and Mr. Gorgeous from Nebraska, as well as another really interesting couple that is from the state over. But there's your problem: the next state over. None of these people are really within 100 miles of us. 

This is why I think it's a big problem for rural swingers because we have to go so far to play. We have to go to another town. We have to get a hotel room, we have to go out and have drinks, and then hope that something works after we've driven a hundred miles someplace else. 

We don't play in town. I mean, it's a town of 7000 people-ish and the last thing I want to do to my kids is have it get around that their mom likes to, uh, get dicked down by other men than their dad. So there's that. 

The whole being outed though, is I mean, it's it's a huge concern for us, which seems kind of counterintuitive because I'm here airing all of our dirty laundry on this podcast. But let's face facts, we all know my name isn't really May Wild West. 

I even had a couple message me on Instagram talking about how they seem to have a lot of the same problems. Now, don't get me wrong, part of their problems is finding people whom they click with, which honestly is the problem that everybody has. But once more, we have a much smaller pile of people to choose partners from. 

Because of this inability to get with people regularly, it's really hard to develop friendships, which makes it really hard to keep those friendships we do develop. For example, we lost touch with several people that we used to meet up with down in Colorado just because as your kids get older in high school and they have more sports, you start to not have the time year-round to play. 

We do a good majority of our playing in the summer months because, well, it's easier to travel, there's less bad weather. Not that we've had a lot of bad weather this year, and there are fewer kids activities sometimes in the summer for us. 

A lot of the time, what ends up happening is you become pen pals, and it's one way you can develop a stronger friendship because you start to learn a little bit more about those people and the things that go on in their lives, but eventually, there's only so much you can talk about, and eventually there are only so many times that you can have the same sort of sexy conversation and talk about meeting up before meeting up becomes a critical thing. It feels sort of the equivalent of getting friend-zoned, you know because people look at it like this is that if you were into them enough and they were into you enough, you would figure out some way for it to all work. 

Now, do I really think that this is maybe true? No, I don't, because as much as I would like to meet up with anybody that my husband and I are talking to right now, I just don't have the time. I haven't been well and money's been a little tight in our lives lately. I really do want to meet up with these people though. It's just that I can't figure out a way to logistically make it happen. 

So then you start feeling guilty because you feel like you led these people on, and then the last thing you want to do is get a reputation as being a flake, somebody who all they want to do is talk, and they never want to do anything. The swinger community, especially in smaller areas, is small, and soon you will get a reputation. 

I know how many times situations were reversed and we were ready to meet up and got frustrated by people who kept having things going on in their lives or kept being AFK when it came time to text the day that they were supposed to meet up with us. And you can't help but take it a little bit personally. 

I read a wall post by a pretty insightful lady on FetLife the other day. I thought it was kind of fascinating because it looks at it from the opposite direction, but she was saying how she was just shocked that for the first time in a long time, the person that she was meeting was going to show up because it was just a woman. I did say that I think that if people don't show up, then they're probably not going to be that good in bed, and then they probably aren't the person for you. 

On the other hand, if people continue to have problems in their lives that make it difficult for them to meet up with you, you have two choices. You can either choose to end that relationship, which is completely reasonable, or you can be patient. So then how do you be patient? 

Then there's the other question. How do you keep the conversation active, or at least convince them that you haven't ghosted them while your life is in shambles or is a busy mess and you just can't focus on the swinging portion of your life? 

So, okay, I don't have a lot of good answers for this because I honestly need help with this. My best bet is, is that randomly throughout the week I try to send everybody a boob pic. You know, like, "Hey, how's your day going? Let me flash you." 

Now that is partially probably because I'm a bit of an exhibitionist. Not that I wouldn't rather my boobs look like they did when I was 19. I'm still pretty proud of them. I get a lot of compliments on them and it seems to perk everybody up. It doesn't require a whole lot of response from the other people, but it helps them to think that you're still thinking about them. 

The other one is just check in and say, “Hey, how's it going? You know what's up? Do anything fun this weekend? Have any sexy times?” A lot of people like to share stories about their sexy adventures. 

The other suggestion I have is the answer to every single question that anybody has ever had in the swinger lifestyle, and that is communication. At the end of the day, most people who you're going to be swinging with are going to be similar in age to you. Understand that life happens and adulting happens. And as I said, if they're not willing to wait for you to have a slower time in your life, then maybe they just aren't the right people for you in the first place. 

Open the lines of communication because at the end of the day, these other people are just people like you, and they've had maybe the same problems, similar problems, just other problems where they've had to step away, or they've had to put things on pause for a few minutes, like currently when life isn't working out. 

Sometimes I feel like there's no real point in talking to people because I don't know when life is going to slow down so that we'll have more time to meet up with people. If it makes it sometimes hard to want to even start new conversations with people. I find whichever app it is I use, whether that is FetLife or ASL, AFF, Kasidee, or even Reddit I get messages. 

I always feel guilty if I don't respond to messages especially from couples, because we have so few options for meeting up with couples that you hate to waste it. But then, on the other hand, you don't know if you're going to be able to hook up with them anyway, so what's the point of wasting time?

Maybe it is time to take my own advice. If I want to start those conversations because I want to see if we can make a match with a couple, then I probably should just start the conversation. “We have a really busy life right now, and I don't know when we're going to be available for meetups.” That'd be the simplest way to do it. 

Once more, as I am going through my podcast and writing my show notes, I come up with these brilliant theories about how to solve my own problems. Go figure. 

Now, I will say that when it comes to single guys, I'm in one of these moods where I feel like there's no point in even talking to anybody because we're not going to meet up and I'm being a big pouty baby,  I get savage about deleting messages from single guys. 

If you start your message with, “Hey,” and then you have no profile, you didn't read my profile, no pictures, or anything that tells me anything about you, your message is probably getting sent to file 19. BTW, I will know if you read my profile because straight up in it it says in the middle. “If you've read this far, you deserve a treat. So start your message out with: Show me the titties and I will flash you.” That's my trick to know when people read my profile. 

When I look at my attitudes toward the whole situation and my general shittiness about the whole situation, I realize that I'm kind of being a big baby and that I should probably look at my life and go, well, shit, it's not so bad. I mean, a month ago is not so bad. 

Okay, yeah, there's a lot of swingers out there who are getting to do this every single weekend. And am I jealous? Shit. Yes, I am jealous and shit because it's fun and, you know, chase the dopamine. But we've got to figure out how to solve our problems. 

Yes, communication is the key to solving most of these problems, but there are other places that we can look for help and how to get better at these relationships that we have to develop as swingers and in the lifestyle. One of the places that I found that has been very helpful is a lot of these Facebook swinger groups, especially the newbie ones. If you search on Facebook for swingers, you're going to find a whole bunch of Facebook groups. And those Facebook groups are everything from newbies to people who are just looking for hookups. So pick the ones that are the best for what you're looking for. 

In those groups, you can ask for advice, or you can just lurk and read the questions that everybody else is asking and the advice that everybody else is giving. Either way you look at it, it's good information, and sometimes it's something to think about. The number of times that I read something and go, “Oh well, shit, I never thought about it from that perspective” is just astonishing. 

The other place that I found that is a good place to find advice and to read about other people's perspectives and how they look at things is honestly FetLife. They have these options where you can post a status update or you can post your writing. And yes, some of this stuff is a little more extreme than the average swinger is looking for. But a lot of these writings and a lot of the groups have interesting perspectives on how those relationships work. 

Another place I found that can give you some advice if you don't mind sifting through the bullshit and the crap and the dick pics is Reddit. One of the Reddit pages that I have found that has a lot of information for people is r/swingers. And then the other one is r/swingernewbies. 

You can also find local groups, and you can find about 72 dudes who want to send you a dick pic. God bless them but Jesus sometimes it's great. I mean, there is such a thing as a good dick pic. Sometimes it's not good. And in my opinion, most of the time it's not good because it looks like you have a Chia Pet in your pants. Personal preference. Personal preference. 

The last thing that I do to get advice, and ideas, and figure out how it is that I'm supposed to interact with people in the lifestyle is to listen to other podcasts. Podcasts that I find helpful are the Wanderlust Swinger Podcast and then The Impulsive Duo. They also do The Unicorn Landing and The Professor Pineapple on Instagram. They have a lot of good ideas, they have a lot of good information. And both those podcasters are moderators of some of those Facebook groups, so they're available there to give you help right on the spot half the time.