My partner Aidan and I met at an orgy. Aidan was inside another woman and another man inside me when I started to lick Aidan’s balls and between his buttocks. I had noticed him before, heard of him and liked his smile and his body, but this was our ‘hello’.

We turned to one another, kissed, detached ourselves from our partners, fell into one another’s arms and fucked, checked, shared a moment or two of recognition, fucked some more, and only afterwards, when we met again at the buffet, did we exchange names, share jokes, arrange to meet again as swing-partners and so embark upon a relationship.

Before that, Aidan had lived for six months with Kerry, a 22 year-old whom he had met through a British internet site called Local Swingers, and,

before that, had had a lengthy affair with Dee, a married woman whom he had also met at an orgy. Before we met, I had four regular friends, male and female, whom I had met through swinging and with whom I ‘played’ from time to time.

Swingers may like sex with strangers, but we like too to make friends with those strangers and to feel at ease with them. They are, after all, kindred spirits who share a hobby and an attitude not merely to sexuality but to life in general. Inevitably, affection and protectiveness will enter their relationships.

As to ‘sharing’ and ‘swapping’ partners, this implies an ownership which is alien. If you cannot own or sell a human being, how can you swap or share one? Swingers tend, when in couples, to encourage and to smile upon and, where desirable, to participate in their partners’ enjoyment of others, but even this is not invariably true.