The Lifestyle, Part 2: Finding Sex Partners on Craigslist

Craigslist is a great resource for those living The Lifestyle – swinging, sex parties, and more. There are 6 worthwhile categories on CL, and each needs its own approach.

This is Part 2 of my series on “The Lifestyle”, on sex parties, orgies, swinging, and polyamory. You can read Part 1 of the series here: “The Lifestyle, Part 1: How to Get Into Sex Parties, Swinging, and Polyamory.” In today’s article, we’ll talk about how to find new partners on Craigslist.

An author named Esther Perel has become really famous for turning public discourse on infidelity and the nature of human sexuality on its head.

She has focused on the question: Why do good people cheat?

Esther – along with many other historians and thinkers – has posited that human beings were never designed to be monogamous. While designed to be in groups, we are primates who are constantly shifting in sexual desires and sexual partners. She adds that monogamy has served more as power structure and agrarian vestige than anything else.

Those societies that held chastity as a sacred virtue often had stricter discipline and enjoyed economic and military conquest. Moreover, young women from various fiefdoms and kingdoms were married off to princes and kings of other fiefdoms and kingdoms in order to form alliances and unions.

In the agrarian age, marriage was a sensible safeguard to produce a family that could help a mother and father till land, and produce goods that would bolster future generations.

Thus, monogamy has always had a sensible function in the human dynamic. But it has never been about love. Perel argues that the combining of monogamy with love was a way to justify a seemingly strange practice.

But biologically speaking, it’s rather unreasonable to say that you do not deeply care about someone or even love them if you don’t have a desire to sleep with only them for 50+ years.

And this tension generates the conundrum that a lot of good people face: their biology versus their vows. Perel argues that ultimately, biology has the stronger pull. And so that is why good people end up engaging in infidelity.

And it is also from this tension that The Lifestyle of sexual liberation was born. Perel posits one central question of her own: What if, in love, we could explore different orientations of sexual partners, situations, and desires while still maintaining a strong bond and commitment?

And it’s exactly these different orientations of love and sexual gratification that Perel explores.

In the last post, I explored “The Lifestyle” from the perspective of public events.

And now, we look at it from the private side of things. But before I dive into The Lifestyle on the private side, I want to highlight a juxtaposition that Perel outlines. She argues that in every romantic pairing (especially traditional male-female), there is always one person who is afraid of losing their partner and being alone. And there’s always one person who is afraid of losing themselves in the relationship. It’s often the person who is afraid of losing him or herself that has the stronger pull toward a more sexually liberal situation.

For any guys who are currently in, or have been in, a serious relationship: have you ever felt this way? I would imagine many have.

So a lot of couples are constantly asking how to make sure that both partners are satisfied in a pair dynamic.

And thus, that is why Perel argues that it’s ultimately healthy to explore sexuality beyond just a pair in a relationship. So in this post, I’ll go through the different orientations you are likely to see, and how to get involved in these myriad Lifestyle situations.

The next post will be dedicated to handling emotional hiccups, jealousy, and some additional resources about The Lifestyle.