“Why isn’t anybody playing at my party?”, the hostess asked us, almost in tears, as we were leaving her house around 2:00am.

Great question! She was horny. We were horny. From the obvious sexual chemistry amongst the super sexy crowd, it seemed that everyone was horny. Yet nobody was in the bedrooms.

This party had everything going for it. The guests were chosen very carefully, to ensure maximum compatibility. The party size was limited to 30 guests, making it the perfect size for intimacy yet large enough that couples or groups could easily steal away to play areas without disrupting the overall flow. It was a house party, so it was convenient to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. The music was standard “swinger house”, loud enough to let people dance, but not too loud for conversation. Alcohol, in this case pitchers of Mojitos, were provided by the host couple and flowed endlessly… Yet still nobody played.

The girls were dressed to kill. Nipples often came out to play on the dancefloor, in the kitchen, and in the living room. Girls were dirty dancing with other girls, working up a crazy “fuck me now” look in their eyes. Guys were getting lap dances, and even a little more, in chairs around the house. Cards from “The Game” were being read and playfully discussed with several couples in a group. The chemistry among the guests was great. People were hot and the room energy was electric. Yet still nobody played.

As the night wore on, the party started to thin out as guests had to depart for various reasons… babysitters waiting at home, exhaustion from a long day of travel, a tough work schedule the next day, early morning commitments, etc. Even at 2:00am there was still a great core of friends flirting and partying… yet still nobody played. Our hostess was beside herself.

We talked about it on our way home. Here we had a fun party, filled with sexy and sexually compatible friends who were dressed hot. The flirting was heavy and the alcohol flowed freely. People were obviously horny AND connected… yet nobody was heading to the bedrooms. Not a single couple. It just didn’t make sense.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen it happen – a hot party filled with connected guests that just… well… it just ends. And then another party at the same home, with almost the same guest list turns into a giant orgy from start to finish.

We think it comes down to three main things; communication, preconception, and instigation. There are likely other factors, but lets explore these for starters.

Communication – We ourselves were guilty of this. In retrospect it’s evident that we are often guilty of it and need to make a pro-active change to deal with it. We were not communicating with each other at the party. It would have been simple for my wife and I to ask each other “Do you want to play tonight?” followed by “Out of everyone here, which couples would you want to fuck?” Since my wife is extremely picky about which guys she’ll fuck (less so about girls, but still selective even there), you can never really anticipate what is “doing it” for her on any given night. Some added communication that would have put us in synch.

Preconceptions – When people know each other fairly well, as most of the guests at this party did, they can form preconceived notions about each other. This can lead to certain expectations, which may limit people’s behavior accordingly. For instance, based on a previous experience, you may have the preconception that a particular couple only flirts but doesn’t play. Preconceptions like this essentially freeze or disable your ability to act despite all the obvious cues, flirtation, touching, or conversation. But who knows what might happen if you ignore those preconceptions and actually pay attention to cues… or better yet, drop a few cues yourself.

Instigation – Like most people, we can be shy. One of most counterintuitive things about the swinger scene is how people can be flirting, dirty dancing, French kissing, and fondling one another… yet when it comes to asking “Do you guys want to play?” it’s as if we were at a high school formal, and everyone is standing by the punch bowl, too terrified to go ask someone to dance. Some people are more assertive, and, just like in high school, they’re the ones who get most of the action. The rest of us often rely on them to be the instigators to get things started.

One girl at the party has been known to shout “This is ridiculous!” and then, literally, start pairing couples up saying “You two and you two, go fuck now!” And people do it. She’s been at hotel takeovers and as people are leaving the party and heading down the hallways to their rooms, she’s grabbed numerous couples saying “You are all coming to our room to get naked and fuck!” and they do. She was at particularly slow New Years party once and at the stroke of midnight, made all the girls strip naked and choose a guy or another girl. But tonight, at this party, she was with a new beau and hung out in the back of the kitchen chatting and watching the dance floor. I guess she didn’t want to freak him out.

Our hostess is herself quite the instigator, often (very, very often) being the first person naked at a party. But tonight she was determined to not have to take the lead. She wanted the party to get hot without her expending more energy than what it took to put the party together.

We were personally guilty of all these things last night. We didn’t communicate. We had preconceptions about people. And we didn’t instigate anything.

Our Communication – If we’d communicated, we would have learned that we were both horny and game to play, that there were guys and girls we were both hot for;

Our Preconceptions – We are acutely aware that sometimes people consider us to be aloof… but we are just really, really shy. We play with a lot of different kinds of people, of all ages and body types. We have our preferences, of course, but it’s not what you’d think. We hate it when we miss out on opportunities because of other people having these preconceptions about us. So then why the hell were we putting our own preconceptions on other people last night?! We need to stop doing that and just ask.

Our Instigation – My wife has been the instigator on many occasions, even though it has often been excruciating for her to overcome her shyness to do so. But when she does, the result has almost always (”almost” being the operative word here) been steamy, hot sex. Sure, sometimes a couple or swingle has said “no thanks,” but that isn’t a reason to not instigate in the future. We’ve just shrugged those off. The rewards of those many successes far outweigh the occasional failure.

We really should have instigated something last night… but we didn’t. Result: no nookie (at least with other people, we did jump on each other as soon as we got home). Next time? We’ll communicate more, forget our preconceptions about people and try to instigate things ourselves, rather than waiting for someone else to do it.