Shelby Criswell
Sheila’s coming off a mid-morning threesome with a couple she just met when she tells SFR about the duality of her personal and family life.
“When you see me in the grocery store, I will look like somebody’s grandmother,” she says, “and they want me to be in that role.”
But, she explains, the idea of what a grandmother should—and shouldn’t—do, doesn’t capture her true humanness: “When you see me eating another woman’s pussy, they don’t want to think about that.”
Born and raised in Santa Fe and an active member of the swinging community, Sheila, 65, doesn’t want to be limited by polite society’s notions of sex, age or anything in between.
“We, as humans, were given a gift,” she explains. “That gift is our sexuality.”
The swinging community, known as “the lifestyle” among its members, encompasses a big tent. Broadly, it’s for people who want to have sex with multiple partners and break free from the rigidity of monogamous relationships. But for those taking part, the lifestyle isn’t easily defined. For Sheila, the possibilities provided by the lifestyle disrupt the traditional narrative first presented in TV shows, she says, like “Leave It to Beaver—the everyday, always, same-old husband, wife-and-two-children.”
For those maybe stuck in sexless marriages, Sheila says the freedom afforded by polyamorous relationships or a swinging lifestyle opens doors to new ideas about what relationships look like.
“As long as you’re over 21, we’re open to everybody, every body type of every age,” Dave, the host and self-proclaimed godfather of swinging events in Santa Fe, tells SFR. Dave explains he’s tried to make the lifestyle scene in New Mexico, which tends to skew older, as inclusive as possible in light of the bias he’s observed in his time swinging. He entered the scene in his early 50s as way to socialize and have sex given his limited free time as a single father of three. Over a decade later at 67, Dave says he’s taken a leadership role in the community by planning and hosting events. In turn, he says, “my sex life is way better—better than ever in my whole life.”
Another reason for Dave’s notoriety in the lifestyle is his reputation for a never-ending supply of those little blue pills that “always made me popular.” Viagra, it turns out, is popular at swinging events.
Sitting outside the DeVargas Starbucks in a skull-sequined mask she made herself, Di shares a similar trajectory of her experience in the lifestyle. Feeling the need to expand her sexual horizons, she began attending events in Albuquerque before building a reputation, she says, as the “queen of the scene,” and eventually helping Dave host events closer to home in Santa Fe. At 55, Di tells SFR, she’s observed all the different ways people practice swinging, which ranges from simply watching others, to jumping into the “puppy pile.” Di points out that the inhibition-free lifestyle enables everyone to meet their needs.
“When somebody can hit your button and when your button is really hard to find, when somebody finds it, you don’t care what he or she looks like,” she says.
While the sex lives of older individuals can sometimes take a backseat to hormonal changes, menopause and other challenges that can complicate sex in more advanced years, Di and Sheila both note the abundance of older couples pushing their sexual boundaries.
In her conversations with her swinging friends, for example, Di says they tell her, “‘This saved my marriage.’”
Despite the inclusive nature of the lifestyle, it isn’t completely detached from reality. Dave, Sheila and Di each confirm the age bias in the lifestyle doesn’t affect all participants equally. They explain that a double standard exists such that elderly men more often get the go-ahead to join in the fun, while older women don’t see such broad acceptance at events.
“I have not been invited to play because there was someone who looks like Barbie,” Sheila tells SFR. “But as women get older, they have more experience and they have skills that young women don’t…it’s their loss, because I know my value.”
While many swinging communities across the country tend to be cliquey and heteronormative, Dave explains, he’s made efforts to expand the tent to make more feel included at events he hosts. The primary problem isn’t making attendees more comfortable, however, it’s the discomfort of those outside the events. With the closure of spaces previously friendly to swinging events, Dave says it’s become difficult to find locations to host groups. He attributes this, in part, to the stigma associated with the lifestyle; unsurprisingly, COVID-19 certainly hasn’t been friendly to group sex parties, either.
Sheila, meanwhile, echoes that everyone’s comfort level around sex differs, noting her family. Still, one liberating aspect she gains from swinging is the joy she shares from having multiple partners and the opportunity to share the gift of sex with others.
“I think a lot of times, what makes people comfortable about sex, makes other people uncomfortable about sex,” she says.
