TL;DR: Desire with friends is a superior way to go for swingers like us.

We just completed our 4th Desire RM trip. Coming back home from this one was tougher than all the rest because we had so much fun. This was our first trip with a friends group along for the ride and I think that plays a big role in how much we enjoyed this trip.

It’s important to highlight what kind of swingers we tend to be. We’re definitely a “friends with benefits” type of couple. We prefer on-going friends to one time things, even though we don’t necessarily turn down the one time thing. Even when we do find a match with a couple at a place like Desire, it’s people we connect with early in the day and we spend some focused time getting to know them before getting naked. We have often noted there is a different type of swinger that we often don’t fit well with. They bounce from conversation to conversation all day, and maybe one or more of those conversations pan out late at night. Nothing at all wrong with that, but it’s not our style. So we try to find the couples like us. The ones that like a buildup during the day to unlock fun later.

We’re also what I’d describe as shy. We’re not introverts. We love company and being social. We’re not extroverts because being social with strangers is stressful for us. So for lack of a better term, we’re shy is the best way I can describe us. Getting over that to find connections is stressful for both of us.

So out of our Desire trips before this one, we found play friends on only two trips. The first trip’s only play time was a disaster because we acted in a way that doesn’t fit us. Last night there, we made a very quick connection late at night in a disco. That did not go well. My wife was definitely taking one for the team, and we cut it short. The second trip, we did find two great connections, but they were definitely by chance towards the end of the trip. The best was the last day. We connected with a couple who just arrived. Wonderful fun, but it was definitely just a one time thing. Our third trip, no successful connection. The lack of play did not at all keep us from enjoying the trips.

For this trip, we were able to join in with 3 other couples that we know from a meet up group we belong to locally. One couple we know well, and the other two are great couples also in the group. In advance of the trip, we also connected with one other couple via a large telegram group for our timeframe. They fit the group perfectly and effectively gave our group a fifth couple while they were there.

Being there with a group changed everything. We no longer spent the whole time trying to be “on” to other couples. We could just be ourselves with our friends. The stress of trying to introduce ourselves to other couples was gone. We always had dinner friends if we wanted them. We could enjoy the shows with others at night. We could all dance together.

The only downside is we certainly didn’t make any attempts at meeting others once we were there. We were certainly casually social, but advancing anything wasn’t really on our minds. We’ve always resisted going with friends on lifestyle trips for this reason. We wanted to force ourselves out of our comfort zone. Given how much we enjoyed this trip, maybe it’s quite ok to be in our comfort zone on a trip like this.

I don’t know what the future will hold for our Desire trips. We’re certainly returning. I don’t think we’d hesitate to go on our own again if we don’t have friends available to go. But, we’re certainly going to try and get friends together if we can.