Wife and I have been non-mono for 15 years. We hooked up with our old neighbors and the four of us spent 12 years in an exclusive foursome. Never once caught feels or felt like we needed or wanted to get feels by anyone, never once felt unsafe, just had a great time. Unfortunately the pandemic hit and our friends moved soon after due to work. Well, it's been three years and the itch is only growing stronger.

Thing is, as we ventured into this new world, all we've found is that it's all either you go full out poly(feels) or full out swinger(casual). We've tried to join both and find our niche for two and a half years but at this point we're just deflated from our experiences. In both we've been promised that we'd find what we were looking for but honestly, they (mostly) lied - I know it sounds harsh but that's what it was, lies to get us in.

The poly side told us that we didn't have to get feels for anyone "BUT WE NEEDED TO KEEP OUR MINDS AND HEARTS OPEN". We should have paid attention to that because it led to some feels by others that happened before we even had sex - dodged those bullets! And after that experience, we started to see that we didn't belong in that world. Total respect to those that can do it, it's just not something we are interested in.

Meanwhile with swingers, time and time again we were told by couples that they too wanted friends but whenever we said that we wanted to go slow or being friends was priority or even the mention of exclusivity happened (not often), we were dropped like dead weight or distances were made, by most. Our profiles were very open about how serious we are about friends first, not moving too quickly and starting with soft-swap, and that exclusivity within a small circle of friends was strongly desired.

We weren't trying to fool anyone and we still have people we consider friends in both areas but no one we want to move further with. We've talked with them about all of this and we respect both sides, they just aren't for us. But what now?

Where do you find couples, and maybe singles, that just want to find a small tribe to build friendships with that can be exclusive to this tribe and where no one wants to get feels or is in a personal space to potentially get feels?