Intimatters

We sat down with Ted and Sandi, the folks behind www.trystmag.com, a dating site and magazine for the swinging community. Not only are they a kick-ass couple and swingers themselves, but they are really cool people who know their stuff. Here’s what they had to tell us:

Question: What came first, the magazine or the website?

Answer: Magazine. It’s been around 28 years. We bought it in 1993. We also have Tab Magazine, that’s been around 50 years that we bought. Tab is a fetish/fantasy magazine, and Tryst is a swinger’s magazine.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the magazine’s origin and evolution? How did you get into this business? When did “Sandi’s Tryst” really begin?

A: I originally worked delivering the magazine, I delivered the second issue of Tryst, 28 years ago. I was the guy who went around to the stores, and it went thru a couple of different owners and then the magazine got in trouble and we picked it up.

Q: When and why did you start the website? What was the website’s purpose?

A: That would be 1995, we’ve been online continuously since 95, I think we’ve had 3 days total down and one of them was the day we converted over to the new site that we’re on now, so it took us a whole day to do that.

The purpose of the very first version was information; it was a continuation of the magazine.

Q: So when did it turn to dating?

A: It’s always been a swinger’s site, it was about a year after, and we started writing programming for it to try to hook people up online, as we saw the internet starting to grow.

Q: And it’s just the 2 of you doing it?

A: Right, this is the whole operation. We’re shut down right now while were talking to you.

Q: What’s different about your site from other online swinging sites out there?

A: Most of the swinging sites, if you’ve been to any of the swinging sites, or any of the dating sites, they have millions of members, we’ve got about 5,000-7,000 members, because if you don’t come back to our site after 6 months, we delete you. Because if you haven’t come back within 6 months, chances are you’re not going to. AFF has 83,000,000 members and all the other sites, because every person who signed up from day 1 is still there and is still a member and are still getting harassing emails from them. So basically, after 6-9 months, depending on the season, because summer slows down a little bit, our busy season is Jan/Feb.

Q: Why is that?

A: New Year’s Resolutions. People are going to meet new people, they’re going to change their life, they are going to go out and do something exciting. The biggest difference between us and everyone else is we don’t have 5 million members because we delete you after 6 months

Q: How active are you in the swinging community? Are you active globally, nationally, locally? Do you offer events and destinations? Do you partner with clubs/parties/destinations?

A: Yes, not nearly as active as most people think we are because we spend so much time working it, we have very little time to play. I would think we are active globally, but generally locally, We vacation, we do the lifestyle vacations, we doing in partnership with someone else a full charter, full cruise ship, that sold out in 4 months, 2090 people. We were done to San Diego last week to tour the ship and we’re doing a new cruise, we’re leaving next week which is totally pleasure, it’s not a business thing.

Q: I was surprised that your business is run out of Oakville, ON – is there a large swinging community in the area?

A: 5% of your friends are swingers to some extent. It depends on your definition of swinger and everyone has a different definition. By my definition, you don’t have to have sex with another person to be a swinger. It’s more of an attitude than a performance sport. So you can whole life and have fantasy games and never have sex with other people but have a swinging lifestyle. You know, go to nude beaches, lay of the beach naked all day long, enjoy it, go there with other couples, and do nothing. A lot of the people who go to swingers clubs go there as a couple, dance, flirt, then go home and have sex together, they don’t want to do anything with somebody else, they just like being around the people and the atmosphere. So you don’t have to have sex with other people to be a swinger. There’s different levels of swinging, the biggest problem with swinging, is, if say you play golf there are a big set of rules, you’re a golfer you do this, but the swinging lifestyle is so huge that if you included everyone who went from one end to the other 50 to 75% of the general population at one point or another in their life were involved in some kind of swinging activity and the other 25% are just lying.

Q: Are there different niches within each group?

A: Yes, there are those couples who go to the clubs and never go home with anyone else, there’s couple who occasionally meet other people and get along and may have some kind of interaction. There’s people who soft swing which is everything up to but excluding penetration, there are people who nothing but penetration, there are people who go to separate rooms, there are people who don’t want to even know your name, they just want to put you on a bed post and away they go, and every single thing in the middle.

Q: With the divorce rate at around 37%, do you feel that swinging implies something different than marriage? Or can swinging be an element of marriage?

A: Everybody knows somebody who is cheating on their partner, the husband is cheating on the wife and the wife is cheating on the husband and one of them gets caught and they get divorced. If they would have sat down honestly and said “listen, we’re not quite getting what we want out of this relationship, why don’t we try this and do it together.” And they might have a really good time. They might still get divorced, but they were going to anyway, it won’t save a marriage but if you have a strong relationship, once you’ve seen your partner with someone else, there isn’t anything you can’t talk about. There needs to be a certain level of maturity in a relationship, and swinging over the last 5-10 years, swinging has become more casual. Most of the clubs out there, its couples in their 20’s who are on their 2^nd date and it’s cool to go to a swingers club. The lifestyle is definitely changing, evolving, and I’m not sure I like what it’s evolving into, because it’s always been for mature, secure, in a committed relationship and its sort of the next step in a committed relationship where now its becoming a lot more casual. It’s kind of revolving back into what my vision of what the swinging 60s used to be, or the key parties and all that kind of stuff, the hippies sleeping with everybody in sight.

Q: Have you seen any increase/decrease in business with the recent recession? Do you feel that the adult industry is as recession-proof as your typical news outlets would have you believe? If you’ve had an increase in business, why do you think that this is? Is it becomes less taboo or are people just more adventurous to try new things?

A: I think everything in the world falling off. We’re still getting the same amount of members, but they are staying as free members and they’re not upgrading, the curiosity is still there but the money isn’t. We’re still getting 10-20 new members a day. The recession has affected the business. Magazine sales are down but magazine sales are down everywhere. Hugh Heffner just sold the mansion, to keep the magazine afloat, Penthouse just went out of business, look at the magazine racks in any store, the fact that we’re still here means that we must be doing something right.

Q: With the recession being what it is, do you find that people are being a bit more adventurous to try something new, have you seen more people that you’ve never seen before on you site?

A: Yes. We said that the other day. Generally, what happens on our site, people go through cycles. You would join our site, and you would meet someone and you would fall away from the site. And then 3, 4, 5, 6 months later whatever happened in your relationship with that person, you show up again, it’s like a revolving door. We get people coming back and coming back, but we’ve got a lot of couples now looking for singles, and couples look for single guys. It’s always been assumed in the lifestyle that 90% of the women are bi, and 10% are just lying about it. Now there’s more bi guys coming out, and I think the number of bi guys are still out there, it’s just that they’re being more open with their partner and there’s a lot of couples looking for guys, which is kind of surprising.

Q: You’ll often see for many swinging clubs that they never let single guys in

A: Because most single guys don’t know how to behave. It’s true. But the single guys who are meeting couples are upscale and well dressed and gentlemen, and know how to behave. Other guys assume that when you’re a swinger that you’ll swing with anybody, and there are couples who do that but they are in the small minority. Any of the clubs that do let guys in on regular bases only let one or 2 of them in, the rest are just in for a cash grab and will let any of them in.

Q: Were you a fan of the TV show “Swingtown”? Did you think it accurately explored/portrayed the nuances/details/complications of swinging/the lifestyle? Any feelings on the show’s cancellation?

A: That was actually a really good show. But the complaints I heard about it were it delved more into, people expected it to get into the sexual side of swinging, and it didn’t, it got into the relationships and the problems that occur in relationships when you get 4 people together and they are emotional. They focused more on the problems and if it had been all about the sex it still would have been on. It did focus more about the problems of swinging and there are problems in swinging it’s not for everybody.

Q: Cool features your website offers?

A: Yeah, we’ve got all kinds of features, half the stuff we haven’t even turned on yet. It’s got instant messaging, this site is a profile site, our old site… we’ve been firm believers that based on the magazine, you can put an ad in the magazine and you can tell more about a person by what they write in the magazine, by clicking on 27 different boxes and letting a computer match you and I up. The new site does that and we’ve been forced to go with that because it seems to be what everybody wants and they want to spend 30 minutes filling in tick boxes than filling out a profile. Old members have been asking what happened to the old system where you could just see who’s updated their profile in the last 7 days. That’s what people are missing so we’re going to try to bring it back. We’ve got full chat, video, voiceover ip option for it, anonymous, that hasn’t been turned on yet, there’s a lot of slick stuff.

Q: Any tips/advice for couples or singles just starting out in the scene or who want to learn more?

A: Communicate with your partner, we always stress that one. Know what you’re comfortable with and before you get yourself into a situation where you’re too far over you head with someone else, sit down and negotiate the rule. Say, listen, I’m comfortable with this, this, this and this, what are you comfortable with, and tell the other couple that you don’t mind trying this but we don’t really want to do this. And expect the rule to change as you evolve.

Q: How do people get over the jealously issue?

A: Some people don’t. Some people will always have jealously. When you see your wife going absolutely crazy with someone else, why doesn’t she act that way with me, it can happen. Some people get over it and some people don’t. I enjoy the fact that Sandi can be someone else and have a good time and I enjoy watching that, so that’s how I deal with jealously. I won’t say that it doesn’t bother me every once in a while, but I certainly sit back and say ok, so that’s how you do it and the next time I do it, pick up a new trick.

Q: Growth plans? Do you ever retire from swinging or from the site?

A: I don’t think so, as long as we enjoy doing it, we do it because we enjoy it, not because we make a lot of money at it. We got a lot of nice friends and a lot of great people we met and we don’t meet a lot of new people, but we like sharing it with other people.