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In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but despite of its name this alternative lifestyle seems to be rising in popularity among mainstream, adult married couples in the US. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the phenomenon, often putting a positive spin on the effects which swinging has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in almost all states as well as France, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are productive enterprises which provide all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special vacation sites for swingers, and annual conferences and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1999.
What exactly is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and tolerance of infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of many sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated much like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a couple. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the principal goal. Wife swapping is typically done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the consent of both to the experience. Though swingers often become close friends with other swinging couples, there are policy restricting emotional involvement with non-spousal partners. While swinging involves having sex with people other than one’s spouse, its followers claim that it enhances the relationship of the swinging couple both sexually and emotionally. By removing the privacy and untruthfulness inherent in one’s natural desires for sexual diversity, the couple can discover their fantasies mutually without dishonesty or guilt. By removing the necessity for dishonesty from the sexual life, a new level of trust and openness about all of one’s feelings is apparently achieved without the harsh baggage of distrust.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly importance because the challenge to mix sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “unusual” from the western model of romantic love which assumes that sexual and emotional monogamy are mutually reinforcing and inseparable. It has yet to be demonstrated empirically whether this alternative lifestyle really strengthens or weakens marital bonds, but in an era where 38% of husbands and 30% of wives, sometimes so-called milfs declare to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 61%, and where family instability and parental neglect of kids has become a main national concern, any effort to redefine “love” and reinforce the marital relationship is worthy of our attention. If swingers have found a way to stabilize relationships, prolong family ties, and improve the lives of couples we would be remiss if we did not take their lifestyle and their redefinition of monogamous love seriously.
It is concluded that swingers surveyed are the white, middle-class, middle-aged, church-going section of the residents reported in earlier studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the common public. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the gladness of their marriages and life satisfaction in general as higher than the non-swinging population.