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In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but in any case of its name this swinging lifestyle seems to be rising in popularity among mainstream, grown-up married couples in USA. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the trend, regularly 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 Belgium, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are productive enterprises which supply all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and yearly conferences and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1998.
What exactly is swinging? Unlike “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of betrayal in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of several sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated much like any other social activity, that can be practiced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the major goal. Swinging is typically done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the approval of both to the experience. Though swingers often become close friends with other swinging couples, there are regulations restricting emotional involvement with non-spousal partners. While swinging involves having sex with people other than one’s spouse, its supporters claim that it enhances the relationship of the swinging couple both sexually and emotionally. By removing the secrecy and dishonesty inherent in one’s natural wishes for sexual variety, the pair can discover their fantasies mutually without deceit or guilt. By removing the necessity for deceit from the sexual life, a fresh level of reliance and openness about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the harsh baggage of envy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and intellectual importance because the attempt to combine sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is basically “abnormal” from the western model of idealistic love which assumes that sexual and emotional monogamy are mutually reinforcing and inseparable. It has yet to be demonstrated empirically whether this alternative lifestyle in fact strengthens or weakens marital relationships, but in an era where 37% of husbands and 29% of wives, sometimes so-called milfs confess to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 59%, and where family insecurity and parental neglect of kids has become a main national worry, 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 enrich 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 population reported in previous studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the broad population. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the happiness of their marriages and life satisfaction generally as higher than the non-swinging population.