Back to the beginning of ”the lifestyle”.
In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but regardless of its name this sexual behavior seems to be growing in popularity among majority, middle-aged married couples in the United States and Canada. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the trend, regularly putting a positive spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in about all states as well as France, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are lucrative businesses which supply all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and annual conferences and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers travel agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1999.
What precisely is swinging? Dissimilar “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and tolerance of unfaithfulness in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, treated much like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the principal focus. Wife swapping is typically done in the company of one’s spouse and requires the approval of both to the practice. Although 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 apologetics claim that it enhances the relationship of the swinging couple both sexually and emotionally. By removing the secrecy and untruthfulness inherent in one’s natural desires for sexual diversity, the pair can explore their fantasies mutually without deceit or shame. By removing the necessity for dishonesty from the marriage, a new stage of reliance and openness about all of one’s feelings is apparently achieved without the destructive baggage of envy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and academic interest because the effort to mix sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “unusual” from the western model of idealistic love which assumes that sexual and emotional monogamy are reciprocally 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 36% of husbands and 30% of wives, sometimes so-called hotwives confess to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 60%, and where family shakiness and parental neglect of kids has become a major national concern, any effort to redefine “love” and reinforce the marital bond is worthy of our interest. 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 segment of the population reported in past 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.