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In the fifties the magazines referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but not considering of its name this swinging lifestyle seems to be increasing in recognition among typical, adult married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the fact, 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 more or less all states as well as Switzerland, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are rewarding enterprises which provide all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and yearly gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1997.
What precisely is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of unfaithfulness in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of several sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, treated much like any other social activity, that can be practiced as a couple. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the major focus. Swinging is typically done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the consent of both to the experience. Although swingers often become close friends with other swinging couples, there are rules 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 privacy and untruthfulness inherent in one’s natural desires for sexual variety, the pair can explore their fantasies together without deceit or shame. By removing the necessity for deceit from the marriage, a brand new stage of trust and sincerity about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the negative baggage of distrust.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly importance because the effort to combine sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is basically “unusual” from the western model of romantic love which assumes that sexual and emotional monogamy are reciprocally reinforcing and inseparable. It has yet to be demonstrated empirically whether this alternative lifestyle actually strengthens or weakens marital bonds, but in an era where 36% 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 children has become a major national concern, any attempt to redefine “love” and fortify 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 earlier studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the general population. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the happiness of their marriages and life satisfaction commonly as higher than the non-swinging population.