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In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but regardless of its name this lifestyle seems to be escalating in popularity among majority, adult married couples in the US. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, regularly putting a optimistic spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in almost all states as well as France, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are productive enterprises which provide all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special vacation sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers voyage agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1999.
What exactly is swinging? Unlike “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of unfaithfulness in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous people at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated a lot like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or dedication to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the principal focus. Wife swapping is frequently done in the presence of one’s spouse and requires the involvement of both to the practice. Though 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 followers 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 couple can explore their fantasies together without cheating or guilt. By removing the need for cheating from the relationship, a brand new level of trust 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 merge sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “abnormal” 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 actually strengthens or weakens marital bonds, but in an era where 38% of husbands and 31% 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 worry, any effort to redefine “love” and strengthen the marital bond 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 public. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the happiness of their marriages and life satisfaction in general as higher than the non-swinging population.