Back to the beginning of ”the lifestyle”.
In the fifties the mass media referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but regardless of its name this swinging lifestyle seems to be increasing in popularity among ordinary, middle-aged married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, often putting a encouraging spin on the effects which swinging has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in just about all states as well as Switzerland, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are profitable ventures which provide all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special retreat sites for swingers, and yearly conferences and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers travel agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1998.
What exactly is swinging? Unlike “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and tolerance of betrayal in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of several people at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, treated a lot like any other social activity, that can be practiced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or dedication to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the major goal. Wife swapping is frequently 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 policy 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 privacy and dishonesty inherent in one’s natural wishes for sexual variety, the pair can discover their fantasies mutually without dishonesty or shame. By removing the necessity for cheating from the sexual life, a new stage of confidence and openness about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the destructive baggage of jealousy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and intellectual interest because the effort to combine sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is basically “unusual” 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 really strengthens or weakens marital bonds, but in an era where 37% of husbands and 29% of wives, sometimes so-called milfs admit to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 60%, and where family instability and parental neglect of children has become a major 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 segment of the residents 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 general population. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the contentment of their marriages and life satisfaction generally as higher than the non-swinging population.