Back to the sources of ”the lifestyle”.
In the fifties the media referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but anyway of its name this lifestyle seems to be increasing in popularity among ordinary, grown-up married couples in USA. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the fact, frequently putting a encouraging spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in more or less all states as well as Switzerland, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are lucrative businesses which offer all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special vacation sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers voyage bureau, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1999.
What precisely is swinging? Dissimilar “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of many sex partners 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 commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the ultimate focus. Swinging is typically done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the consent of both to the practice. 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 followers 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 couple can discover their fantasies together without deceit or shame. By removing the need for dishonesty from the relationship, a fresh level of trust and openness about all of one’s feelings is apparently achieved without the negative baggage of distrust.
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 “deviant” 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 36% of husbands and 31% 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 shakiness and parental neglect of kids has become a main national concern, any attempt to redefine “love” and fortify the marital relationship is worthy of our interest. If swingers have found a way to stabilize relationships, extend family ties, and improve 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 general population. 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.