Back to the history of swinging.
In the fifties the journalists referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but not considering of its name this swinging lifestyle seems to be escalating in popularity among ordinary, middle-aged married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the fact, often putting a encouraging spin on the effects which the lifestyle 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 lucrative businesses which supply all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special retreat sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1998.
What precisely is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and acceptance of infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous people at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, 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 goal. Swinging is frequently done in the presence 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 followers 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 couple can explore their fantasies together without dishonesty or shame. By removing the necessity for cheating from the relationship, a fresh stage of reliance and sincerity 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 importance because the challenge to mix sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is basically “abnormal” 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 actually strengthens or weakens marital relationships, but in an era where 37% of husbands and 30% of wives, sometimes so-called milfs admit to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 61%, and where family shakiness and parental neglect of children has become a major national worry, any effort to redefine “love” and reinforce the marital relationship 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 previous studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the general public. 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.