Back to the beginning of wife swapping.
In the fifties the magazines referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but anyway of its name this sexual performance seems to be escalating in recognition among majority, grown-up married couples in the United States and Canada. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the phenomenon, regularly 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 rewarding ventures which supply all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and annual conferences 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 infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of several people at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated much like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the main focus. Swinging is typically done in the presence of one’s spouse and requires the consent of both to the experience. Though 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 supporters 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 wishes for sexual variety, the couple can explore their fantasies together without cheating or shame. By removing the need for deceit from the relationship, a fresh level of trust and sincerity about all of one’s feelings is apparently achieved without the destructive baggage of jealousy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly interest because the challenge to merge sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “unusual” 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 relationships, but in an era where 37% 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 60%, and where family instability and parental neglect of kids has become a main national worry, any attempt 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 earlier studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the common public. 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.