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In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but despite of its name this sexual behavior seems to be rising in popularity among mainstream, adult married couples in USA. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the phenomenon, frequently 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 Switzerland, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are profitable enterprises which provide all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special vacation sites for swingers, and yearly gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers travel agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1999.
What precisely is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and acceptance of unfaithfulness 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 experienced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the major goal. Wife swapping is usually done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the approval 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 dishonesty inherent in one’s natural desires for sexual diversity, the pair can explore their fantasies mutually without cheating or guilt. By removing the necessity for cheating from the relationship, a brand new level of reliance and openness about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the harsh baggage of suspicion.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and intellectual importance because the attempt to merge sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “deviant” 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 in fact strengthens or weakens marital bonds, but in an era where 38% 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 59%, and where family instability and parental neglect of kids has become a main national concern, any effort to redefine “love” and strengthen the marital bond is worthy of our attention. 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 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 general population. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the contentment of their marriages and life satisfaction in general as higher than the non-swinging population.