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In the fifties the magazines referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but despite of its name this swinging lifestyle seems to be rising in recognition among ordinary, adult married couples in the US. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, frequently putting a encouraging spin on the effects which swinging has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in more or less all states as well as Canada, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are profitable enterprises which provide all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour bureau, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1998.
What precisely is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and tolerance of betrayal in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated much like any other social activity, that can be practiced as a couple. Emotional monogamy, or dedication to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the ultimate goal. Swinging is frequently done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the involvement of both to the experience. Although 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 wishes for sexual variety, the couple can discover their fantasies mutually without dishonesty or guilt. By removing the need for cheating from the marriage, a brand new stage of trust and sincerity about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the destructive baggage of envy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and academic importance because the effort to merge 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 in fact strengthens or weakens marital relationships, but in an era where 38% of husbands and 31% of wives, sometimes so-called milfs declare to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 62%, and where family instability and parental neglect of children has become a main national worry, any attempt to redefine “love” and fortify the marital bond 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 previous studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the broad public. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the contentment of their marriages and life satisfaction commonly as higher than the non-swinging population.