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In the fifties the mass media referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but anyway of its name this sexual performance seems to be rising in recognition among ordinary, grown-up married couples in the US. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, regularly putting a encouraging spin on the effects which swinging has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in more or less all states as well as Belgium, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are rewarding ventures which provide all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special vacation sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in February of 1997.
What precisely is swinging? Unlike “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous people at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated much 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 primary focus. Swinging is frequently done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the involvement 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 adherents 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 diversity, the pair can discover their fantasies mutually without cheating or guilt. By removing the necessity for deceit from the relationship, a fresh stage of confidence and sincerity about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the negative baggage of distrust.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly importance because the attempt to mix sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is deeply “deviant” 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 in fact strengthens or weakens marital relationships, but in an era where 36% of husbands and 30% of wives, sometimes so-called hotwives confess to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 60%, and where family shakiness and parental neglect of kids has become a main national worry, any effort to redefine “love” and fortify the marital bond is worthy of our interest. If swingers have found a way to stabilize relationships, prolong 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 residents 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 broad public. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the happiness of their marriages and life satisfaction generally as higher than the non-swinging population.