Back to the history of wife swapping.
In the fifties the mass media referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but not considering of its name this sexual behavior seems to be rising in popularity among ordinary, grown-up married couples in USA. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, regularly putting a positive spin on the effects which swinging has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in just about all states as well as France, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are rewarding 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 voyage agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1998.
What precisely is swinging? Dissimilar “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 a lot like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a couple. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the major focus. Swinging is typically done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the consent of both to the practice. 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 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 desires for sexual diversity, the couple can discover their fantasies mutually without dishonesty or shame. By removing the necessity for deceit from the relationship, a brand new stage of reliance and honesty about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the harsh baggage of distrust.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and intellectual interest because the attempt to merge sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “deviant” from the western model of romantic 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 bonds, but in an era where 38% 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 62%, and where family insecurity and parental neglect of kids has become a major national concern, any attempt to redefine “love” and strengthen the marital relationship 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 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 broad public. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the gladness of their marriages and life satisfaction in general as higher than the non-swinging population.