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In the fifties the magazines referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but regardless of its name this lifestyle seems to be escalating in popularity among majority, adult married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the phenomenon, often putting a encouraging spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in more or less all states as well as Canada, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are beneficial ventures which provide all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special retreat 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 1999.
What precisely is swinging? Dissimilar “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and acceptance of betrayal in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of many sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, treated a lot like any other social activity, that can be practiced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or dedication to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the main goal. Swinging is usually done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the consent of both to the practice. Though 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 advocates 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 diversity, the couple can discover their fantasies together without deceit or shame. By removing the necessity for dishonesty from the sexual life, a brand new height of confidence and honesty 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 effort to merge sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is basically “abnormal” 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 relationships, but in an era where 36% of husbands and 29% of wives, sometimes so-called hotwives confess to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 61%, and where family insecurity and parental neglect of kids has become a major national worry, any attempt to redefine “love” and strengthen the marital relationship is worthy of our attention. If swingers have found a way to stabilize relationships, extend 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 segment of the residents 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 common population. 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.