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In the fifties the magazines referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but anyway of its name this lifestyle seems to be rising in recognition among mainstream, adult married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, frequently putting a encouraging spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in about all states as well as Switzerland, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are lucrative businesses which supply all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and annual conferences and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers travel agency, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in January of 1997.
What precisely is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and tolerance of infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of several sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, treated much 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 ultimate goal. Wife swapping is frequently done in the company of one’s spouse and requires the involvement of both to the practice. Though 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 apologetics 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 variety, the couple can discover their fantasies together without cheating or shame. By removing the necessity for deceit from the marriage, a brand new height of reliance and sincerity about all of one’s feelings is apparently achieved without the harsh baggage of jealousy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly interest because the challenge to mix sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is basically “unusual” 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 really strengthens or weakens marital relationships, 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 62%, and where family insecurity and parental neglect of children has become a major national worry, any effort 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 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 earlier studies, but when it comes to attitudes about sex and marriage they are less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the broad 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.