Back to the history of wife swapping.
In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but not considering of its name this non-monogamous subculture seems to be escalating in popularity among majority, adult married couples in the US. The popular media are paying increasing attention to the trend, regularly putting a encouraging spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in just about all states as well as Canada, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are profitable enterprises which supply all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special retreat sites for swingers, and annual conferences and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour bureau, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1999.
What exactly is swinging? Not like “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of betrayal in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of several people 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 commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the principal focus. Swinging is frequently done in the presence of one’s spouse and requires the approval 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 supporters claim that it enhances the relationship of the swinging couple both sexually and emotionally. By removing the secrecy and dishonesty inherent in one’s natural wishes for sexual diversity, the pair can discover their fantasies together without dishonesty or shame. By removing the need for dishonesty from the sexual life, a new level of reliance and honesty about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the destructive baggage of jealousy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly importance because the effort to combine sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “deviant” from the western model of idealistic love which assumes that sexual and emotional monogamy are reciprocally 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 37% 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 shakiness and parental neglect of children has become a main national concern, any attempt to redefine “love” and strengthen the marital bond is worthy of our attention. 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 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 population. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the gladness of their marriages and life satisfaction commonly as higher than the non-swinging population.