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In the fifties the newspapers referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s named “swinging,” but despite of its name this alternative lifestyle seems to be escalating in recognition among mainstream, adult married couples in the United States and Canada. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the trend, frequently putting a encouraging spin on the effects which swinging has upon relationships. 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 productive businesses which offer 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 1999.
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 sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual action, treated much like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a pair. Emotional monogamy, or commitment to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the principal focus. Swinging is typically done in the presence of one’s spouse and requires the consent 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 followers 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 explore their fantasies mutually without cheating or shame. By removing the necessity for cheating from the sexual life, a fresh level of trust and honesty about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the negative baggage of envy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and academic interest because the effort to combine sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “unusual” 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 36% of husbands and 31% 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 main national concern, any attempt to redefine “love” and reinforce 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 section of the residents reported in past 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 commonly as higher than the non-swinging population.