Back to the sources of wife swapping.
In the fifties the journalists referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but anyway of its name this non-monogamous subculture seems to be escalating in recognition among majority, adult married couples in USA. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the fact, regularly putting a positive spin on the effects which the lifestyle has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in more or less all states as well as Switzerland, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are beneficial businesses which offer all levels of social activities for swingers including vacation plans, special holiday sites for swingers, and yearly gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers voyage bureau, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1997.
What precisely is swinging? Dissimilar “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and tolerance of infidelity in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous people at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, 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 main focus. Wife swapping is usually done in the attendance of one’s spouse and requires the involvement of both to the practice. Although 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 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 pair can discover their fantasies together without dishonesty or guilt. By removing the need for deceit from the relationship, a fresh level of reliance and sincerity about all of one’s feelings is apparently achieved without the negative baggage of distrust.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and scholarly importance because the attempt to mix sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is deeply “unusual” from the western model of idealistic love which assumes that sexual and emotional monogamy are mutually reinforcing and inseparable. It has yet to be demonstrated empirically whether this alternative lifestyle really strengthens or weakens marital bonds, but in an era where 38% of husbands and 31% of wives, sometimes so-called milfs admit to having had at least one extra-marital affair, where divorce rates for first marriages are approaching 59%, and where family instability and parental neglect of kids has become a main 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 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 general 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.