Back to the history of swinging.
In the fifties the journalists referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but despite of its name this alternative lifestyle seems to be increasing in popularity among mainstream, adult married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the fact, regularly putting a encouraging spin on the effects which swinging has upon relationships. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are structured swing clubs in almost all states as well as Belgium, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are lucrative businesses which offer all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special vacation sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers journey bureau, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1999.
What precisely 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 many 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 dedication to the love relationship with one’s marital partner, remains the primary focus. Swinging is usually done in the company 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 rules 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 privacy 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 need for dishonesty from the relationship, a new height of trust 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 importance because the effort to combine sexual non-monogamy with emotional monogamy is fundamentally “deviant” 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 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 60%, and where family insecurity and parental neglect of children has become a main national concern, any effort 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 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.
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