Back to the history of wife swapping.
In the fifties the magazines referred to it as “wife-swapping.” Today it’s called “swinging,” but not considering of its name this lifestyle seems to be rising in recognition among majority, adult married couples in America. The popular media are paying increasing interest to the phenomenon, often putting a encouraging spin on the effects which swinging has upon marriages. The North American Swing Club Association (NASCA) claims there are organized swing clubs in about all states as well as France, England, Germany, and Japan. These clubs are rewarding ventures which supply all levels of group activities for swingers including vacation plans, special retreat sites for swingers, and annual gatherings and seminars. Lifestyles, Inc., a swingers tour bureau, booked 700 couples at a resort in Jamaica in December of 1999.
What precisely is swinging? Dissimilar “open marriages” of the 1970’s which promoted non-possessive love and broadmindedness of unfaithfulness in their spouses, or “polyamory” - the love of numerous sex partners at once – swinging is non-monogamous sexual activity, treated a lot 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 ultimate 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 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 privacy and dishonesty inherent in one’s natural desires for sexual variety, the couple can discover their fantasies mutually without cheating or guilt. By removing the necessity for cheating from the marriage, a fresh stage of trust and openness about all of one’s feelings is supposedly achieved without the harsh baggage of jealousy.
Swinging as an alternative lifestyle is of both practical and intellectual interest because the attempt 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 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 36% 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 62%, and where family instability and parental neglect of kids has become a main national concern, any effort to redefine “love” and reinforce the marital bond is worthy of our interest. 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 segment of the residents 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 public. Swinging appears to make the vast majority of swingers’ marriages happier, and swingers rate the gladness of their marriages and life satisfaction in general as higher than the non-swinging population.
Tags: echangistes, hot wives, milfs, polyamory, swingers clubs, swingers in Canada, swingers in France, swinging, the lifestyle, wife swapping