Although the majority of people in the West live in stable monogamous partnerships, it is a recent phenomenon as far as the human race is concerned. This is one of those cases where sexual scripting has become involved, because in 2020 we are conditioned to believe that life long monogamy is the best and most natural solution for relationships, while the incidence of premarital sex, extra-marital affairs, and the divorce rate demonstrates that monogamy doesn’t work for everyone all of the time.
In the US, only about 25% of couples have lifelong monogamous relationships, in which they have only ever had sex with each other, so true monogamists are a minority. Instead, most people are serial monogamists, having had sex in a series of shorter-term relationships before settling down into a longer one — an interesting thought.
Monogamy happens to be a very practical arrangement because it improves financial security and provides a stable environment for bringing up children. There is even a term for this — practical monogamy — but the problem with it for many is that it doesn’t always cater so well for sex. For a lot of people, monogamy provides a workable template for relationships, but it isn’t the only one. In patriarchal cultures, polygyny works just as well, and in matriarchal societies, polyandry is fine. It all depends on what you are brought up to think of as being normal.
Monogamy is the accepted Western norm today because it has been encouraged — if not enforced — by many religions. Inadequate separation of church and state has meant that many people live with the legacy of such arrangements, resulting in oddities such as bigamy being proscribed by law in many Western cultures, while there is nothing to prevent threesomes living together outside of marriage.
Having introduced other ways of running a relationship, it is worthwhile listing them. Other solutions include promiscuity, polgynandry, non-consensual non-monogamy (more commonly known as cheating), and consensual non-monogamy. The last category includes polyamory, polyfidelity, and swinging, the latter being the most misunderstood type of relationship model of all time.
Since the most common reaction to swinging is extremely negative, we had better talk about it, and although swinging occurs across the entire spectrum of genders and sexual identities, this article focuses mainly on heterosexual swinging.
Just to get it out of the way before anyone asks, I am not a swinger, but I have no problems at all understanding why it works for some people. My sex life is complicated, and it has touched on the world of swinging, which is one of the reasons why I know more about it than most. I had never really thought about it before writing this piece, but I would probably be described as a ‘communal polyamorist’. Because I am not married, my long term relationships don’t fit into social norms that have only just adjusted to the idea of people living together.
If you have read any of Complications, you will have probably worked out that I score highly on ‘agreeableness’ in that I am highly compassionate and concerned about others, which has strong stabilizing effect on my relationships. That, and the fact that my sexuality revolves around the person and not their gender, is what makes polyamory work for me.
What is swinging, exactly?
The first hurdle we need to jump is that swinging is different to all the other ‘p’ words above, because swinging couples are deeply committed to each other, but they also have consensual sex with other people, based on full disclosure. The problem that many outsiders have with swinging is that they see it as a ‘have your cake and eat it’ scenario, which in many ways it is, but since both partners in a swinger couple agree to eat the cake, it isn’t a problem for them.
At least some of the prejudice against swinging is based on zero-sum thinking, leaning on the perception that gaining one person’s love must involve losing the love of another. Clearly this is not so in every type of relationship, which is why a mother loves all her children equally, and why sibs love each other in the same way — some of the time, anyway. Zero sum leads to swingers being described as ‘not knowing what they want’, with heavy hints that one member of the couple must be being exploited. The reason for this assumption is that people who are heavily scripted to believe in monogamy wrongly see swinging as cheating.
Another reason for the prejudice against swingers is that they are in a minority, and so are treated in the same way that other minorities are discriminated against. This falls under the umbrella of what is called ‘labeling theory’ — to which even the law courts are prone — where a single characteristic of an individual is used to label them and overshadow the rest of their life, however virtuous and meritorious it might be.
To my way of thinking, worrying about how other people conduct their most intimate relationships is not only a waste of mental energy, but runs the risk of making the person doing the worrying feel worse. I am quite happy to accept that anyone who has the capacity to do so can conduct their relationships however they want, as long as nobody gets hurt, either emotionally, or physically.
How many swingers are there?
Dealing with the numbers first, estimates of numbers of swinging couples in the population are notoriously hard to pin down. Swingers learn to keep quiet about it, because of the issues described above. However, it is estimated that there are between 2 and 7 million pairs of swingers in the US.
By my calculation, that means that approximately 4% of couples of all types are practicing swingers in North America — so it isn’t common, although it is thought that up to 20% of couples have experimented with the idea at least once. The 4% figure includes both heterosexual and same-sex couples, so the figure for classical ‘hetero’ swinger partnerships might be as low 2% of the population. However, this assumes that there hasn’t been under-reporting, so the actual figures may well be higher than that.
What are swingers like?
Your bank manager or your doctor might be one. Studies have shown swinger couples to have high rates of honesty, closeness, happiness, communication, and relationship satisfaction, and that they are no more likely than anyone else to have been abused or to have come from dysfunctional families.
Two features that all successful swingers share is that they have high self-esteem and low levels of jealousy. Critics of swinging often react to findings like this with utter disbelief, but enough research has been done to be confident that the numbers aren’t lying. These are normal people, apart from the fact that they have dumped the monogamy script.
Other features that swinging couples share are high levels of intimacy, and therefore they have higher levels of sexual self-disclosure than average. They also tend to be more curious and adventuresome than most, and much better at dealing with grey areas and complexity—partly because there are no social or sexual scripts for swinging. While stereotypes of swingers portray them as being manipulative and destructive, in practice these traits would doom a swinging couple before they got to first base.
Couples who don’t talk to their partners are unlikely to become swingers because even if they both share a preference for consensual sex outside of their relationship, they will never find out that they do so. Equally, if couples have difficulty achieving consensual agreements then they will be unlikely to see swinging as a possible relationship choice.
To reiterate, swingers most commonly have well-established relationships, share positive views about communicating their sexual desires and needs, and — most importantly from their point of view — take the view that love and sex are divisible. With this sort of background, once a couple appreciates that both partners are curious to explore consensual sex with others, then the door opens.
How do couples discover they are swingers?
The way in is very often a discussion of sexual fantasies, followed by a shared appreciation that they needn’t remain fantasies — you say, ‘I love you, but I dream about having sex with someone else,’ and he, surprised, replies, ‘so do I, but I never dared to tell you.’ It can be as easy as that, providing that a high level of trust and self-esteem is coupled with low jealousy.
Since some couples share sexual fantasies to increase their arousal, it isn’t difficult to see how a common theme of consensual extra-marital sex might emerge. The other attraction for many couples (if you have read Deep Dives 8), is that after a couple of years, the frequency of sex between partners in most relationships declines because they have got used to each other.
As a partnership becomes routine and familiar, decreasing levels of sexual arousal can be a problem. The best term for this phenomenon is ‘sexual habituation’, from which consensual monogamy can often seem to offer few escape routes — swinging offers a way out of that for those who are inclined to take it. From there, the most usual step is for the partners to explore the possibilities, reaching out to swinger resources and talking their way through their own attitudes, expectations and fears.
Every successful swinging couple bases their relationship on a set of shared rules, something that normal couples often neglect to devise. For many aspirant swingers, this is the most challenging part of the negotiation, because of the tension between the allure of exciting sex, and the potential risks associated with it. Successful swinger couples factor in the different desires that each partner has — for example, the woman might not enjoy anal sex, but the man does — to work out detailed rules which can subsequently be amended according to experience.
Inevitably, there is a lot of ‘try it and see’ in swinging, because there aren’t any sexual scripts for the lifestyle, and there is remarkably little available to read about it for couples who are seeking advice. What successful couples do is to extract the maximum possible shared sexual pleasure out of swinging, while avoiding situations that could threaten their own relationship, which is the precise opposite of what most outsiders think that swinging is about.
How does swinging work?
Research has repeatedly shown that in many couples, in the early phase, the man screens for potential contacts, while the woman has the veto whether it goes ahead, and there a great deal of discussion along the way. Besides consenting about who to swing with, agreements between partners usually include privacy issues, condom usage, how to deal with overly aggressive men, and the need to avoid emotional attachments.
This male-led model, is one of the few places where swingers engage with conventional sexual scripts. Women are heavily scripted not to take the lead in searching for sexual partners, and particularly not to do so where casual sex is involved. This may be why men often take the lead, but in both cases where I have become involved with swinging couples it has been the woman who has approached me. I would have thought that once some women who have unfulfilled sexual needs get a good look at how the swinger scene operates at its best, then they would almost certainly be more enthusiastic than the men. After all, we can come as many times as we like.
At the risk of repeating myself, the most important point is that the selection processes that swinging couples go through are consensual. It isn’t that the man decides and the woman goes along with it because she doesn’t have the vote, because that wouldn’t be consensual non-monogamy. On the contrary, it is as likely that the female partner in a swinging couple will have as many needs to be met as her man.
A good example of the situation described above is women who like to be admired by other men, or who love to flirt. In a long-term monogamous relationship, that need can’t be fulfilled, but in a swinging one, it can, and furthermore, flirting can be taken to its logical conclusion, without doing any damage to the woman’s relationship with her partner. Even better from the point of view of a woman who likes to flirt, there is no need to see other women as competition. In a swinging couple, the woman’s ability to do this actually increases her love for her man, because of the gratitude she has towards him for allowing her to do it. This is one of the completely non-instinctive payoffs from swinging, and it only works because her partner doesn’t see her as being unfaithful because the sex is consensual.
A final observation worth making in this section is that although a male-led model is common early on, once swinger couples are established, women take over an equal level of responsibility, and it is frequently stated that in steady-state clubs with high percentages of experienced couples, the women usually hold the balance of power in terms of governance. Bearing in mind the characteristics of people who are likely to make successful swingers, I find this completely understandable.
The gay scene
Swinging is much more stratified than most people would imagine. Male couples have their own scene which has virtually no overlap with heterosexual swinging, and both are divided from lesbian swinging.
The split described above is always worthwhile bearing in mind when looking at overall reported numbers of swingers because men who have sex with men almost certainly form the majority of the swinging community worldwide. Swinging is much more common among male gay couples — at just over 50% — than it is in gay female couples, where it is under 5%. This is likely to be a demonstration of how influential ‘braking’ scripts are in women around their own sexual approaches, and may offer proof that they operate even in the LGBTQ arena.
The one area of overlap in swinging is where women are concerned. I hardly dare to use the word bisexual, but the heterosexual swinging world contains numerous women who have sex with women, but prefer having sex with men. This provides a crucial escape valve for women who want to have sex, but do not want to have penetrative sex with anyone but their male partner, and it not only caters for a widespread fantasy, but ticks the voyeurism box at the same time if that partner watches.
Jealousy
The most obvious problem most would see swingers facing is jealousy, which is where many critics part company with the idea of swinging being possible at all. The supremacy of monogamous relationships seems obvious to people who are comfortable with monogamy, but only in the same way that espresso tastes great to folk who like espresso.
Most people are comfortable with monogamy, but swingers view the sexual side of their relationship and the intimate side of their relationship as two completely different and firewalled compartments — but only as long as the extra-marital sex is consensual. In a nutshell, successful swingers experience jealousy differently, because they are not sexually possessive.
The big question is whether successful swingers are people who naturally experience jealousy differently, or whether they learn to experience it differently. In theory, for jealousy to be a problem in a couple, it requires one or both partners to have what is known as ‘self-esteem dependence’, meaning that they are dependent on their partner’s approbation to maintain their own self-esteem. In this sort of case, even thinking that a partner might be attracted to another person would be enough to trigger possessive jealousy. If this describes you, then don’t go near swinging.
One of the characteristics of many successful swingers is that far from experiencing jealousy, they find watching, or thinking of their partners having sex with others erotic, a phenomenon known as ‘compersion’ (see A new vocabulary below). Be clear that this is different to the common fantasy of having sex with someone else while your partner watches, which — by definition — won’t trigger any feelings of jealousy. In a nutshell, if you would not be pleased at the idea of your partner being pleased at having sex with another person, then swinging almost certainly won’t work for you.
However, the discovery of non-consensual sex in a swinging relationship would do just as much damage as it would in a monogamous one. Why? Because it is cheating and therefore threatens the intimacy of the couple’s relationship. If one partner fell in love with someone else, that would do as much or more damage, because that love would strike at the heart of a settled relationship.
Beginning to get the hang of how this works? Swinging may not be your idea of fun, but for couples where it works, it is both logically and morally defensible, because it is based on a core of trust, respect, and love. All they do differently is to set consensual sex outside of that sandbox.
Outing
Jealousy aside, the worst fear of most swingers is probably that they will be ‘outed’, because some people are so prejudiced against it. As I wrote at the beginning, I am polyamorous and I took so long to realize it that all of my neighbors had figured it out before I did, so they have always been cool with the idea. I am accepted because I am extremely decorative, very smart, and so nice that I can’t possibly be doing anything evil, despite my extremely unconventional household arrangements.
The way people’s minds work, I am normal because I love several people at once and have sex with them, while swinger couples are seen as abnormal because they only love each another, and have sex with people that they don’t love. Yet some of the people who think of me as normal are having regular sex with people they don’t love — I can’t really see any difference between them and swingers, except that the people I am thinking of are having sex within loveless marriages. It might have the approval of the church and state, but it defies any sort of logic.
Recently, one of my neighbors launched into a fierce condemnation of swingers, only to stop when he met my eye. Why? Not because of my lifestyle, instead, it was because he had remembered that I knew he was having a raging affair with one of my employees. Afterwards he approached me, scared that I might tell his wife, and was mightily relieved when I told him that what he got up to in his spare time was none of my business. Suffice it to say that the world of sex is riddled with double standards, and that sexual scripting leads to some interesting examples.
Body image
One route for couples into swinging has traditionally been joint viewing of porn, which helps with conversations about sexual likes and dislikes, along the lines of, ‘I would love to be able to do that!’ But porn actors and actresses usually have a high level of fitness and are selected for their looks, which trips women’s scripts about only being sexy if they are beautiful and in great shape.
By all accounts, swingers aren’t any fitter than the average member of the general public, but once couples appreciate this, they realize that everyone is in the same boat together, and the additional arousal of having sex with relative strangers is hard to resist even if they don’t have ripped bods. I recently heard of a club which has active members in their eighties, and all I can say is that I hope they are having a very good time.
Feeling the way in
A lot of couples experiment around the edges before they take the plunge into the pool of swinging. A common start is with trips to nudist camps, but it is equally common for wives to have sex with another man or woman with their husband watching, or for the husband to have sex with another woman while his wife watches. Hiring sex workers is frequent too, often to have a trial run at home so that a couple can gain confidence before going any further. There is an excellent account of a couple taking this route on Sexology in the form of a guide. Swinger mentor couples also exist, but I know no more than that.
The next stage is for couples to make contact through magazines, swinger web sites and social media services, or to visit swinger clubs or conventions. Play parties have always been a huge part of the scene, and today resorts and cruises are in the mix too, thanks to the web and its enabling tech. If you look around, there are swinger groups everywhere.
It is quite common for couples who started out with limited ambitions for swinging to expand them considerably after they have gained experience and confidence, and especially after they have talked to other couples. The dynamic here is obvious — four people will have twice the number of sexual fantasies that two can— and a successful match with another couple can open up previously impossible trades in fantasy.
This early stage is where many couples drop out. The first bridge that has to be crossed is the jealousy test, and many men find it harder to watch their darling wife opening her legs in eager anticipation of being penetrated by another man than they could possibly have imagined. To keep things consensual, many clubs operate open rooms, where several individual couples have sex at the same time. Some find it incredibly erotic, others a complete turn off, and I guess it is hard to know unless you have been there. Equally many women find they have the same problem watching their husband make another woman come, and I find that perfectly understandable too.
Other couples find the world of swinging to be a shallow pool. It is certainly hedonistic, but I suppose it depends entirely on your view of sex. My own view as a non-swinger, is that if you don’t find sex hedonistic, you are definitely doing something wrong in bed. All swinging does is to open up the possibilities for sex, and one way of looking at it is to imagine it as lots of people with pre-long term relationship patterns of sex, but who happen to live with each other and care for each other.
Going deeper
One of the key points about swinging is that couples who have really strong intimate relationships, together with high mutual self-confidence and low jealousy levels, soon discover that it is possible to do almost anything they want.
While a lot of swingers never move on further than the possibilities of two couple sex (which offers plenty of scope), some reach beyond into the giddy realms of BDSM, gang-bangs, and so on. There is also a group of swingers who are looked on askance by much of the community because their aim is to have sex with as many different partners as is possible, and these people hop from club to club, moving on as their reputations catch up with them. Why are they discouraged? Swinging is about enjoying sex, not about number crunching — and everyone involved knows what a risk such couples represent from an STI viewpoint.
Where do you stop?
If swinging offers a challenge, it is this. I was told by some friends that they knew a couple where the husband had led the way into swinging with her agreement, only for her to find that there were clubs where she could fulfill any fantasy she wanted. Hers included having sex with multiple men, one after the other, double penetrations, sex with three guys, and who knows what else, but he couldn’t handle it and lacked the assertion to call a halt. It all happened at one club, and eventually the members themselves worked out that the husband was unhappy and they had a hear to heart talk to her, which was really sweet. She cut back drastically on her ambitions.
Making swinging work therefore requires a really good understanding between all parties of what each person’s fantasy is and exactly how far they are prepared to go with it. It is vital to realize that this works both ways, and that each partner must give the consent for each detail of the other’s fantasies — it was the lack of this that caused the problems described in the paragraph above.
So couples absolutely have to have an agreement that if one says no, then it means no for both of them, even if one partner is keen to continue with an arrangement.
Finding your own level
Swingers tend to find their own level, and while I know there are clubs which must resemble the more memorable scenes in Eyes Wide Shut, the majority lie at the other end of the scale. While they aren’t exactly like church fetes, the members are protective, particularly the women, and it is unlikely that anyone for whom swinging is a preference would find themselves out of their depth, even if they weren’t particularly experienced.
A lot of swingers never visit clubs after the initial phase, and once they have struck up friendships with other couples, they often stick with them, sometimes with additional couples being added along the way to form a small community. These arrangements are ideally suited to being carried on at home, and 2 x 2 relationships can work really well, especially if the two sets of partners’ fantasies are complimentary — as a model, it is probably hard to beat for recreational sex. Since some couples rely on this model exclusively, and it is known as ‘friends-first swinging’, the word friends being the key. If two couples do become romantically involved, then it isn’t swinging any more — it is polyamory, and that has a different set of rules entirely.
A new vocabulary
Because of the lack of scripts associated with swinging and its semi-underground nature, swingers have their own language, and use words to express concepts which are utterly foreign to monogamous couples. Best known of all is the way swingers refer to their way of life as ‘the lifestyle’ and I have heard couples drop this into conversation at otherwise perfectly normal parties in the hope of getting a positive response. Other swingers would pick up on the phrase very quickly.
Other examples include ‘compersion’, which is the feeling of pleasure gained from a partner having positive experiences with other sexual partners; and a ‘wibble’, which describes feelings of uncertainty about the same thing. ‘Friends with benefits’ is one of the best-known swinger phrases; a ‘hotwife’ is a married woman who has sex with other men, or women, within a swinger relationship; and a ‘hot bi babe’ is an unmarried bisexual woman. ‘Soft swinging’ or ‘friction parties’ are used to describe couples who agree to go no further than kissing, touching and massage without any genital contact. ‘Closed swinging’ is when couples shut the bedroom doors behind them when they separate to have sex, while ‘open swinging’ everyone has sex in the same room (although usually as separate couples).
A ‘unicorn’ is that vanishingly rare and treasured thing, a woman who is prepared to prepared to have sex with both members of a swinging couple, but with no one else, on the agreement that the couple follow the same rules. Because the male partner in a heterosexual swinging relationship usually takes the lead, and unicorns by definition have to be bisexual, they are in huge demand, but very short supply.
By contrast, the one group who aren’t usually welcome in swinger circles are single males, because one of the few objective tests that couples can apply when judging potential partners is the length of time they have been in a relationship, and their attitude to each other. A single man represents a quantity that is hard to assess, and although they are to be found in swinger groups, they are usually there because of a proven track record in a previous relationship. The curse of swinging, according to everything I have heard and read, is pushy guys.
Swinging and STIs
A lot of the research about swinging has concentrated on STI risk avoidance, because only a third of swinger couples insist on safe sex, despite being at high risk. There are some obvious issues here, particularly with couples who play the field — a great deal of trusting to luck goes on, so if you do get involved, be aware and be safe. Although the majority of swingers are people who could easily be your next door neighbors, like any walk of life, inevitably there are some sleazeballs, although they tend to be few in number.
By comparison, couples in monogamous relationships are relatively safe from STIs, with one big but. Because approximately 40% of men and 30% of women in serially monogamous relationships have had at least one affair, and since straying partners use barrier methods less frequently than swingers do, the risk is relative. This is not to say that monogamy is a risk for STIs — just that it pays to be aware of what your partner might be getting up to.
However you cut the cake, it is inescapable that some swinger couples are high risk for STIs overall, although individual couples who are committed to safe sex will be lower risk, and friends with benefits, unicorn relationships, or triads, are probably lowest risk of all. It is noticeable that the figures show that swinger couples are twice as likely as monogamous couples to have had STI screening.
So don’t trash swinging as destructive self-indulgence, because all the evidence suggests that it is anything but. Apart from that, the rest of us have something to learn from how swingers handle their own relationships, because it seems that they are usually exceptionally good at sexual self-disclosure — indeed if they didn’t have it, they would never have got into swinging in the first place.
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