Stages in Swinging

PRIMARY STAGES IN SWINGING

The following information excerpted from Dr. Edgar W. Butler's book: Traditional Marriages and Emerging Alternatives

There are two primary stages in swinging:

In the first, the curiosity stage, the couple learns how to behave and swing with others. While many females are rather reluctant to get involved in swinging, once they do, they accept initial experiences more successfully than males. Women are generally either enthusiastic converts or completely turned off by the experience. Generally, swingers are relatively no selective when they first become involved. Following the curiosity stage, there is relative selectivity, characterized by increasing individuation of self and others.

In the individuation process of the second stage, a woman becomes selective because she no longer needs to prove she is desired or can satisfy other men.

In order to make the experience meaningful, she arrives at a point where she feels that she must refuse the advances of many men. She learns to define her preferences more clearly and to learn to act on these preferences. This is an experience that many women never have because they rely on their husbands to make decisions in social situations. In short a woman learns to individuate both herself and others in the second stage of swinging.

Swinging ordinarily does not result in jealousy or marital break-ups, it may succeed in solidifying marriages by re romanticizing them and thereby making them tolerable and perhaps even enjoyable.

One reason for marital happiness among swingers:

Swinging is an activity both spouses do together -- a unique pattern compared with other types of extramarital sex. Most people who continue to participate in swinging believe that such co marital sex embellishes and enriches marriages in all areas, especially in the erotic sector. While most swingers report that it makes a good marriage better, swinging evidently cannot very often save a poor marriage. Some swingers feel that a weak marriage probably will not survive swinging and that perhaps in such cases couples shouldn't swing. A very strong marriage will survive swinging.

Most swingers believe:

Swinging is not for all married couples. They do believe that swinging is better than sneaking around corners and lying to the partner about an outside relationship. Most agree with the statement "I think if two people agree on sex other than with their partners, then swinging perhaps is for them". To most swingers sex is a recreation which also satisfies a bodily hunger.

Jealousy In Swinging

Generally, swingers do not show jealousy on the surface. Most swingers argue that this is because by going to parties together and leaving together, they realize their commitment to each other as a couple. Thus, they do not feel threatened because the other partner has gone into another room to have sexual relations with another individual. One such swinger said, "We both know that each of us have experiences with other people and, yet, we come back to each other because we want to be together" They feel that this gives you a feeling of security that you never had before because you feel and know that the partner is coming back to you even though they have had a sexual relationship with someone else. They feel that this builds up self confidence and security.

For a couple to engage in swinging, they must throw off the belief that having sexual relations outside of marriage is improper, they must break the shackles of the double standard. That is, the wife will be having sexual relations with other males much as the male may have had sexual relations outside the marriage with another partner previously.

The effects of swinging most often reported are the following:

- Couples experienced an increased feeling of warmth, closeness, and love, often most intense immediately after swinging, when the couple got together and exchanged their experiences. This is as if the swinging experience was proof of their love.

- Knowledge and confidence regarding sexual technique was more fully developed.

- Social life was enriched and active.

- Couples became more open and honest with one another in all areas of their relationship.

- A benefit for some was that sexual behaviour was taken out of the dark and became more of a taken-for granted normal activity.

Another effect of swinging is that there is a change in the meaning of sex -- that is, of what is appropriate sexual behaviour, in what situation, and with whom. Sexual behaviour in swinging becomes more broadly defined to accommodate a wider range and choice of behaviour than in a typical monogamous relationship. Sex takes on a different meaning for a wife and her spouse when she engages in oral-genital sex with another swinger in the presence of her husband. In addition, the idea that sexual exclusivity between marriage partners symbolizes devotion, trust, security, and love no longer holds, and nonexclusively comes to symbolize these things. Further, sexual behaviour loses its mystery, its secretiveness, and its aspect of "something done in the dark" and takes on more the character of normal everyday activity.