Kink is as old as time, and “swinging” has been part of the Western cultural lexicon for decades. But swinging tends to conjure up an image of a 70s pool party outside the Kauffmann house rather than two millennials heading to a couples’ date after a day at the office. And the scenery and technology aren’t the only things that have changed, the language has, too: Folks are now referring to recreational sex with multiple partners as being “in the lifestyle.”
Some people get off on seeing their wife having sex with someone else (doesn’t work for me, but that’s one of the reasons I enjoy full-swaps: my partner is close and I can be present with them and share the energy of the room, but I’ve got someone giving me their full attention so that I don’t have to just watch them). Many couples enjoy bringing in a single female for threesome swinger sex(unicorns, anyone?) and some enjoy playing with single males. Group sex and orgies are also prevalent. There are many other variations, but in my own experience, the above mentioned are the most common.
Swinging typically refers to couples switching sexual partners with other couples, but “the swinger lifestyle” encompasses people looking to have recreational sex or sexual experiences with anyone outside of the relationship. This might include inviting in a third party for a threesome, as my boyfriend and I have discussed or attending sex-positive clubs or parties, even if just to watch. The lifestyle is distinct from polyamory, where multiple partners are emotionally involved in the relationship—couples in the lifestyle are still emotionally exclusive to one another.
If you consider all relationship styles a spectrum, I am sure there are blurred lines and variations and swinging is some kind of poly and all of that, but I try to offer some perspective by pointing out what the differences mean to me personally. For me, wife sharing sex is the proverbial icing on my marriage cake. We don’t need it to be happy and complete, but it’s awesome. In contrast, often in poly, it is a requirement or needs, and the poly people wouldn’t be happy or fulfilled without it. Swingers move at the pace of the slowest person: if we are not all in, we don’t do it (never take one for the team); whereas, in poly, there can be one monogamous partner and one poly partner.
In its heyday, the notion of swinging was associated with mustached men and cigarette-smoking women tossing their keys in a bowl after socially lubricating with a few Singapore Slings. Casual swinger sex wasn’t as casual back then, Montell says. It was considered scandalous, and so we started to associate the corresponding language with scandal, and a stigma was created. This may be why new generations are ditching “swinging” for something vaguer, and possibly expansive.