Swingers club

What is a swingers club?

A swingers club is a club built around swinging: partner swapping and group sex, with play rooms on site. Couples and singles meet there and have sex with others on the spot. In the Netherlands a swingers club is practically the same as a couples club, the local “parenclub”.

What a swingers club looks like

The heart of a swingers club is the play room. Up front is the social side, a bar and a dance floor, and at the back are the rooms where the real thing happens. Large mattresses, dark corners, sometimes a sauna or a hot tub. That is where the difference with an ordinary bar sits.

Picture a couple who has been once before and wants to go further this evening. They dance first, get talking with another couple, and agree between the four of them that it stays at soft swap: touching and kissing, no intercourse. On the mattress at the back everyone lies among each other, but each couple keeps to their own partner. Only when it still feels right on a next visit does the question come up whether they want to move to full swap. That rising pace is typical, and rushing it is where things usually go wrong.

How a swingers club works

The international description calls a swingers club a place where people with the same interest meet, with different facilities and atmosphere per club, and often with theme nights. There is a difference between on-premises and off-premises: on-premises has rooms where you have sex on the spot, off-premises is more a meeting place without a play room. Swinging does not only happen in clubs, by the way. It also takes place in hotels, at resorts, on cruises, and simply in people’s homes.

What a swingers club in the Netherlands shares with the couples club is the split between social and sexual space, the emphasis on couples, and the ban on paid sex. Prostitution is almost everywhere absolutely not allowed. You pay entry, sometimes membership, and the bar on top of that.

Why people go to a swingers club

The appeal is the play room itself: a place where sex with others is allowed and where you don’t have to pretend you came to do something else. Watching, being watched, or more than two people at once. For anyone who can’t do that at home, the threshold at a venue like this is a good deal lower.

For a couple, a swingers club is a way to swing together and make it something they share rather than hide. For a single who comes alone, it is a marked-out entrance with people at the door and rules on the wall. Dutch research among swingers shows it involves an older group than the cliche suggests, on average somewhere between 43 and 46 years old.

A swingers club removes no tension that was already there at home. If one person mainly goes to please the other, that does not go well on the mattress. The place is a backdrop, not a fix.

How people visit a swingers club

Usually it starts with picking a night that fits, because a busy single-men’s party is a different thing from a quiet couples evening. You read the house rules beforehand about touching, condoms, and respecting a no. Inside you often change and keep a towel with you. Most people talk at the bar for a long time before anything happens at the back, and a couple agrees between themselves whether the evening stays at soft swap or may go further.

What a swingers club is not

“A swingers club and a couples club are different things.” In Dutch practice they are not. The same venue is often called both; one word stresses the couples, the other the partner swapping.

“Everyone there does it with everyone right away.” No. Most visits stay at dancing, talking, and watching, and many couples keep to soft swap. The play room is open, but no one has to go in.

“It’s a brothel with a tidy jacket on.” Paid sex is precisely forbidden there. You have sex with other visitors, not with sex workers, and that is exactly what sets a swingers club apart from a sex club in the sense of a private house.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active and trained as a psychotherapist, and I regularly go along with couples and with women who want to try something like this. What strikes me is that the play room is rarely the problem. The problem sits in the car on the way back, when it turns out one felt a limit the other didn’t see.

That is why I always advise agreeing, the first time, that you only go to watch. Anyone who finds that dull can do more next time. Anyone who changes their mind halfway has then broken no promise. That one agreement beforehand saves the most hassle afterward.

More about a swingers club

On this site, the page on swinging explains the practice, the sex club page sets out how a venue like this relates to other places, and the blog First time at a swingers club, a practical guide for women describes step by step how an evening goes.

Outside this site, the English-language encyclopedia gives the broader frame of swinging and the club types, and the research by Kampman and colleagues shows why STI testing in this world is not a side issue.

Where this fits on this site

A swingers club is a place, not a service I provide. If you want to explore that world without stepping into it alone, a calm companion who knows the atmosphere can make the difference. More about how I guide couples and women through it is on my couples page. Asking a question first is always an option, and it commits you to nothing.

Sources

• Swinging (sexual practice). Wikipedia. Gives the description of the swingers club as a venue with varying facilities and theme nights, the distinction between on-premises and off-premises, and the difference between soft swap without and full swap with intercourse.
• Sexual behaviour and STI testing among Dutch swingers. Kampman et al., PLOS ONE 15(9), e0239750, 2020. Gives the definition of swingers as heterosexuals who take part in partner swapping or group sex as a couple, the average age of 43.4 in 2011 and 46.5 in 2018, and STI positivity in 23 to 30 percent of participants.
• Parenclub. Wikipedia. Gives the Dutch practice in which swingers club and couples club run together, the split of social and sexual space, and the ban on prostitution in almost all clubs.

Related terms

• Swinging. The practice a swingers club is the backdrop for.
• Sex club. The umbrella name the swingers club falls under, alongside the sauna club.
• Soft swap. The lighter level many visitors keep to, without intercourse.
• Full swap. The level with intercourse, which couples are usually ready for only later.