Swinging

What is swinging?

Swinging is when committed partners have sex with other people together, with each other’s knowledge and consent. The word says what happens and with whom: a couple, together, with others. How far the sex may go is not in it. Couples settle that separately, with the words soft swap and full swap.

How swinging works in practice

Almost everything that makes swinging swinging happens before the evening itself.

For Archives of Sexual Behavior, Claire Kimberly and Jason D. Hans interviewed sixteen married couples who swing, and they did it separately, two conversations per couple, thirty-two in total. Those interviews produced a four-part model: the steps a couple takes before it begins, what it is looking for, what it says it gets out of it, and the rules it makes for itself along the way.

The finding that stands out is not about rules but about signals. The researchers call the use of wordless communication, next to the spoken agreements, decisive for how satisfied these couples stayed with their marriage. What that means in practice is familiar to anyone who has ever been somewhere: a look across a room where one asks the other whether this is still okay, without anyone else noticing. Whoever lacks that falls back on a conversation that cannot be had in the moment.

The authors underline it themselves. Swinging couples are hard for researchers to reach, precisely because of the stigma, so these are sixteen couples who wanted to be interviewed.

Where the word comes from

The Dutch word for this practice is not swingen but partnerruil (partner swapping), and it can be dated precisely.

The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (Dictionary of the Dutch Language) lists swingen with one meaning: “to dance the swing.” Its entry SWING reads “a kind of jazz music.” That is how the word turns up in the newspapers too. Of the 11,180 articles containing swingen, 1,022 date from before 1940, and the oldest image is one you would not expect. On 23 June 1939, De locomotief reports, under the headline “Germans may not ‘Swing’,” that the owners of the dance halls in St. Pauli in Hamburg had struck every swing dance from their programs; a committee had ruled that swing was “a new example of degenerate art,” because the dance of the couples demands “bent knees, a bent spine, and a suffering gaze.”

Partnerruil appears thirty years later and almost out of nowhere. In the entire newspaper archive there is not a single article with the word before 1969, nineteen in 1969 itself, and 448 already in 1970. The first is from 25 January 1969, in the Algemeen Dagblad, spelled with a hyphen. It reports that Sextant, the monthly of the Dutch Association for Sexual Reform, had noted that in the Netherlands there were “a dozen little magazines” that stayed afloat on ads in which married couples sought contact with other married couples. The piece observes that there used to be “sleutelclubs” (key clubs), “spoken of only in whispers.” And it quotes a married couple who had let themselves be interviewed about it on the radio: their marriage had gained “in strength and depth” from it. Exactly what the couples in Kimberly and Hans say fifty years later.

Why couples swing

Because they want to do something together that neither would do alone, and because the secrecy comes off it.

In Kimberly and Hans, all sixteen couples show the same order: first the conversation, then the fantasy out loud, then the rules, and only after that someone else. That the conversation comes first is the point. Whoever starts to solve a problem that was never discussed simply brings that problem along.

• For the one who proposed it, the gap between wanting something and having to keep it secret disappears.
• For the one who went along, the relationship often turns out to be sturdier than expected, because there are words for it now.
• For the couple together, a subject arrives that nothing has to skirt anymore.

Swinging does not turn a couple that talks badly into a couple that talks well. It only lays bare how well it was already going. Kimberly and Hans put that wordless understanding at the top for a reason.

What swinging is not

“Swinging is an American word that got borrowed.” The English word was indeed borrowed, but the practice arrived here under a Dutch name: partner-ruil, with a hyphen, in January 1969. That same newspaper already named an even older Dutch term, “sleutelclubs.” When swingen took on its sexual meaning in Dutch cannot be established from the newspaper archive, because the thousands of earlier hits are about dancing.

“Swinging means there is intercourse.” No. That is exactly the gap soft swap and full swap fill. A couple that swings may for years do nothing more than kiss and caress others.

“Swinging is the same as an open relationship or polyamory.” Polyamory is about multiple relationships, with feelings and a future in them. Swinging is about sex the couple does together and comes back from together. An open relationship usually means each of the two may do something apart. With swinging, going together is the whole core.

How I see it

With me it is usually not called swinging, and yet that is the word couples come in with. Strictly speaking it does not fit. I bring no partner, so there is nothing to swap. What they mean is that they want something together with someone else there.

The two halves of a couple use the word very differently. One says it lightly, as a category. The other says it carefully, as a question. So I do not watch what gets agreed but who says it, and I always ask the question twice, once of each. That Kimberly and Hans interviewed their sixteen couples separately is exactly why their finding rings true to me.

More on swinging

On this site, the guide on visiting a swingers club or party describes what such an evening looks like from the inside. Compersion is the word for what some people hope to feel here.

Off this site, the encyclopedia entry on swinging is the shortest way into the terms, and the study by Kimberly and Hans shows how couples describe the step themselves, husband and wife questioned separately.

Where this fits on this site

The lightest version of this idea is one third person instead of a whole second couple, and that is exactly what I do. What happens then, in what order, and what we settle beforehand, you can read on the page for couples.

Sources

• From Fantasy to Reality: A Grounded Theory of Experiences in the Swinging Lifestyle. Claire Kimberly & Jason D. Hans, Archives of Sexual Behavior 46(3), 789–799, 2017 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-015-0621-2, PMID 26597644; first names, volume, issue, and pagination checked against Crossref, which gives Claire Kimberly and Jason D. Hans where Europe PMC has only initials). Only the abstract is freely accessible, and nothing is claimed here that it does not contain. Provides the thirty-two semi-structured interviews with sixteen married couples questioned separately; the four-part model (preparatory steps, which desires get fulfilled, the stated benefits, and the rules couples keep along the way); the finding that effective use of spoken and wordless communication was decisive for the sexual and marital satisfaction of these couples; and the note that swinging couples are hard to reach for research because of the stigma.
• SWINGEN. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal via the Geïntegreerde Taalbank of the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Provides the only entry for swingen, vb. (intr., weak): “Swing dansen” (to dance the swing), with the associated entry SWING, n. (m.): “Soort jazzmuziek” (a kind of jazz music, and some related uses). So there is no dictionary meaning in which swingen has anything to do with sex. Partnerruil is there, as a sub-entry under PARTNER.
• Newspaper archive of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Delpher). Searched through the SRU service on the DDD_artikel collection, with the OCR of the cited articles read word for word. Provides 11,180 articles containing swingen, of which 1,022 date from before 1940, with an early instance in De locomotief of 23 June 1939 on the striking of swing dances in St. Pauli in Hamburg; 13,038 articles containing partnerruil, of which zero before 1969, nineteen in 1969 itself and 448 through 1970, the first being that of 25 January 1969 in the Algemeen Dagblad, with the report from Sextant of the NVSH on the ten contact magazines, the earlier “sleutelclubs,” and the married couple who said on the radio that their marriage had gained in strength and depth; plus 5,677 articles containing parenclub and 6,386 containing swingers. Of the latter, well over five thousand date from before 1965 and are about dancers, which shows that a count on this word says nothing about the sexual meaning.
• Swinging (sexual practice). Wikipedia. Provides the definition of swinging as non-monogamous sexual activity that committed partners undertake together, and the split into penetrative and non-penetrative forms, which the scene calls soft swap and full swap. Written by volunteers; used here only for the definition.

Related terms

• Hotwifing. The variant where one of the two lets the other go and watches or stays home.
• Polyamory. The other umbrella, where it is about relationships and not about evenings.
• Monogamy. The starting point this departs from, and why that also means something legally in the Netherlands.
• Compersion. The word for taking pleasure in your partner’s pleasure.
• Lifestyle. In the Netherlands, outside BDSM, this is the word for this world, which causes confusion.
• Play party. The other kind of evening with more people, where partner swapping is not the point.
• Trio. The lightest form of this idea, with one third person instead of a second couple.
• Ethical non-monogamy. Swinging is one of the four forms under it, alongside polyamory, the open relationship, and relationship anarchy.