Swinging and ethical non-monogamy are becoming increasingly popular for a variety of reasons. While it certainly isn’t right for everyone, the Swinging Lifestyle offers many benefits and can strengthen a great romantic relationship.
Is it easy?
No, but it can be well worth the effort.
We’ve compiled a list of ways swinging can improve your love life. Some of these reasons may seem obvious, while others might surprise you. If you’re considering stepping into the lifestyle with your partner and want to know if it’s worth doing, read on!
#1 Power To Define Your Relationship
Traditional monogamy generally comes with a set of rules and expectations that can be extremely limiting and may lead to jealousy and insecurity.
For example, just looking at another person and finding them attractive can be seen as a betrayal, as monogamy carries with it the idea that finding someone else attractive somehow means that you don’t find your partner attractive. This is what is often called a jealousy trap by non-monogamous people. These traps feed on jealousy and insecurity, leading monogamous people to hide their attraction to others while secretly worrying that their partners also experience attraction to people outside of the relationship.
By living an ethically non-monogamous lifestyle, swingers throw out the limiting beliefs and behaviors instilled in them by traditional monogamy and decide for themselves what constitutes a successful relationship.
For most swingers, a successful relationship is built on honesty, loyalty, and trust rather than the belief that attraction is solely limited to their partner. This often leads to relationships that are stronger, healthier, and happier than traditional monogamous relationships.
#2 Swinging Improves Your Communication Skills
To maintain a relationship within the Swinging Lifestyle, a couple must work to develop excellent communication skills. Swingers must talk openly to their partners with honesty, understanding, empathy, and love.
Swingers must communicate their hopes, fears, fantasies, and insecurities. They have to share their feelings and work through them together. These conversations aren’t always easy. Sometimes they can arouse difficult emotions. But that is part of what makes swinging so great. You take away some of their power by sharing your insecurities, fears, and feelings of jealousy. You also give your partner a chance to diminish those feelings, providing comfort, love, and judgment-free understanding.
Couples who swing and put in the effort to communicate with each other find that their communication skills are vastly improved. It becomes easier to talk about difficult emotions and provides them with valuable problem-solving skills leading to fewer arguments and a stronger relationship overall.
#3 Swinging Can Deepen Your Trust in Each Other
In a long-term partnership, mutual trust is absolutely crucial. This is where many monogamous relationships fail. Because each partner tends to feel the need to hide their attraction to others, they find it difficult to trust their partner isn’t attracted to someone else. It is too easy for insecurity and jealousy to creep in, chipping away at a person’s trust. If their partner is hiding their sexual attraction to others, what other feelings might they be hiding?
Feeling secure in a relationship is difficult when you know your partner is hiding or hiding their true feelings.
Swingers know the importance of honesty and don’t hesitate to share what they feel, whether mild attraction or something more. This creates a level of trust rarely seen in monogamous relationships.
#4 Swingers Feel Less Jealousy and Insecurity
If you have feelings of jealousy or insecurity, swinging will force you to face them head-on. While this may seem scary, it’s a very good thing!
Most jealousy is rooted in insecurity. People often worry that if their partner is attracted to someone else, they might leave them for the new person. Swinging takes away that fear. Seeing your partner kiss or touch someone else without any adverse effect on your relationship can be so liberating.
Swinging allows your partner to disprove your fears, further building your trust in them. As a result, you’ll find that feelings of jealousy and insecurity occur less often and are easier to deal with when they appear.
#5 Swingers Can Experience Compersion
Once you’re comfortable with the idea of your partner being intimate with someone else, whether kissing, touching, oral, or full penetrative sex, you may find yourself enjoying these situations. This is called ‘compersion’ and is familiar to the swinging lifestyle.
Compersion is a state of happiness or joy caused by watching someone you love enjoy pleasure. It is the same feeling we get when we see our partners having fun and experiencing pleasure, for example, when enjoying a delicious meal or playing a video game. But Compersion in the swinging lifestyle is more intense than in everyday life. In fact, some swingers actually enjoy these experiences even more than the physical pleasure they experience when swinging themselves.
#6 Experiencing the Thrill of Dating Together
When you’re single, dating can be scary, but it is also a lot of fun. You get to meet interesting people, experience the thrill of sexual attraction, and enjoy countless firsts. With swinging, you get to do all these things, but with your partner by your side.
You no longer have to worry about failed dates leaving you single and lonely because you will still be with the one you love. Instead, you get to focus on the enjoyable elements of dating; discovering new attractions, discovering that your interest is reciprocated, and enjoying new partners in the bedroom. It is one of the main things that draws people to the swinging lifestyle and one of the most enjoyable benefits.
#7 Swinging Enables You To Explore Your Sexuality
Sexuality is a spectrum, but monogamy limits your sexual experiences to a single gender. If you’re bisexual, bi-curious, or pansexual, you might feel like monogamy forces you to set aside your attraction to genders other than the one you are currently dating. This can be difficult.
Swinging can set aside the sexual limitations of monogamy. You can have sexual experiences with other genders without causing harm to your relationship. Some swingers do this with threesomes, foursomes, orgies, or other group play. Others open their relationship, allowing one partner to explore their sexual preferences with others while maintaining their relationships. If you’ve ever found monogamy stifling your sexuality, swinging can give you the freedom you desire.
Swinging can also broaden your sexual horizons in other ways. Group sex, sex parties, and sex clubs are often frequented by swingers looking to try new things. These events allow you to explore voyeurism, exhibitionism, group sex, kink play, BDSM, and a variety of fetishes in an environment where your sexual desires are accepted without judgment.
#8 Swinging Helps You Uncover What You Like
Couples in monogamous relationships often stick to the sex acts, skills, and tricks that have worked in the past. While some monogamous couples are adventurous in bed, there are still some limitations to what they can learn together.
Swinging, however, opens up a wealth of possibilities. Often swingers will come home from a date or event having learned something new that they find pleasurable and sharing that with their partner. This can improve the sexual experiences of both partners, making it easier to have better and more frequent orgasms and better sexual satisfaction overall.
#9 Swinging Can Improve Your Sex Skills
Just as you can learn what gives you pleasure on swinging dates, you can also learn new ways to give your partner pleasure. Soft swaps, full swaps, group sex, and voyeurism are great ways to learn new sexual skills and techniques. For this reason, experienced swingers are often exceptional lovers. If you are open to learning, you can greatly improve your skills in the bedroom during your swinging adventures.
You can become better at what you already know. Learn new tips and tricks to pleasure both of you. Uncover fantasies & desires that you didn’t even know about yourselves. The more you explore, the better you can satisfy each other in the bedroom.
Why Swinging is Becoming More Popular
All of the benefits of swinging work together to enhance your primary relationship. From better communication, less jealousy, and the excitement of dating as a couple to improved sex skills and a more adventurous sex life, each benefit of swinging improves your relationship in some way.
While swinging isn’t recommended for couples struggling with their relationships or as a way to fix a sexual relationship that isn’t working, it can make an already thriving relationship even better. As long as you are determined to approach swinging with honesty, trust, compassion, and understanding, your relationship can grow more robust, with deeper trust, improved communication, and better sex.
Remember to start slow and take your time. There’s a whole world of new sexual experiences for you and your partner to have together, but you don’t have to rush. The swinging lifestyle will always be here, and your relationship must come first.
If you think swinging might be for you, talk about it, and then talk some more. Figure out what you want from the swinging lifestyle, make sure you’re both ready, and then step into the Lifestyle, knowing that it can make your relationship stronger than you imagine.