Dear Man Shrink,
My husband and I are in our late thirties and lead a pretty nice lifestyle. We don’t have kids, so we have enough money to do a lot of fun things. I thought we were pretty happy. However, my husband recently made a suggestion that almost made me faint. He said we should try meeting with a group of local “swingers” who have sex with each other’s spouses. He told me about some research that said that people who do this have healthier marriages than those who don’t. (Is this true?)
I’m not totally against the idea. I love my husband and feel secure in his love for me. However, this does make me wonder if he doesn’t find me attractive enough or if he’s bored with our sex life. I guess I’d be willing to give it a try, but honestly, I’m a little afraid and repulsed by the idea. But if it will help our marriage, I guess I’m open to it. I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this, as I’m very confused.—Betty
Dear Betty,
Some research was done a while back suggesting that couples who consensually engaged in extramarital sex had better relationships than those prudish monogamous types. So you’re husband isn’t lying. But he’s still wrong about this being a good idea.
The research indicating that “swinging” promotes healthy relationships has a pretty big hole in it: researchers interviewed only active swingers. This is the equivalent of interviewing everyone at a bowling alley and discovering that most of them enjoy bowling. I have found no studies about people who stopped swinging, and those are the folks that would give us the real dirt. Ex-swingers could give us a better picture about the potential damage it can cause.
For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that swinging makes marriages better. You get the opportunity to act on sexual impulses instead of repressing them, and then go back to the business of working on a healthy relationship. That sounds great on paper. In practice, however, things get a lot messier.
If swinging does, in fact, make for happier marriages, it does so by allowing people to ignore problems in their marriage. It takes the work out of keeping a long-term relationship exciting, and I’m not just talking about sex.
Anything you do over and over again for a long time can become dull. Since being married is more or less exactly that, it takes work to keep romance alive. As a psychologist, the thing that drives me bonkers is the vast number of couples who refuse to accept this. They have bought into a lie—told to them by everything from fairy tales to romantic comedies—that love and intimacy should be spontaneous and natural. If two people are meant to be together, their love life will remain vital and fun for years. Working hard to keep the home fires burning won’t be necessary.
What a load of crap.
Imagine what would happen if you didn’t pay your power bill. Or feed the dog. Or go to the grocery store. Or replace the toilet paper. Your life would start to fall apart. Romance and sex are no different. You have to pay constant attention to each other’s intimacy needs. You also have to remember that these needs change with time.
Your husband wants you to start swinging because he thinks it will spice up your relationship. Not only is this a lazy way to go about it, things can get mucked up fast and easy. Sex creates feelings of intimacy even when there is no emotional or relational basis for those feelings. If the two of you start having “recreational” sex with other people, there’s a chance one of you could feel a connection with someone else who threatens your marriage. Insecurities can arise when you imagine your husband preferring sex with another woman. And I’m just scratching the surface of the potential problems. Despite the fact that many swingers have healthy marriages, such a lifestyle is fraught with emotional and relational pitfalls.
