Can Swinging Save Your Marriage?

I just read a brief synopsis of some research done by sociologist Curtis Bergstrand. He recently wrote a book titled Swinging in America: Love, Sex and Marriage in the 21 century. In the book, he examines whether the institution of marriage is broken. In a word: yes.In Bergstrand has been researching what is wrong with marriage (and yes, he means the traditional monogamous, til-death-do-we are a part of marriage) led him to wonder what, if anything, could not rescue this ancient institution. And that's where swing comes into the picture.

threw, I think recreational consensual sex involving one or more persons with a married couple. Swinging is done as a way to improve relations, and it was talked about and acted on a full, open and honest communication.

Bergstrand wanted to know whether swinging is just a fad, or if it was a viable way to improve long-term relationship, and perhaps inject some life into dying institution of marriage. He was also curious about the psychological make-up swingers. Are they deviants? Are they part of the edge of the counter-culture? Who are these people?

In 1999, he conducted a survey of 1,000 people who identified themselves as swingers. He discovered that they are pretty normal, just like you and me (haha). The average age was 40 years, range 22-82 years of age. 90% were white, but I do not know if that's because of his sample, or if swinging is primarily a "white" activity. Let me know what you think about that one. They were primarily Democrats, but is identified as the middle of the road, not lefty liberals. Besides, they really seemed to Americans to cross. There were doctors, lawyers, business owners and blue collar workers. level of education varies, but most were at least semi-educated.

The most important thing, for me anyway, whether they are psychologically normal (no pathological features), and they were happier than most non-swingers with their primary relationship. Bergstrand concluded that swing looks like it has a positive impact on the strong relationships and a negative effect on the weak ones.

In my experience, he is right. If your relationship is on the rocks and swinging you think will spice back into things, you're probably wrong. When my partner and I were rocky last year, we decided to investigate whether rocking will help. After a lot of honest, open communication (which is absolutely necessary for a positive experience swinging) we decided that we need to strengthen the emotional component of our relationship before we branched out into swing. In short, we did not really trust each other enough at that point. And if you do not fully trust your partner, jealousy will rear its ugly head and make bad and worse.

After working on the trust of our relationship, we were ready to play. Since then we have dabbled a bit. We still have a lot of research to do, but what I really love about the process that has brought us much closer emotionally.

When you trust your partner and are able to consistently have an open and honest communication (and even some serious stuff), and then swing can improve the relationship and add part of the excitement that often die in the long-term relationships.