Tribute to Evelyn Ortner

Is it a form of recreational sex for people with new type of psychology? Or is swinging just a way for people to live out their animal instincts in our sexually-controlled society?

Swinging as a kind of adult dating is widely spread in many European countries and the USA. Much less swinging has touched more traditional cultures, such as Western European and Asian societies. In Russia swingers appeared a few years ago; swinger clubs there can be found only in the capital and one or two largest cities. For some reason Australia most of all has been affected by swinging or the lifestyle. Each Australian state has a number of swinging clubs; a couple can easily become a member of an Australian swinging club for a moderate fee.

It’s interesting how mass media portrays a typical swinger. From all that have been said about swingers so far it seems that they are regular, normal people, most of them are married or in long-term relationships and family-oriented, most of them are conservative rather than liberal. The only difference is just that in their spare time they have mutual or consensual sex with other adults.

Another intriguing point is emotional and ethical sides of swinging. What are the common rules for people’s behavior at couple adult dating events? How do they deal with jealousy?

It may look strange how couples with a long history of relationship can overcome jealousy. There are contradictory opinions on this point. As swinging appears to be half a social and half a sexual activity both partners are supposed to be sensitive to each others emotional needs and take them seriously. The risk of jealousy may be avoided if both members decide to only swing together as a couple, at least initially.

Swinging occupies a prominent position in the adult dating industry. Actually it seems to be a branch number one today and can compete only with dogging. Sites where people are looking for swingers for no string adult fun significantly outnumbers regular dating sites designed to help people find love and romantic relationship. Other terms closely associated with swinging are “dogging” and “voyeurism”. Dogging seems to be the closest term that may refer to swapping a sexual partner with a stranger somewhere in a semi-public place.

However the bunch of adult dating sites in the Internet does not guarantee that one will easily find a couple for swinging. Swingers are usually cautious when looking for partners because of the fear to be ostracized if their community members become aware of their sexual habits. Search of a couple for swinging may take a considerable amount of time. That’s why most of swingers prefer swinger sites allowing free mail box, forum and chat. Long message and chat history help swinging couple to learn as many details about their potential sex partners as they need before deciding to meet them in real life. But even an off-line meeting does not mean that the couples will want to engage into sexual relationship.

From all mentioned above it’s obvious that swinging today is a much more civilized form of recreational sex than those practiced by our ancient ancestors. It’s a sexual and a social activity at the same time. Though the majority of people even in the UK consider swinging as something wrong or weird, swinger sites accept more and more new members every day. As for the future it seems that the number of sex-positive people engaged into swinging will significantly grow and adult dating sites popularity will be increasing.

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