Swinging, also often referred to as wife/husband/partner swapping, is a sexual act where partners in committed relationships, typically marriages, swap partners for sexual intercourse for mutual enjoyment. Dissimilar to cuckolding, this isn’t for embarrassment or for a means of enjoying submission, as typically both partners enjoy a sexual experience with someone else, and instead exists within non-monogamy and, often, open relationships. Swinging is often enjoyed to add some variety into a couple’s sex life, bringing extra enjoyment and fun into the sexual relationship between the husband and wife, and to appease the curiosity of couples who may have not experienced much of their sexuality away from their partner.

Partner swapping is often enjoyed privately between two couples, but it is also not uncommon for swingers parties to be enjoyed, where there are a larger number of couples and individuals to enjoy each other’s sexual company. Such parties can often be a one-time social engagement, but in many friendship groups and online chat communities they can be regularly organised. Such activities can often also be enjoyed at a sex club where specific nights may be held particularly for swingers, or even just typical play within a normal night could easily involve married couples swapping partners. For those afraid to go to a club or without an online chat community or friendship group to partner swap within, in more modern times there are now apps to help people find others to swap partners with. These apps typically work much like tinder but for couples to chat on.

Swinging, as a form of casual or non-monogamous sex, can be understood to hold the same risks as other similar escapades. Therefore, partakers need to be careful to avoid the contracting and spreading of STIs (as within a specific community, one outbreak could quickly affect a large number of people). Ensuring everyone wears condoms is, therefore, a great way to continue enjoying more casual forms of sex without endangering your own health, something that could not affect only you but also your partner and subsequent relationship. For those wanting to forego the use of condoms, having a small community to swing within, with each individual having to undertake regular sexual health tests, is another way to manage and protect your own health. However, using your own protection is always going to be a great way to keep yourself safe. A condom also limits the ability to gain pregnant within swinging, something that could certainly complicate not only an individuals’ relationship with their committed partner, but also the individual they had sex with, as well as their partner if they had one. Such a situation could quickly become difficult to manage or messy in many different ways, and is therefore typically regarded as one of the more frightening potential consequences of engaging in swinger activity. When a couple are privately trying for a child, it is generally recommended within the online swinger chat community to cease activity with others several months prior to trying, just to ensure that the child will certainly biologically be from the intended partner, and not a different individual.