All Comments on 'On Open Marriage and Swinging Pt. 02'

it seems you use the terms swingers and open marriages interchangeably. I don't agree. An open marriage to me is the ability to have sex anytime anywhere with anybody without letting your partner know. Swinging on the other hand, usually is a do it together activity with rules and etiquette the partners have agreed on beforehand.

There have been a couple of psychiatrists that have done swinger studies and these studies have shown higher satisfaction rates and more open communication between spouses. Accordingly the divorce rates have been (siginificantly) lower.

Here's a couple of decent articles:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-swinging-paradigm/201310/are-swingers-freaky-and-deviant

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-swinging-paradigm/201311/women-swinging-sex-and-seduction

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-sexual-revolution-polyamory/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20160105

I'm sure that I didn't even scratch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the various studies that have been conducted. Thanks for adding a few links. (By the way, had I known that was allowed, I would've included the links to all my studies in my essay!)

Re. open marriage, if one spouse is going behind the other's back, then it really isn't what I would call an "open marriage." If they had an agreement where they allowed each other to do whatever they wanted without the other spouse needing to know, I suppose that could be "open", but I have no idea how you would pull that off!

As always, thanks for your comments.

What you consider important. What is less so. Strong marriages? It's hard enough when things are going right. It's shit when they are not. All in all, thank you for your writings. As you have said several times. It's not for everybody, only the strong. Looking at my family and compatriots (and my own sometimes rocky marriage)...IT AIN'T FOR ME. Might be for someone else, but you have made it somewhat clear (to a point) it really doesn't save the marriage.

I've been married for 25 years and am in an open marriage. My wife and I have had several different sexual partners over the years. We've had our ups and downs, as all married couples do. That said, we have maintained our relationship quite well. There are times when one of us has gotten jealous of the other 'getting some' while the other isn't, but those are few and far between. As we've gotten older, we are both in our 50's, the frequency of outside relationships have slowed.

Has it affected our marriage? I don't know. How can I? I haven't had any other experience than the marriage I'm in and couldn't give an accurate opinion on the subject. All I know is we are still together and reasonably happy. We still fight on occasion. We still have sex with each other. We still sometimes pursue 'conquests' with other sexual partners.

If she gets laid by another guy it doesn't bother me, I actually get turned on by it. If I get laid by another girl , she seems to get turned on by that. When she has sex with another girl, I really want the details! If I decide to suck a guy off, she wants to know how he tastes, If I get sucked off by a guy, she wants to know if he's better at it than her. That fact that we are both bi-sexual might make a difference in why our marriage has lasted. Again, I don't know. All I do know is that it works for us.

Another point I wanted to make was the "marriage counsellor" claims of percentages of couples in open marriages. As you point out, it was his own experience and numbers that came to HIM for counselling.

Most chat boards where areas like this are discussed warn you to go to "lifestyle friendly counsellors" to get an unbiased opinion or help. Someone who has at least a modicum of understanding of what drives a particular lifestyle, rather than a "thou shalt not" bible belt mentality. (A.K.A brain dead)

Counsellors frequently have their own agendas, faith based, pro-marriage, anti-abortionist etc. Seriously, would you want to go to an anti-gay counsellor if your problem was being gay.

Counsellors usually lay out their areas of expertise and preferred practice areas and would attract appropriate clientele. Those advertising "lifestyle friendly" are the most broadminded. (anecdotal evidence) :-)

Based on anecdotal evidence, a lifestyle counsellor could claim 100% of all married people are in swinging or open marriages.

There is a name for this type of statistical error: a self-selecting sample. There is a LW reader (whose name I can't use because he thinks it breaks some copyright law or code of honor or something) who specializes in this type of error. He often mentions that his wife is a couple's counselor, and the vast majority of swinging couples she treats end up divorced.

Ummm...if the only swingers you ever meet are the ones seeking marriage counseling, wouldn't that skew your view of swinging marriages just a little bit? LOL.

Well ask him next time if the couples were swinging because they thought it would repair their marriage. They're quite common in swinging and already on the path to divorce. It's a huge mistake so it wouldn't be a surprise to find them in counselling!

Needless to say experienced swingers avoid couples like that like the plague!

fag cuck shit.

With all studies showing that more than 95 percent of "open" marriages end in divorce within five years, your claims are preposterous. You claim to be a swinger, even your username boasts of it. The likelihood of you even being married is gut-busting funny. In fact, I heard it through the grapevine that you use your mother as your wife in the kindergarten stories you write. I took a look at your page. You have to be the most unsuccessful writer in the history of the site. This is just laughable. One million "open" marriages and over 95 percent end in divorce. Great statistics for your side. How many successful ones does that make? Your chances of taking that key down to the car dealer and winning the new caddy would be better. You're a very stupid man, assuming you're over 18. I've got my doubts.

Great job refuting all of the numbers I listed from actual academic studies with numbers that you just completely made up off the top of your head! Let me guess: are you a public school teacher? Do you volunteer for the DNC? LOL.

Thanks for the morning laugh!

Seems to me you have made an honest attempt to counter some of the arguments against swinging. I make the following observations.

The Blumstein and Schwartz study you quote states that 26% of men and 23% of women claim to be in a marriage which permits sex outside the marriage. It also states that only 15% of couples claim to be in such a relationship. Seems a lot of people have not told their spouses about the deal.

Furthermore only a fraction of the people in these relationships actually exercise their prerogative so one cannot help but wonder how enthusiastic their partners are about the arrangement and how sure these people are that the marriage will survive the experiment.

The sensible conclusion seems to me to be that there are quite a lot of people who claim they are free to have sex outside their marriage, a much smaller percentage who are game to try and an even smaller percentage (unresearched) where both partners are happy about the arrangement.

You mention a whopping 63% of swingers say that swinging has improved their marriage, 36% say it is no worse and a tiny 1% say that their marriage has got worse. This is scarcely surprising. What it amounts to is a finding that people who want sex outside their marriage are happier when they are allowed to have it. It tells us nothing about the impact of swinging on marriages more generally.

Nothing you say tells us anything about the divorce rate amongst swingers. The only way to produce something worthwhile would be to do a longitudinal study over (say) 30 years comparing swingers and non-swingers. I doubt anyone has the patience and I suspect it would find they are very similar. Happy marriages last and unhappy ones don't, whatever the cause of the unhappiness.

Still, nice try. I appreciate your rational approach.

I thought yours was a reasoned comment Twentyseven, something of a gem in what tends to be a mess of subjective opinions.

As your comment shows, and as SwingerJoe's treatise also shows, obtaining objective data on this topic would be a very difficult exercise. How many respondents would be likely to give completely honest and open answers to a social researcher? And what population would the sample be representative of? Are there differences in sexual openness in marriages at different social strata? And so on.

I think Joe does make a "nice try" as you say. He has a viewpoint which he promotes fairly vigorously, for which he comes under frequent sustained attack in these commentaries. But it seems to me that his attackers accuse him of doing more than he actually does.

His attackers seem to believe that he is promoting open marriage as a lifestyle. I see him as defending it. Promoting it would be saying "more married couples should do it". Defending it is saying "if people want to do it, that's OK".

SwingerJoe doesn't help the situation sometimes with his responses, maybe the best form of defence could be something scaled back a little from counter-attack. But the to-and-fro debates he causes can be entertaining.

Lue

The only thing I tried to do here is prove that there is no way of knowing -- for certain -- how many marriages are open, or how many open marriages end in divorce. Because so little research exists on these topics, it's impossible for anyone to know the answers to these questions.

...And yet, that doesn't stop people on this site from making absolutely certain proclamations that swinging is extremely rare and that 95-97% of all open marriages end in divorce. Clearly, anyone who claims such things is talking out of his/her ass.

The only thing we know for certain is that around half of all marriages end in divorce. If we assume that swinging and open marriages really are rare, then we can deduce that the success rate for monogamous marriages is abysmal. If you believe nonmonogamous marriages are less successful, you're welcome to that opinion, but I've yet to find any proof to back that opinion.

"At least 95 percent of married and cohabitating Americans expect sexual exclusivity," said Judy Treas, a sociology professor at the University of California at Irvine.

As for the success of open marriages, "there have been no scientific evaluations of how well open marriages work," Treas said."

Guess those "studies" Joe cites are just numbers pulled out of someone's ass. Probably Joe's ass. "No scientific evaluations." To difficult for your tiny brain, Joe?

So...I can only assume you didn't read this essay, because I listed several studies by name that you are free to Google yourself. See, what you've done is provide another example of confirmation bias. You want to believe something, so you Google search until you find someone to confirm that belief. That isn't how thoughtful analysis is conducted. Sorry.

The issue her is this author speaks and treats open marriages as an equal,opportunity. Consistent use of his/her for example. However, open marriage,swinging is not equal opportunity and always places the man at significant disadvantage. Some men figure this out,and some never do so we end up with a huge rising cuck population and insidious economic damage to society as a result. Has anyone researched why cuckolding is a one way street. The myriad blogs and web site speak glowingly of the gift each partner gives the other. Yes, she gets a Ferrarri and he gets a broke new bike. The man is spoken of as having no free will, no feeling, and the utter stress and angst he receives is of no consequence. Swinging is not equal opportunity, and yes marriage is on the decline,women will regret things when male pushback begins. Mgtow movement is gaining strength. As regards cheating and infidelity , or attitudes re marriage, among gen y and z, femal erates have already surpassed male,by about 5-7 percent, while mal erates overall have remained somewhat flat for a few decades