Is swinging risky?

Potential risks:

• Loss of partner
• STD
• Loss of job
• Family Rifts

Loss of Partner.

As long as you are coming into the swinging lifestyle as a couple who have talked things out between you, the risks are minimal. The greatest risk is that you will enjoy yourselves so much you get hooked, and improve your sex life and strengthen your relationship.

If you are trying to use swinging to repair a relationship in its dying stages, then you will probably speed up the end of the relationship. Swinging does not repair broken marriages, as one or the other of you will start looking at the singles in the lifestyle as a source of a new partner for the future.

In over 30 years, we have seen many marriages made in swinging, lots of new relationships formed, and where a couple with a marriage in trouble join the lifestyle we have seen those relationships fail. In all those years we have witnessed only 1 marriage where we thought both partners were happy come to an end.

STD/STI

The risks of sexually transmitted diseases are lower than in the general population, as unlike meeting a stranger in a night club and having sex. People in the lifestyle can contact each other and let them know if they have contracted an infection. This means we stop the infection from spreading by all infected parties getting treatment within a few days of the infection being identified. In over 30 years, we have only seen 1 case of Gonorrhea, and 1 of chlamydia.

Loss of Job

This is a big worry for many people. Although throughout the whole of Europe it is illegal for an employer to sack anyone for having sexual relationships with other swingers, some people do lose their jobs when employers find other excuses to dismiss swingers once they have been exposed. Thus most swingers keep a low profile, and only talk about their lifestyle with other swingers.

If you do get exposed, keep your nerve, and hold your head high. On average, 1 in 4 of your fellow employees are also swingers. When David got outed in 1999 (through an email to 10,000 employees in the company where he worked, showing him naked in bed with 2 girls) the MD and Personnel Director called him in for a disciplinary hearing, but on hearing that he was a swinger closed their books and started asking questions about the lifestyle. For the next week he was asked questions by many of his employees, and also told by many of them that they were also in the swinging lifestyle.

Family Rifts

This is a very delicate issue. It is hard for us to give advice here, though we do have a few anecdotal stories that may help to re-assure you.

We are of the opinion that swinging is hereditary. People in the older generation may not have been formal swingers, but we often find that when the parents of people we know find out that their children are swingers admit to having engaged in partner swapping with friends in the past.

This has even applied to our families. When Jo told her step mother, she was not shocked, and even came to our bed. When her aunt and uncle found out, he explained to us that he and his wife and Jo's dad and step mum used to swap partners in the past.

When David's family found out, his brother was shocked and angry. His cousins meanwhile were supportive and full of questions about the lifestyle.

David was sitting in the kitchen at a girlfriends house one day relaxing and having a drink after a Play session, when the girls mother came to visit.

The mother walked into the kitchen and said hello, and then excused herself and went home. Later that night the girl called David and told him that: Mum had called daughter on the telephone and asked "How do you know David?", she just said that "David was a boyfriend", Mother then told Daughter that she knew of David, because her and dad were swingers, and had been for many years, first swapping when they were based in India with the military services in the 1940's. They were still using our sites to meet people at the end of the 1990's.

We have other friends who were worried about what their parents would say, we know of no-one who has been disowned by their parents as a result of finding out that they are swingers.