Soft swinging just might be the thing to save your love life. Here’s how to do it properly.
What is “Soft Swinging?”
Swinging is when a couple decides to open their sex life up by (consensually) adding new sexual partners into the mix. You might’ve heard of the “key parties” or “swinger parties” of the past, or seen couples on dating apps like Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble looking for people who want to join a couple’s sex life. Swinging can involve adding one partner to make a threesome (or throuple), two partners to make a quad or foursome, or by switching partners so that each member of the original couple goes with someone else.
No matter the circumstances, however, swinging always involves sex. This can be a bit tricky. Most couples are monogamous and allowing your partner to have sex with someone else might cause jealousy, friction, or feelings of resentment or even anger.
But what if you want to experiment with opening up your love life, without crossing the line of intercourse?
“Soft swinging,” is a love life dynamic where a couple introduces one or more people into their love life, without involving intercourse. In contrast to regular swinging, or “hard swinging,” soft swinging is a great way to spice things up without crossing the line of full intercourse.
Soft swinging involves one or more people engaging with a couple by performing sexual acts like: cuddling, kissing, touching, masturbation, or oral sex, without any kind of intercourse.
Carolanne Marcantonio, a certified sex therapist who co-founded Wise Sex Therapists, says that, with soft swinging: “'you feel like your marriage or primary partner relationship is intact, and [other sexual experiences are] extra icing on the cake. We get to explore these very regular human nature curiosities with others, and then come back to one another and we still have a safe, solid foundation.”
How Does Soft Swinging Affect Your Psychology and Emotions?
Sex is complicated, no matter what kind of relationship you have. We don’t have sex with just anyone. It involves high levels of trust, baring yourself, opening yourself up, making yourself vulnerable, but it also involves incredible physical and emotional pleasure, fulfillment, intimacy, and mutual bonding and wellness.
For most people, sex is one of the most significant acts they do, especially when it's integrated into a serious romantic relationship. Choosing whether you’re going to have an exclusive, monogamous relationship with your partner or an open, polyamorous relationship is an important decision. Most couples are monogamous, and most people can’t stomach the idea of their romantic partner having sex with someone else. This is why hard swinging is a no-go for most couples.
Soft swinging, too, can have some psychological and emotional hurdles. Adding a new person to your sexual dynamic isn’t easy. If you don’t do it with strong communication, it could easily cross boundaries and create jealousy and resentment.
Experts agree that soft swinging can only be successfully integrated into a couple’s sex life after establishing clear rules and being aware of emotional responses and reactions. The original partners must pay attention to their partner’s feelings, and be willing to ask questions about how the experience is affecting them.
What Benefits can Soft Swinging Bring to Your Sexual Dynamic?
"[Soft swinging] can create or enhance excitement, intrigue, and desire for those who find ethical non-monogamy enjoyable," says Jillian Amodio, licensed social worker at Waypoint Wellness Center. Read more at: women.com
But why? How does soft swinging create excitement and intrigue?
According to psychologist and sex therapist Dr. David Scharch, many couples struggle with sex becoming stale and turning into what he coined as "leftovers sex.” Dr. Schnarch states that leftovers sex is when both partners establish what they’re not willing to do during intercourse, and they end up doing whatever’s left over. For example, one partner might state that they don’t want to engage in anal sex, and another states they don’t want to give the other partner oral sex. Partners could also try sex positions, then rule them out forever because they’re too hard or too tiring. Whatever’s leftover is usually whatever’s convenient, most familiar, and ultimately most boring.
Soft swinging helps by adding one or more new people to the dynamic. This puts both original partners in an open state of mind, where they’re learning another person’s sex language, and are willing to open themselves up and redefine what they’re willing to try.
Set Up Boundaries and Establish Consent
Like any sexual act, soft swinging should only happen after communicating with your partner effectively. To have an effective discussion, you and your partner must set up boundaries for this new experience and make sure both partners, and the new partner or partners, give their clear consent.
How far can the new partners go? How much can they interact with your partner? Cuddling? Kissing? Touching? Where can they touch? How much? Is there an area on your partner you’re worried about someone else seeing or touching?
Practice “safe swinging” by creating and respecting these boundaries, and you and your partner’s relationship will remain intact.
How Does Soft Swinging Impact Relationships?
Many couples who try safe soft swinging report a positive impact on their love life and relationship as a whole.
Jillian Amordio explains that soft swinging can be a great way to complement a partner’s limits. "Practices like (soft swinging) can help partners to receive different things from different people,” she said. “Sexual partners might fulfill different needs just like a variety of friends fill different needs and interests in platonic relationships."
Hank and Cleo, a real soft swinger couple from New Jersey, were featured in the New York Post article “We’re ‘soft swingers’ and our sex lives have never been better.”
In this article, they explained the many benefits they’ve experienced with this dynamic, which they also refer to as “soft-swapping.” Cleo stated, “(A) benefit of soft-swapping for women is that we have so many parts that feel good when touched, and realistically one person can’t get to all of them at once.” So soft swinging actually leads to a wider range of simultaneous stimulation.
Cleo also stated that “I feel more people would be happier, and happier in their marriages, if they just opened them up a little.”
Dr. Justin Lehmiller, host of the “Sex and Psychology Podcast,” was also featured in the article stating that, “(Soft swinging) could be a risk-mitigation strategy in that it allows for some degree of sexual novelty without taking as much risk for STIs and/or unintended pregnancy.”
How to Do Soft Swinging Right
Like we mentioned previously, safe soft swinging is all about communication. After getting consent from all parties involved, and communicating with them to establish boundaries and no-go zones or actions, soft swinging should start with foreplay.
Set the mood by lightning candles, dimming the lights, putting on music, and getting closer both physically and emotionally. A great place to start is by sitting close on a couch or bed, talking intimately to get to know each other better and establishing trust.
From there, a great way to move things forward is to start dancing, as this will naturally bring all parties closer in a fun way.
Then it’s time to move onto the first step you’ve established that all parties are comfortable with. This could be some light, playful touching like tickling or caressing. If kissing is okay, you can then move on to kissing less intimate areas like the hands, then moving onto areas like the neck, chest, stomach, and thighs.
Don’t rush things. Take your time to experience, process, and enjoy each act of intimacy. Go with the flow, but also remember your boundaries and limits.
Aftercare Once It’s Done
After doing any sexual act, it’s best to have a comfortable talk about how it went.
Dr. Edward Ratush, sex therapist and certified psychiatrist states that, “The term 'sexual aftercare' was introduced by the BDSM community as a practice to make sure everyone was taken care of after sexual encounters but has since spread outside of that community.”
So practice aftercare and speak to all parties involved. How did the soft swinging feel? Was there anything you found uncomfortable? Were any boundaries touched? How? How did getting close to those boundaries make you feel? Are there any negative feelings that need to be addressed?
Sexual aftercare is necessary, and could help process, smooth things over, and could help ensure that the soft swinging will have a positive effect on your relationship.
How Will Soft Swinging Impact Your Relationship in the Long Run?
Introducing any new sexual act into your relationship will undoubtedly have a long-term impact on your dynamic as a couple.
But identifying and tracking this impact isn’t always easy.
Of course, the easiest way to track the impact of sex acts on your relationship over time is to talk with your partner. It helps to set up a specific routine, like talking with your partner every Sunday about your sex life specifically, maybe over coffee or tea in a space you both feel comfortable in.
A great way to track the long-term effects of any sex act on your relationship is to write a journal.
Sex therapist Lisa Hochberger, states that sex can be difficult to process while it’s happening and also immediately afterwards, “so a sex journal gives you the space to interpret your experience.”
By expressing how you feel about your sex life, and how it might be impacting your relationship as a whole, you’ll be able to identify and track how specific actions, like soft swinging, are affecting your dynamic as a couple.
How Does Soft Swinging Impact Non-Monogamous and LGBTQ+ Couples?
Most articles written about soft swinging focus on how it impacts heterosexual couples who are mostly monogamous, but we know that sex is a wide, vivid canvas that belongs to everyone.
So how does soft swinging affect non-monogamous and LGBTQ+ couples?
Non-monogamous couples are couples that aren’t sexually exclusive with each other.
While there isn’t much information on how the specific act of soft swinging affects non-monogamous relationships, research shows that non-monogamy is just as valid as monogamy.
Dr. Joel Anderson, an author of a study on non-monogamy from La Trobe University states that, “Our findings show that non-monogamous individuals experience relationship and sexual satisfaction on par with those in monogamous relationships, challenging the myth that monogamy is inherently superior.”
The team also concluded that, “The overall effect estimate showed no significant differences in relationship satisfaction for non-monogamous individuals compared with monogamous individuals,” also explaining that the result applied to both heterosexual and LGBTQ+ participants.
As these couples are already not sexually exclusive to one partner, soft swinging might already exist in their sex life as part of their usual dynamic, so its impact is probably already being felt.
LGBTQ+ couples are, inherently, no different than heterosexual couples when it comes to sex, pleasure, and intimacy. Therefore, we can surmise that soft swinging would have the same effects on them that it could have on heterosexual couples.
Remember, if you’re in a non-monogamous, LGBTQ+ relationship, you still have to discuss soft swinging before you engage in it, establishing consent, boundaries, and rules in order to do it safely.
Conclusion
Sex therapists and researchers both seem to agree that soft swinging can have many benefits for a couple’s sex life, including upping excitement, intimacy, and breathing fresh life into stale sexual routines and dynamics.
However, there could also be a few adverse effects to soft swinging, such as creating jealousy, resentment, and discomfort if it’s practiced without clear communication: consent, boundaries, rules, and sexual aftercare.
So you may try soft swinging out, but only after talking to your partner about it!
