Sex, Love, Companionship and the American Swingers: A Critique of the Modernization Thesis
and (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
The balance between the longing for sex and the longing for love is rendered more complicated in the modern world. The modernization theory (e.g., William Goode and Anthony Giddens) which highlights the love equation over the carnal dimension holds that the shift in subsistence away from industrial to service economy encouraged the development of an increase focus on intimate relationships that bind people together through choice and the pursuit pleasure rather than through commitment and obligation. How then can the sexual exchange of spouses for the purpose of carnal enjoyment be accounted for?
Our research found what appears to be narcisstic and strikingly hedonistic behavior is just another vehicle by which couples enhance their spousal-centric focus. Swinging seems to compel its participants to become ever more attentive or romantic oriented toward their spouse. Moreover, we found that sexual jealousy is the primary mechanism through which couples appear to enhance their emotional bonds with one another and thereby strengthen their marital relation.
In addition, unlike spousal exchanges noted in the ethnographic literature, whereby men barter sexual access to their wives in return for concrete resources or other indicators of social entitlement, contemporary swinging norms are organized around the notion of mutuality; whereby women and men equally participant for no other reason than for sexual pleasure. As culture becomes more complex, premarital sex norms become more restrictive, has long been an anthropological truism. If so, how do we account for the increase emphasis on the sexualization of love and eroticization of sex within the marital union. The chapter will present the results of data collected in Las Vegas in the late 1990s from the interviews of eighty individuals engaged in the swinging life style. The implications of our findings for anthropological theories of sexuality, companionship marriage, and human sexual jealousy will also be explored. This chapter will further explore how some members of the American middle class strive to bracket the idea of sexual exclusivity, while retaining a strong sense of emotional exclusivity.