The After-Effects of Wife Swapping: What Are You Willing to Accept?

A reader wanted to know about the after-effects of wife swapping. Although I’ve addressed some aspects of swinging in previous posts, it’s a topic that some of you want to explore further.

While you inquire about the aftereffects, the real question to consider is, “What effects are you willing to accept?”

First, let me point out that there will be effects.

Swinging or wife-swapping changes you and your marriage. Bringing someone else into the most intimate part of your life makes an impact. Let’s examine the major elements of this impact.

Is it worth it? If you ask that question, you need to determine your goals in doing it. Are you honestly looking to improve your marriage? If so, the impact can swing both ways. It can make parts of your marriage more exciting in some areas while pushing the two of you further apart in others.

Are you doing it as an escape from boredom or other marital problems? Or are you and your spouse interested in adding spice to your marriage by opening up non-monogamous relationships? Remember, when it’s non-monogamous for you, it’s non-monogamous for your spouse as well.

Telling yourself that it’s only recreational or adult fun is fooling yourself. Yes, you’ll wake up the next day, but your marriage will be changed by your partner having had sex with another person. The special bond only you two shared is gone. Your marriage is no longer exclusive; it becomes a series of two different relationships—one with you and one with the third person.

Perceptions are everything in marriage, and there is no way to avoid that question when having sex outside your marriage. The impact on feelings can be quite powerful, especially if your spouse has self-doubts. Bringing in a third or fourth person increases those self-doubts. The reality is that the emotional and spiritual bonding between the two of you has been corrupted.

Second, not only are there effects, but they also aren’t reversible.

You can’t undo what has been done. You can learn ways of living with it or moving past it, but it can’t be undone. Are you willing to live with such a change? This is a change that, once it’s done, can’t be undone. Like a tattoo, it leaves a permanent impact.

Although you can treat STDs and use the abortion option, these actions don’t undo the effects of wife-swapping. They cover up the effects but don’t undo them. You can’t unsee what has transpired.

Third, the effects are multi-dimensional.

They occur across a wide swath of areas and on many levels. The effects impact marriages on an individual, family, and societal levels. Trying to diminish the effects by claiming that it was just ‘consenting adults’ having fun puts blinders on what’s actually happening.

There are external effects and internal effects. Externally, there is increased exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and foreign bacteria. Internally, there are physiological and emotional effects. Physiologically, what happened changes you. It is a different experience from marital intercourse. You can’t just put the memory of it away and forget about it like other sex acts that take place in your marriage bed.

You may think you can live with those effects, but can your spouse? Can they live with the images of what happened repeating in their mind? Even when the people you’re swapping with are ‘clean,’ you’re assuming they are telling you the truth and assuming that the bacteria and organisms in their body are risks you are willing to expose yourself and your spouse to.

This is one reason why the ‘infections’ often happen afterward. You may have never made the connection. From this point on, pay attention to when infections flare up and swap play times. Those in non-monogamous relationships have been found to have shorter lives, take longer to recover from illnesses, and are unhealthier than their monogamous counterparts (John Gottman).

Studies have found that having multiple sex partners increases the mortality rate. Do you really want to increase your risk of dying? Do you really want your wife to increase her risk of dying due to infections from swapping wives or swinging? Is the increased level of guilt worth it to both of you?

When your swinging includes people who test limits, they’ll test limits in sexual activities as well. You may set limits, but that doesn’t mean that limit testers will respect them or follow them. They’ll also test limits on protection practices. It’s not uncommon for them to intentionally not use protection or ‘accidentally’ let the condom slip off (aka ‘stealthing’) or get rougher than agreed.

Those you swing with may want more contact with you or your spouse than intended. Limit testers will redraw the boundaries of your sexual comfort level.

Fourth, there are bonding issues.

Researchers studying human bonding are only beginning to understand that it is not just chemical but also electrical and possibly magnetic. This means bonding is much more than just the release of the neurochemical dopamine. With the creation of new connections and their activation, there are changes in who you desire and the intensity of your desire.

Bonding changes how you feel about your spouse and swing partners. Swinging changes you physically and emotionally down to the molecular level. It rewires your brain and your emotions.

Spiritually oriented people have discussed personal magnetic fields for years and how sleeping around weakens those fields. Although you don’t see it, the people you are with change the energy fields around you. Those aware of personal magnetic fields know about clean and dirty energy. Dirty energy is non-compatible with yours or is of a disruptive nature.

Researchers are finding that magnetic fields influence biological processes like sleeping, so it is not far-fetched to say they influence bonding as well. Although I haven’t personally researched this area, I can’t dismiss its influence as negligible.

When science can’t explain bonding and all the chemicals involved, it’s unlikely that some swingers’ experts know more than the researchers. They may base their knowledge on social experiences, but that doesn’t mean they fully understand the effects of creating new bonds and disrupting old ones on people physically or psychologically.

Then, you have to consider the social effects. Wife swapping changes your social atom. It changes the nature of your relationships and the people you associate with. It can also become a source of alienation between you and other family members. You have to consider who knows and who you do not want to know.

When you have to be concerned with such matters, it does not pass what my brother-in-law calls the “sniff test." If it doesn’t smell right, it’s likely not something you want to be doing. Keeping secrets and tracking who is “in” and who is “out” of your social atom does not pass my own sniff test. Having a secret life that has to remain hidden is not a hallmark of healthy human relationships.

Internally, there are issues concerning guilt or buyer’s remorse. I saw this plainly when I talked with Rachel about her ‘swinging’ experiences. She made sure she was drunk before ‘playtime.’ The room where relations occur is even frequently referred to as a “playground” or “playpen.”

Numbing her conscience was the only way Rachel could swing. Whenever possible, she limited her play to the same sex. She felt it was a betrayal to her husband, and her marriage vows when it came time to be with other men. Swinging for her became an emotional nightmare.

She loved her husband and didn’t want to lose him. For her, wife-swapping was about keeping her husband and making him happy. His happiness became her new standard.

Rather than examining her actions in terms of right and wrong, she viewed them in terms of whether or not they pleased her husband. Pleasing him became her new moral standard. She consented when he approached her about having a website filled with her photos and short videos, thinking it would improve their marriage. The photos and videos mainly made money for him.

Over time, the nude photos and videos became a source of shame that she had to hope people did not find. She never intended for the wife swapping to go that far, but it made him happy. Having to be numbed out to a wife swap does not sound healthy, wholesome, or natural to me. Neither does being exploited in pictures and videos. Rachel was tired of this way of living and the toll it took on her.

Increased sexual activity leads to the desire for more. Your sex life will change. Part of the change is that you no longer desire the exclusivity of your spouse; you want others as well. The increased sex drive changes how you look at members of the opposite sex. You’ll view them as sex objects first, then as people. You will also be more attuned to sexual vibes.

Tuning into sexual vibes often leads to impulsive sexual decisions. You may find yourself having sex behind your spouse’s back.

This takes me back to the question I asked initially, “What effects are you willing to accept?” You have to consider how far you are willing to go because once the swinging starts, it will take you deeper and further into the darkness than you had planned to go.

If you’re struggling with the effects of swinging, you may be experiencing relationship trauma. You don’t have to get drunk, take pills, or use medications to numb yourself and keep symptoms under control. When you have been traumatized, there are reasons for not being able to get over it and bounce back.

When you are ready to do something about changing a swinger lifestyle and recovering from it, my video “Overcoming Relationship Trauma for Swingers” provides the tools, exercises, and techniques you need to understand and move past what has happened to you.

Best Regards,

Jeff