Partner swap

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Swap refers to a sexual practice in which two couples whose partners are in a committed relationship, swap sexual partners. If there are more than four people, or if no partners are involved, it is called group sex . If there are fewer than two couples, that is to say if there are three people, colloquial speech is referred to as a quick threesome .

The partner swap is often practiced in an organized manner, someone who participates in it is called a swinger . In addition to commercial swinger clubs, there are also private swinger parties or swinger meetings. At swinger parties in particular, it is difficult to distinguish between orgies and group sex .

Motivation and goal setting

Partner swapping can have many motivations (see also below). With many couples it is simply mutual admission that they want to have sexual contact "with someone else" . Although the majority of people imagine something like this in their thoughts or dreams, very few dare to talk to their partner about it.

According to proponents, swapping partners can bring new momentum and new ideas to a partnership. However, a relationship can also be destroyed by swapping partners if feelings such as jealousy are not managed. In addition, the partner swap is interpreted by critics, even where it takes place by mutual agreement, as a tendency to devalue the first partner. This is seen as at least partially uninteresting or insufficient. Ultimately - according to the opinion of critics such as the Catholic Church - the partner swap degrades all persons involved, since they perceive each other primarily as objects of mutual sexual satisfaction and not as people with a longing for love and loyalty.

The following elements are assigned to a stimulus-motivation continuum :

  • Fear / attraction of the stranger
  • Charm of the new experience
  • Voyeurism in general
  • Voyeurism towards one's partner
  • Self-punishment by observing one's partner while cheating with negative feelings
  • sexual satisfaction
  • Self-affirmation of acceptance of another couple

Frequency and change

In a three-year study in the late 1960s of the behavior of swingers and partner-swapping couples, Bartell, a professor of anthropology at Northern Illinois University , assumed that the phenomenon of swapping was one percent of the population. After that, especially in the 1970s, attitudes towards sexual behavior, loyalty and living out fantasies changed, for example promoted by effective contraception with the pill and a changed, emancipated self-image of many women. Nancy Friday describes this change retrospectively in her 1991 book Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Sexual Fantasies. this change in the needs and fantasies of women in general, while this changed behavior in men as early as 1980 in the book "Men in Love: Male Sex Fantasies: The Triumph of Love over Rage" . These changed opportunities to live out one's wishes and fantasies, which, according to Fridays and other research, also include partner swapping, agrees with the increase in experience with partner swapping or a menage a trois from a share of 2% of married couples in 1978 to a share of 5% of the population. The actual number is likely to be higher today, as the availability of swinger clubs and the possibility of private contact via the Internet have become easier since the last study in 1988.

Partner swapping in literature

The different constellations and motives for swapping partners appear in erotic fiction as well as in literature. Examples of this can be found in older writings, in Shakespeare's “ Midsummer Night's Dream ”, Kleist's “ Amphitryon ”, GE Lessing's “ Freigeist ” and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , who deals with it in “ Elective Affinities ”. Later, John Irving in “ A Middleweight Marriage ” and Kurt Tucholsky in “ Gripsholm Castle ” deal with the partner swap as a literary motif, which not necessarily only has an erotic character, but can also serve other purposes, such as stabilizing a friendship.

Another approach to the theme in the style of the opera is Mozart's “ Così fan tutte ” (libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte ), in which the unconscious and provoked exchange of partners ultimately leads to a happy ending, not without the love of the protagonists beforehand through confusion, jealousy and doubt question each other. As in some other works, a mediator appears here who instigates or accompanies the exchange of partners.

The Italian Renaissance poet Matteo Bandello wrote another variant; it was used in 1924 by the Swiss composer Pierre Maurice as the libretto for the comic opera "La nuit tous les chats sont gris" (At night all cats are gray): two Venetian neighbors find out that their husbands are in love with the other's wife . They arrange a rendezvous at which the men find their wife instead of their lover; Since the two meetings take place on a moonless night, the men do not notice the exchange until late. The opera ends with a reunion of the married couples.

Partner swap (dance)

There is also a partner swap in dance, e.g. B. in some medieval folk dances that are danced in a circle and where partners are regularly swapped.

literature

  • Stephan Dressler, Christoph Zink: Pschyrembel Dictionary Sexuality. de Gruyter, 2003, ISBN 3-11-016965-7 , p. 386.
  • Wolfgang Lukas: Anthropology and theodicy: studies on moral discourse in the German-language drama of the Enlightenment. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005, ISBN 3-525-20841-3 , pp. 181-183.
  • Suzanne G. Frayser, Thomas J. Whitby: Studies in Human Sexuality: A Selected Guide. Libraries Unlimited, 1995, ISBN 1-56308-131-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gilbert D. Bartell: Group Sex. A Scientist's Eyewitness Report on the American way of Swinging. Peter H Wyden, 1971, p. 298.
  2. ^ Nancy Friday: My Secret Garden. (1973) and Forbidden Flowers. (1975)
  3. ^ Nancy Friday: Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Sexual Fantasies. Simon & Schuster, 1991, ISBN 0-671-64844-6 .
  4. ↑ Nancy Friday: "Men in Love: Male Sex Fantasies: The Triumph of Love over Rage". Delacorte Press, 1980, ISBN 0-440-05264-5 .
  5. ^ Brian G. Gilmartin: The Gilmartin Report. Citadel Press, 1978.
  6. ^ Arno Karlen: Threesomes: Studies in Sex, Power and Intimacy. Morrow, 1988, ISBN 0-688-06536-8 .
  7. ↑ a b Sahra Dornick: Just a grotesque carnival of the body? Grin Verlag, 2007.
  8. ^ Adriano (conductor) in the booklet for the CD by Pierre Maurice, p. 12 (www.sterlingcd.com, CD 1053-2)