Swingers in the 1970s

I was just watching The Ice Storm and was thinking about this very topic.

There was a couple that lived on the next block from me that were swingers. Not sure that each time was a party but they would hook up with other couples to switch partners for the night.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, but was working class, and people like us didn't do that kind of thing. I only read bits and pieces about it in my brother's Playboy magazines, about places like 'Plato's Retreat'. It seemed like it was part of the porno chic of that time period, mainly for the so-called upper middle classes.

Not something the majority took part in

Lots of affairs in the town I grew up in, but not much in the swingers scene. I do remember this one couple that owned a stereo store who were into that and blatantly hit on other couples. They were super creepy and no one liked them. They eventually moved.

I found out from overhearing a very heated argument between my drunk parents that the swingers group in Westchester had an initiation rite: My mother had to swallow all of the other husbands' loads before dad could fuck any of the wives.

Wow, r6, that's interesting.

70s, affairs all over the place and there were swingers parties. I never went to one but some friends did. Seemed kind of gross to me. Sex was great, no aids but the clap was common.

I grew up in the suburbs in the 1970s. Our next door neighbors got into the swinging scene. It ultimately killed the friendship they had with my parents because they started partying all the time and become a couple of belligerent drunks. A few years later they ended up divorcing and the kids were split up -- the two girls went with the mother and the boy went with the father, and they all moved away.

What % of the time was it the husband pressuring the wife to do it?

There were at least 2 younger couples in our neighborhood that were known swingers. The one husband was notorious for going out to get his newspaper in a short robe with no underwear,I glimpsed his impressive meat many a time ,he was one of my first jack off fantasies. The other couple were hippies,the husband had long brown hair and a long lean hairy body.He lived in cut off denims and no shirt! His wife was huge breasted and scandalized the neighborhood ladies by refusing to wear a bra! My one uncle,who was a notorious sex addict ,was frequently at the hippies house,much to my mothers shame.

It's one thing to have a threesome or a bit on the side, but the whole idea of swinging with lots of random people (most of whom are ugly as sin), including your neighbors, is so unappealing. I could never do it.

Anyone a fan of Swingtown? It was a good show, but hit a little close to home and I stopped watching.

R13, I absolutely love it. I have the series on DVD and will probably rewatch it soon.

Roger Stone and his wife used to advertise in swinger's newspapers, which was a scandal when it surfaced. Never heard of any so-called key parties but knew of couples who were involved in the human potential movement--think Esalen and primal scream therapy--who would go to retreats that were essentially about screwing other people and getting stoned. The idea was that it allowed couples to stay in a committed relationship without being monogamous. None of those people stayed together.

I think the swingers was a jealous reaction to all the gay orgies and sex clubs that were going on at that time. The straights wanted some sex too.

R16 Swinging became a thing before gay things were fully on the radar.

Pro baseball had a famous swinging incident.

This is what I remember hearing about it...

Two players traded wives. Forgot what team. They just...traded. Then one couple didn't want to return back to their original spouses...and it became a mess. Both couples divorced. The new couple got married...and I don't remember from then on..

My dad was a swinger...sadly none of his wives were.

Bump

[quote] It seems to be something that defines that decade.

Sometimes things become so associated with a time period that we think everyone did it, but I'm sure a majority never did. It is like hippies and drugs in the 1960s, even a majority of the young people alive then weren't hippies, but that seems to be all people think about when discussing the decade.

There's way more swinging these days than there was in the 70s.

What's with all the bumping of old swinger threads? Someone watched The Ice Storm.

r23 We have a new Bump Bitch. Or else Defarto is back, posting as Anonymous, and not being as particular about the year.

I remember that, R18. They were pitchers on the NY Yankees. According to this article, Ben Affleck & Matt Damon started working on a script about the them in 2011, titled THE TRADE. Mike Kekich (the one whose relationship didn't work out) refused to cooperate and threatened to sue them.

With the husbands, absolutely. With the wives, no way and ewww!

I babysat one summer for swingers. Their bedside table was filled with swinger directories. The sad thing was that I could tell the wife wasn’t into it, just doing it because her husband wanted it.

R6. OMG.

My husband's parents were swingers, and the father divorced the mother and married the wife in another couple.

To make it even more weird, his mom married the mew wife's ex-husband. Total kind fuck.

Both couples have been married now for about 40 years (they're all in their 80s now)

^^ Jesus. I really do type fat, my fingers are like sausages.

Above should read "his mom married the NEW wife's ex husband. Total MIND fuck."

POPCORN!!!

I think it was one of these things that was pretty rare, but which got a shit-ton of press.

The whole Swingers lifestyle creeps me out - it's just so... straight! Or rather, straight male, it was an ironclad rule that all the women were expected to eat pussy but the men were forbidden to touch another dick, and the women had to fuck who the husband said but not vice versa, and I've always suspected that a ton of the couples were in abusive relationships. It was all so unlike the hippies casually fucking whoever they wanted to fuck and not worrying too much about it, I mean the hippies at least seemed like they were having fun. But there always seemed to be something terribly joyless about the "swinger lifestyle".

I kind of agree R32. I get the impression that it was totally patriarchal. Man gets bored with wife so he manipulates or coerces her into it so he won't be "cheating" but gets to fuck random women and watch wifey getting plowed by multiple men at the same time. I'm not a prude but there's something skeevy about the whole thing.

Why is R34 on my ignore list?

R34 you are R34.

I knew several swingers. We had a couple on our street who threw parties. It wasn't terribly obvious, except for all of the parked cars in front of the house every week. The problem was that the charged a fee for booze and the cleanup afterwards. The police considered that exchanging money for sex and raided the party. The raid resulted in at least on suicide and several ruined careers.

The rules varied. At a key party, you had to have sex with the person whose key you pulled out of the bowl. At some swingers parties, it was much looser. You did not have to swing every time, only if you felt like hooking up. It was perfectly fine to just be in the hot tube naked and drink wine. The power dynamic went both ways. It was not unusual for a woman to pressure a man, who really could not say "no" without appearing to be less than a man.

I grew up in the 70s in a very Ice Storm type of suburb. My mom told me years later that members of the towns ski club (families that would take big ski vacations each year—we were members) were swingers. She said that she and my dad went to a party on one of the trips and it turned out to be a key party! They skeedaddled! But a couple of my friends’ parents stayed.

Ooops.

I wonder how many of these forays into swinging ended like the one in "Summer of Sam", with the husband pressuring the wife to do things she didn't want to do because he was super horny, and calling her a slut and threatening divorce afterwards.

Probably 80%.

[quote] At some swingers parties, it was much looser.

I see what you did there.

R39, that existed, but it wasn't as prevalent as you want to think. You might get away with that at a relatively anonymous swingers club, such as Plato's, but most swinger parties were not huge orgies. They were parties at a private home...with a little extra. Everybody knew each other. This was why swinger's parties were popular, they were relatively safe. If any bullying went on, the others would step in. I don't remember the language, but they are a "safe place" before a safe place was a thing.

Also, keep in mind, the majority of society was not that welcoming to the idea. If the party got out of control or someone decided to blab, lives could be ruined.

I need to rewatch Summer of Sam. I don't remember the swinging scene.

Neither do I.

When we came back from summer vacation junior year of high school, suddenly Mr. Walsh was married to Mrs. Leland and Mr. Leland was married to Mrs. Walsh.

Each family had two boys in my class, and the families had vacationed together for years.

It was quite a gossipy scandal among the adults and teachers. Happily, none of the other students picked on the boys because they knew how embarrassing it was.

I went to a job interview where the interviewer talked about research he did on swingers. He then invited me to have a drink and dinner at his house with him and his wife. I turned him down, creepy fuck.

I tend to agree with the posters that the wives mostly went along to please the husbands - also, don’t forget the coke and how it increases arousal and lowers inhibitions.

Remember these groundbreaking photos of domestic violence were inadvertently taken while doing a story on wealthy swingers:

Each family had a set of male twins in your class, R44?

A friend of mine showed me photos of her mother and stepfather at a nudist resort, with other nude people. It was locked away in a filing cabinet in her mom’s office.

Her mother was separated from the stepfather at that point, and would bring men home sometimes. I slept over there one night when she had a guy over and we were so grossed out we used the bathroom before they finished fucking so we wouldn’t have to go in after them. Ew.

So I do think they were swingers as well as nudists.

[Quote] I could never do it.

It's not always about you.

I grew up in a small manufacturing town in North Carolina in the late 60s early 70s . My father was the town surgeon and my parents were part of the local crowd who were very conservative. But, many of the executives brought in from the north with families belonged to the fast crowd. They definitely got together for key parties.

One of my best friend's parents were big into the local action. Her father, then in his early 30s was my first fantasy jack material as he was a good local version of Redford with mustache and all. He ended up leaving his wife for one of the realtors in town.

An elder gay once told me in the 1970s porn theater he patronized female secretaries would come in during their lunch hour, get gang banged, and go back to work. It was good for the gays and trannies as it brought in a lot of str8 trade who would experiment during the heat of the moment,

WHET to swingers?

My parents bought their house from swingers. I was surprised how open they were about their swinging and how the house had seen lots of action.

I read a book about swingers by some researchers (it was jerk off material for a long while). Gay men were not usually welcome. Like typical suburban Americans, most participants were ugly and fat.

For some reason, every time I look at SCOTUS Justice Thomas and his wife—I always think they look like typical swingers

"WHET to swingers?"

Oh, the young ones are all "polyamorous" or "pansexual" now, they seem to be generally cooler about same-sex sex and are generally more annoying but less creepy.

But there are still swingers conventions going on, a couple of years ago I met a lady who made hand-made clothing and sold it at fairs, and she said her biggest sales of the years were always at the big Swingers' conventions! Look, they're still having big official get-togethers, and I bet the average age is 55 or more.

Jack made me do it all the time. And, we had poppers!

R53, hahahaa

They've all retired to The Villages, FL. They now identify each other by putting shower scrunchies/loofahs on the roof of their golf carts.

Not only Roger Stone. Paul Manafort, and where is that asshole now.

Their daughters' text/email exchanges publicized a couple of years ago reveal their disgust at the treatment of their mother...and of course she was made to travel abroad with him and engage in the same stuff.