I
received this question from our anonymous Have A Question page a few days ago:
Can we swap wives for sex (intercourse) in a marriage?
We are told that there is a website on christian “swinging” (wife swapping).
How christian is this in a christian marriage?
Is this allowed in a christian environment?
And while I’ve mentioned it before, I’ve never written a post with swinging in the title, so it’s not easily searchable. So, here we go, just for those who go searching for the topic:
No, it is not okay to swap wives for sex! Not husbands either!
It’s adultery, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter if you have permission from your spouse or not, it’s still adultery. Sex is designed to be shared, with your spouse, only with your spouse, and only within your marriage (with that same spouse). There are absolutely zero situations where it is okay to have sex outside of your marriage.
Period.
So, why do people keep asking?
I think we have two problems in our society that drive people to ask about this.
Society teaches that lifetime monogamy is to be avoided
I’m defining lifetime monogamy here not as one partner at a time, but one partner for your entire life. Just one.
I remember having a conversation at work once with people, and through the course of the conversation, it came out that I’ve only ever had sex with my wife. They were incredulous. They couldn’t understand the concept. They had questions like:
Don’t you get bored?
How do you know you’re any good in bed?
How do you know your wife is any good in bed?
Now, at the time, we had a largely sexless marriage, but still, the answers to these were simple.
Do I get bored with sex? No, I wasn’t have enough of it to get bored. I didn’t tell them that, but at the time, I was fairly newly married, so sex was relatively new still. Besides, when we had sex, it was pretty good. So, I could truthfully answer that sex was certainly not boring.
How do I know I’m any good in bed? I didn’t. I still don’t. You know what I know? That I’m good enough for my wife. She’s happy, and that’s enough for me.
How do I know my wife is any good in bed? I didn’t. I still don’t. But again, who cares. I’m happy. Why on Earth would I want something to compare her to that might make me less satisfied?
So, lifetime monogamy has it’s advantages. Some very clear advantages, especially when it comes to being satisfied with your spouse.
But many people have this fear that they need to get more experience, either to be better in bed, or so that if they end up with a less satisfactory partner, at least they’ve had their chance at a good sex life.
And so I think what happens sometimes in Christian marriages is that they did the right thing, they waited until marriage, and then they get taken in by this lie, that they have to have the experience of multiple partners. And so, this idea of Christian swinging was devised, to make the lie more palatable. But, make no mistake, it’s a lie, and you’re damaging your relationship, both with your spouse, and with God.
Society teaches that a relationship that is monogamous becomes monotonous
Now, I haven’t been married that long: just short of 15 years. But I can definitely say that monogamy does not need to become monotony. Our sex is so much improved from what it used to be that I couldn’t hope for any better. And yet, it keeps improving, year by year.
And that’s the benefit to a monogamous relationship, that the only situation you can compare yours to is your prior, same, relationship. Your not competing against anyone but yourself.
But this growth take work. It’s takes vulnerability, it takes being truly intimate. And that’s scary for some. For others they don’t even know how to start. Some never had that modeled and don’t even know it can exist. To them, things are only better when they’re exciting, and they’re only exciting when they’re new.
And so, how do you get a new sexual experience when you’re in a Christian marriage and you don’t know how to work on deepening your marriage? Well, you buy the lie that Christian swinging is the answer.
Instead of investing in their marriage, in finding out what a Christian married sex life can actually be like, they try to take a shortcut, and in doing so, run right off the road.
If you’re considering swinging as a way to spice up your sex life, please stop. Learn how to communicate, learn to be really intimate and you will find that a monogamous, Christian, married sex life is far more exciting and satisfying, with much less risk and long term costs. The investment is well worth the work.
I would love to see a more detailed article about the benefits of monogamy – all the points you made and more in more detail.
great response to this Jay Dee. I’m so thankful that you were asked this and have such great wisdom to share. 🙂
Have been married for 10 short years. Yes, monogamy is truly boring. No, it ‘doesn’t have to be’–but doesn’t change the fact that it actually really is for many people–even those people who are doing their very best to ‘learn to be intimate’. The sad fact is that many people do it ‘the right way’ and still end up with an extremely dissatisfying Christian, monogamous, married sex life. So, it’s important to actually not gloss over that reality with, “Well, if you’re really trying to be intimate, things will be all spicy and wonderful.” The reality for many people is that sex will never be that great with the partner they’re with for a whole myriad of reasons. Swinging won’t solve this either. So, while your own personal experience is worth sharing–it is just one experience. It would be more fair for you to actually bring in the views of people in different monogamous, Christian marriages to share what it’s really like–it’s not easy to be monogamous–and it really can be truly boring but that’s just how it is.
When we get married, along with the normal baggage we bring along, we also bring the baggage of our childhood. The attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs our parents, grandparents, teachers, pastors, and friends gave us about sex, marriage, and relationships.
I was raised that sex is something beautiful between a husband and wife that love each other, and something you don’t talk about. That was about it, I had no idea what that meant or how that looked. So it was something mysterious and secretive.
My wife was raised being told that sex was dirty and naughty. That men only want one thing and just fake it.
Then add our desires, fantasies, expectations, selfishness, and all the other lies we’ve seen or heard, keeping sex and intimacy as just a performance based, satisfaction rated, get your rocks off, physical act is so much easier than the complicated alternative.
Then bring us both together in a one flesh relationship and we become a poster couple for a boring sex life. We can just accept that it will always be ho-hum and yawn, or we can ask ourselves “Is this it? Shouldn’t it be something more?”
If God says it’s something beautiful and the Song of Solomon sure makes it sound glorious, we’re missing something. It starts by asking those questions and talking about them. Reflecting on where your ideas about sex came from and how that’s being influenced by the world around you. Such as what you watch on TV, listen to, and read. Even family, friends, and co-workers you associate with.
Sex and intimacy in a marriage (between a husband and wife who love each other) is so much more than just a physical act. There’s trust, oneness, openness, acceptance, tenderness, joy, excitement, laughter, warmth, comfort, honesty, submission, security, and so on and so on…
Even if for reasons beyond your control when one spouse isn’t able to perform, your sex life and relationship can still be satisfyingly awesomeness.
It comes down to who’s way do you believe and submit to, the world’s or Christ’s?
Our sex life is not boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One wife for 50 years. Sexless for many years, yet we were faithful to each other. When people say their sex is boring, I can not understand that. Any sex with my wife is the most exciting thing I can do in a day. (And we are not that creative, adventurous or push the envelop very much.) I just love skin to skin caressing, kissing, massaging, stroking, hugging, sleeping in each others arms. It is the most comforting, blessed feeling I ever have. I cannot imagine having that with any other woman.
Another argument against swinging is the old adage of “it’s greener on the other side” being not true. Sex will not be better with someone other than your spouse because sex is more than just physical pleasure. The world says it is just physical pleasure but we Christians know better. Of course, we live in a fallen world so this is not always true for many marriages…
“The grass is always greener where you water it.” Is a saying I’ve always liked.
I don’t get the comparison thing. What if some one you had sex with in the past *was* better than your spouse. Heck, I regret even kissing other guys because there was one guy who was the most amazing kisser ever. I wish I didn’t know that. As a woman, your husband having had previous partners will wreak havoc on your sexual confidence because you will always feel insecure about his past experiences. I feel like a sex goddess because I am the only woman my husband has ever had sex with and we are pretty happy at the moment. And if the wife had previous partners, she will then struggle with her sex life and remembering past experiences–good or bad. Maybe men have an easier time letting go of those soul ties, but women don’t. No matter who had sex with someone else, it does harm your marriage. That is why life-long monogamy makes so much sense to me!! People gave my hubby crap because I am the only woman he ever dated, but that’s because he was looking for the real thing; I love that I have always been the only woman for him and will always be the only woman for him.
A lot of truth in that. I counselled one wife who wanted to be full of the Spirit. It turned out that the blockage was previous partners before marriage. These were affecting her sexual relationship with her husband. She went through each one and repented. I then asked God to break the soul ties and she was gloriously filled with the Spririt. I believe her intimate relationship with her husband was much better as well.
Kay, sorry I mostly agree, but not all previous experiences are sin and I believe that God does give us freedom from past experiences if they were not sinful or, if they were sinful and we seek forgiveness and have real remorse. I obviously can’t speak for my husband, but he seems to not mind at all that I was married before him. I know when we first started dating, I felt physically ill even holding hands with him because of being married before, but by the time we got married, I had completely moved on and was ready to embrace a sex life with him. I believe it was God gave me freedom from the past experience to fully enjoy sex with my second husband.
While I must admit, it would perhaps make me insecure if my husband was the one with previous experience, not me, that is only because of his lack of interest in sex.
Coming up to 27 years of being each other’s one and only, ever. It’s never boring because it isn’t about body parts and orgasms, its about a relationship we are building together. Each encounter happens in a richer context than the last one.
Over 27 years a couple can build something pretty amazing, something that people who switch to a new relationship every 5 years to so will never get to experience. Is it predictable what happens in the bedroom when we get intimate, sure, predictably wonderful. I am a great lover of her, and she is a great lover of me, nobody else matters, nobody else gets to judge how ‘good’ either one of us is but us.
On top of that is the freedom from the soul crushing emotional turmoil of going through the breakup of a sexual relationship, the jaded expectation of failure of the next relationship, or the insecurity of never finding somebody who will be there for the rest of your life. The emotional security that comes with a lifelong monogamous relationship is a powerful thing.
Those who find the idea of swinging attractive are thinking in very limited and selfish terms. They won’t find emotional satisfaction or relationship security in the arms of somebody who from the very start has no intention of sticking with.
I can’t even fathom why Christians would even entertain the idea of swinging, unless it involves time at the playground together. My wife and I just celebrated 21 yrs of marriage this past Friday and even after all that time we still love each other’s bodies and enjoy sex with each other. I love that Jay and his wife write these blogs and encourage us to be more open and adventurous in our sex lives and marriage as long as it’s in the proper context that God created for us. He has given us so much freedom to enjoy our spouses with His plans for marriage and great sex.
Adultery to me, is sneaking around behind your partners back and sexually/emotionally betraying that person. But a loving couple bringing a 3rd or 2 into their bedroom isn’t soiling their marriage. its not breaking their vows. its not cheating. You’re doing it with them and with their blessing. I don’t believe this is a sin. King Solomon had 1000 wives, and 200 concubines. God had Abraham sleep with their servant to make a baby before he came to them and said oh btw, she will bring you a child. Stop hand picking scripture to push your agenda.
You should check your Bible. Solomon had many wives in defiance of God’s law for kings (Deut 17:17). God never told Abraham to sleep with Hagar. God told him Sarah would give him a child and they got impatient (Genesis 17:16).
If you’re going to try to argue with scripture, make sure you got the basic story right first.