Swingers Olivia, 31, and Gage Masterson, 32, from Lincolnshire, have been happily married for 12 years. They are prolific within the UK’s swinging community. Here they explain why more young people than ever are joining, and why it’s no longer for the older crowd
It all started as pillow talk. Just a simple conversation with my husband seven years ago. We were talking about desires and fantasies. We had been married for five years, and I explained that I thought I might be bisexual and that I’d like to explore that more. We had a lot of conversations over the next couple of weeks about how that would look, and eventually, we landed on swinging.
We joined a website called FabSwingers looking for a single female, known as a unicorn in the Lifestyle (the term for the swinging community). If you search online for swinging, it’s one of the first websites that come up. That is where most people start their swinging journey but it looks so dated that it feels unsafe. Everyone I speak to feels suspicious of it. And rightly. There’s a lot of catfishing. You might think you are speaking to a couple, but realistically it could be a single guy. But when we first started swinging seven years ago, that was all we had.
We used it regardless and eventually found a couple nearby who were a similar age to us, but a lot more experienced. On the drive over to their house, I was very nervous. It was something so out of the box. I said to my husband, I think we should turn back. I’m too nervous to go through with this. But he reassured me. It was just a drink.
We like people who don’t take themselves too seriously and as soon as we arrived, we clicked with them straight away. It was supposed to just be a meeting to get to know each other but we dived in. Our love of swinging skyrocketed from there.
When we joined the Lifestyle, we would meet couples maybe once or twice, and not create friendships. But as the years have gone on, we have friendship circles. We have become best friends with some of the people we swing with: we speak to each other every day. But there is a very fine line between swinging and having an open relationship. For us, swinging is more sexual, whereas an open relationship is emotional too. My husband and I promised each other we would have an emotionally monogamous relationship. We make it clear with people we are meeting that we don’t want to “date”. We are just looking to explore sexual desires and kinks. We can still have friendships and connections with people but it wouldn’t be in a romantic way.
In seven years since we started this, the Lifestyle has really changed. More people are talking about being in an open relationship and being non-monogamous. A lot of people are not using the word swinging, because it does come with a lot of stigma. Most people think swinging is for the older generation but it is having such a massive boom with younger people at the moment. We saw a gap in the market and last year, my husband and I set up the app SwingHub: a community for swingers to meet each other, which has more safety features and picture verification. We have 1,000 paying members already and the main demographic on our app is the 24-34 category. Our oldest member is 84.
Since Covid, the age bracket for people in the Lifestyle has completely changed. I think being locked down gave people the space to have these sorts of conversations. I have hosted swinging events and have had 18-year-olds showing up. It makes sense. Younger generations are much more open-minded. They don’t like labels and are just doing their own thing.
What I have realised about swinging, is that it’s full of very normal people. A lot of people are doing it. You probably know someone who is, and they just haven’t admitted it yet. A lot of people when they join the Lifestyle get immersed into it, like we did. My husband and I have a couples account on SwingHub, and then we have two single accounts on the app, so we play together or separately. It’s interesting. It feels like a nice hobby that we can do together. We don’t need it to complete our relationship. We have always said that we could easily leave non-monogamy. Our main priority is the relationship.
Swinging still has a bit of a stain mark on it, but people are learning to just be themselves more than ever. As a result, the age bracket is widening, and younger people are starting to join. There’s nothing for them to be shocked about. We are just normal people.
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