If you watch The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives or are familiar with the scandal of Mormon MomTok, you’ve likely heard of the concept called “soft swinging.”
Swinging is basically when two or more couples swap partners in a sexual context. But while swinging typically means going all the way, soft swinging is a bit less…involved.
What Is Soft Swinging?
Soft swinging is a form of regular swinging, where couples will basically have sex with each other’s partners in the same room. However, with soft swinging, the couples don’t actually go as far as having sex. There are typically more boundaries involved. For example, perhaps the swapped partners will just make out rather than sleep together.
“Soft swinging is when you do other things but you don’t go all the way,” Taylor Frankie Paul, one of the infamous Mormon moms, said in a TikTok Live in May 2022. “There was a group of us who were intimate with each other. All of us were pretty open to it and on board for it.”
Carolanne Marcantonio, LMSW, an AASECT-certified sex therapist and co-founder of Wise Sex Therapy Associates in New York City, spoke with Women’s Health about the concept. In her interview, she stated that many happy couples find the idea of soft swinging to be appealing.
“You feel like your marriage or primary partner relationship is intact, and [other sexual experiences are] extra icing on the cake,” she explained. “You get to explore these very regular human nature curiosities with others, and then come back to one another and still have a safe, solid foundation.”
The problem with soft swinging
Soft swinging is certainly not without its risks. Many couples who engage in this dynamic end up feeling betrayed or jealous, while others sometimes even develop intimate connections with their swapped partners. As you can imagine, this can lead to a ton of issues.
Take the Mormon moms, for instance: Taylor Frankie Paul and her best friend (at the time), Miranda McWhorter, partook in soft swinging. Essentially, the two girls consensually swapped husbands. However, Miranda’s husband apparently ended up developing romantic feelings for Taylor, which threw the entire dynamic off.
“The agreement was … as long as we were both there and we saw it and we knew it, it was okay, and the second it goes behind without each other, you’ve stepped out of the agreement,” Taylor revealed in a bombshell of a TikTok video. “And I did that.”
In one of the episodes of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Taylor recalled: “Chase [Miranda’s then husband] came to me at the gym and told me that he had feelings for me, and basically, that was him trying to open a door.”
Naturally, Miranda was completely devastated when she found out about her husband confessing his feelings to her best friend. Mind you, she was four months postpartum at the time. She mentioned that she didn’t just lose him but also lost her best friend, Taylor.
While it might work for some couples, soft swinging is definitely not for everyone and certainly requires boundaries.
However, Jillian Amodio, a licensed therapist and sex educator, told TODAY.com that some of the more blanket “rules” aren’t enough.
“This is what we talk about in therapy with couples who want to explore open relationships or consensual non-monogamy,” she said. “‘What does physical intimacy mean to you? What does sex mean to you? What does cheating mean to you?’ If your definition is different than your partner’s definition, that’s where we run into problems.”
Personally, I’d rather throw myself in front of a truck than share my partner with another woman, but that’s just me. If both parties are on board and completely consent to the arrangement, then by all means, go for it. Just make sure you’re crystal clear about your limits.
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