Kate Hamilton was deeply committed to her failed marriage, even though she could barely stand to be in the same room as her husband.
So when he suggested an unlikely solution to their problems, she agreed.
For two years, Hamilton claims she was reluctantly ‘prostituted’ to strangers in the suburban swing scene. But the world she describes is far from one of potluck dinners, fish tanks and car keys.
“We became swingers while living in the conservative, Republican, hyper-religious South,” she writes in her new book. Crazy Wife: A Memoir“So from the beginning, swinging felt intensely taboo and shameful, something that must remain hidden at all costs.”
The only swing club in town was hidden in a soulless strip mall, a block from a Dunkin’, with blacked-out glass walls hiding what was really going on inside… which was much like any other club, but with a crucial difference.
The world of swing she describes is far from one of potluck dinners, fish tanks, and car keys.
The only swing club in town is a lot like any other club, but with one crucial difference
The first time her husband, Rick (she changed his name and hers in the book), proposed she try swinging – when they were newlyweds and feeling sexually adventurous – she agreed to the idea for a while.
But when she finally heard another man’s voice on the phone, the man she was supposed to have sex with, she knew she couldn’t go through with it.
“My stomach dropped,” he writes, “I left the room.” I told Rick no. We have something precious and pure between us, and once we break it, it is gone forever.
He didn’t broach the subject for another seven years, during which time they had two children and lots of couples therapy, while their marriage slowly deteriorated.
“What had begun as a true union…had become an arena in which I fought for resources with an opponent who was becoming an outsider,” he writes.
Their solution, again, was to invite strangers into their relationship. But she only discovered how far along they were on that path when she returned home from a work trip and discovered that he had been advertising the couple on a swingers website for months.
“He created our portfolio in which ‘we’ express ‘our’ desire to meet a nice, attractive partner to have sex with,” she writes.
“I had selected photos that showed my body… Innocent photos of our life together turned ugly.”
She adds that he had covered her eyes to protect her privacy, but that she still felt violated.
“Rick,” she says, “had been advertising me and my body on the Internet for months.”
Many will find it difficult to understand how he could finally capitulate; why wouldn’t she just leave him if things were that bad. And he admits that he can’t fully explain it.
But she says, by way of explanation: “I was exhausted by the urgent onslaught of Rick’s exhortations. It made me feel terribly guilty that our marriage was so bad… that I had to resort to this. I knew I wouldn’t stop until I got what I wanted.
He discovers that one of the least surprising things about swinging is the amount of alcohol consumed; to loosen inhibitions, almost certainly. But also, as Hamilton describes, “dampened the part of me that didn’t want this, that wanted a different kind of marriage, that was rocking it as a way of giving it up.”
Behind those darkened windows, the club looked a lot like any other club. There were dance floors, bars and seating areas. What made them different, however, were the “rows of curtained hiding places” that lined the walls.
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This was where couples, or any number of entangled adults, could fall when the action on the dance floor began to heat up.
Hamilton explains: “Given that the vast majority of swingers are not only middle-aged but also of parenting ages (36-55), providing ways for swingers to “get a room” without having to go home makes a lot of sense. “.
There were also rules to be closely followed and sets of etiquette to learn. For example: ‘The women always approached first. It was absolutely unacceptable for a man to express interest in another man’s wife or date before the couples had met and decided (“mutually,” it was assumed) that they were all interested in interacting with each other.’
Last month, Dax Shepard was forced to deny that he and his wife Kristen Bell hosted wife-swapping parties, after rumors emerged that they were Hollywood’s top swingers.
However, one star who admits his love of swing is ‘Silicon Valley’ star Thomas Middleditch, who claimed in 2019 that he had saved his marriage to Mollie Gates.
The couple filed for divorce the following year, a month after a woman named Hannah Harding claimed he had touched her and another woman without their consent at a now-defunct club in Los Angeles called Cloak & Dagger in 2019.
But as Hamilton enthusiastically participated, she began to wonder how many women there, like her, had never taken up swinging; who were present under duress.
“It was a strange performance of chivalry, intended, I think, to make women feel empowered, that we were calling the shots and in control, whether we did or not.”
‘I wonder how many of these women I met at the club, between meetings and carpools, with insufficient energy left after a long week, announced that night: “Honey, what I really want is more sex, more complicated things.” “. to negotiate, more people to manage”?
Most swingers, he writes, are “middle to upper class, well-educated and married, having been married an average of 11 to 20 years,” meaning most are burdened by things like jobs, mortgages, houses. and children.
“While swinging is often the result of a desire to get through such a monotonous task before it can consume any remaining passion, my experience and that of many women I met confirmed the statistics: We were usually not the ones who had the energy and the momentum to start the swing.
The couple continued on the scene for almost two years. “Rick wanted me to swing with him,” he writes. ‘He insisted I do it and emotionally manipulated me into doing it, meaning he bullied me into having sex with other people.
“Swinging became, like couples therapy, just another thing we were doing in a desperate attempt to stay together that just revealed how far apart we already were.”
This period also (unsurprisingly, considering she regularly stripped naked with strangers) coincided with a kind of extreme body obsession that ensured she looked good at all times, not only in person but also on camera.
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“I started appearing on camera a lot,” she says, from Playboy-style semi-nude shoots to full-on pornography.
“I maintained a year-round spray tan and a perfect Brazilian,” she writes, describing her slim body as “magazine gorgeous.”
Those photographs—a hard drive full of them—remained a painful, embarrassing reminder of that part of his life long after it was over. However, he found that he couldn’t delete them.
“After the swing ended, after the marriage finally ended, when I gave up the self-punishing behaviors that produced my perfect body, I found it difficult to let go of the photos and videos from that period.
“Even when I couldn’t bear to look at those photos, couldn’t bear to remember what I had been doing when they were taken, I still held on to the photos,” he writes.
Finally, however, after enough time had passed, he was able to see those photographs, and the woman in them – “the thinner version of myself teetering on stilettos” – as something not beautiful, but rather sad; a body shaped by fear and self-loathing.
‘I saw the images as embarrassing and embarrassing, something my children should never encounter. Knowing that I didn’t know how to completely wipe the hard drive, I asked my partner to do it for me. I left the room like him.
Mad Wife: A Memoir by Kate Hamilton is published by Beacon Press