What is soft swinging? And why is the term trending on Mormon TikTok?
If you move within the sphere of #MomTok, also known as Mormon TikTok, you’ve likely come across the term ‘soft swinging’. The suggestive term was newly coined by none other than Mormon momfluencer Taylor Paul. It describes a new sex practice the creator and her fellow religious acolytes invented to partake in the age-old activity of partner swapping, for similar reasons to the ones behind the other Mormon sexual practice known as ‘soaking’.
So, from all the dirty details to the origin story, here is everything you need to know about soft swinging.
My friend just described ‘Soft Swinging’ as a lot of Hokey without the Pokey… pic.twitter.com/TVzS38rqyI
— Stacey Harkey (@StaceyHarkey) May 28, 2022
What is soft swinging?
Soft swinging, as described by Taylor Paul during an infamous TikTok LIVE, is when couples engage in sexual intimacy with other couples, but stop short of penetrative intercourse. Instead, it is centred around kissing and other forms of physical contact that don’t require clothes to hit the floor. Essentially, it’s a very chaste version of having sexual contact with a different partner. Very Mormon-coded.
Another crucial element of this swinging alternative is that the actual partner is present during these interactions.
Still, other Mormons have their own variants of it. You could say it’s couple-dependent.
“I’ve actually done like a version of soft swinging,” former Mormon influencer Stitch explained. “From what I understand about the Utah Mormon mom drama is that soft swinging is everything but. No, everything butts,” the creator stated in her TikTok clip, alluding to the infamous ‘poophole loophole’.
“So yeah, everything outside of what the religious heteronormative concept of physical intimacy is. So from what I understand, this group of people, as long as they didn’t do the baby-making deed, everything else was fair game,” Stitch continued.
Anticipating a lot of surprised and confused responses, the content creator clarified: “[T]he reason for this is because the baby-making deed will get you excommunicated from the church. [With] everything else, you just have to feel bad, get a slap on the wrist, and stop taking the sacrament for a few months.”
She continued: “People who take it to the next level have to get excommunicated, go through a year-long repentance process, and then get re-baptised in order to continue to be a member of the church. It is ridiculous.”
@exmostitch Reply to @sophiesays4 what is “soft swinging?” #softswing #swingers #mormonmomdrama #utahmoms #mormonmoms #mormon #utahmormon #exmormon @Shirelle
♬ original sound - Stitch
What does Mormon TikTok have to do with soft swinging?
MomTok, with its funny dance videos and candid parenting advice, was coined by a group of Mormon mothers, all based in Utah.
@taylorfrankiepaul thankful for these moms #momtok
♬ original sound - Kinross uwu
And of course, they made motherhood look like a glamorous, stylish, and idyllic dream—until a salacious scandal disrupted their bliss…
Taylor Paul, who revealed that she had separated from her husband, Tate Paul, started to drop a couple of not-so-subtle hints that the situation was less than amicable and coincided with a fallout between them and some close friends.
After it became apparent that their split had resulted in a larger rupture within the Mormon MomTok community, Paul revealed everything in an explosive TikTok LIVE that caused a global scandal and skyrocketed her into stardom.
Their friendship group had become a swingers’ community, and the couple separated after Paul “crossed the line” by participating in actions without her partner present. In fact, she found herself in the middle of a full-blown emotional affair, as we found out on The Viall Files podcast.
Apparently, it all started with innocent party games: “I think we were all drinking and partying (…) We’d get blindfolds and play spin the bottle. And everyone would make out with everyone. All the husbands would have to kiss me and I’d have to guess [who it was],” Paul recounted.
“So we were obviously in an open relationship with a group of friends,” she continued. “So, I have my husband, and then I have my best friend, and then her husband and some other people,” Paul elaborated, before adding that the friendship group had fallen apart since.
“And then it was like, let’s take off your clothes and do lingerie pictures together while making out. And it just escalated…”
Paul didn’t hold back on the details in her explosive confession: “So me and my husband start to escalate with this couple because they’re more down. [W]e were at a cabin. I’m with this other man, completely naked, we’re about to go full force, and then he’s with the wife [and] he’s about to go full force. He’s super drunk [and] he comes to this realisation, ‘We can’t, we can’t do this, like, what if one of you gets pregnant?’ So we’re like ‘Ok, you’re right’.”
While Paul’s husband was starting to feel guilty about their soft swinging arrangement, Paul was still very much enjoying the set-up and eventually developed feelings for someone else. Her marriage collapsed in the subsequent weeks, however, she stressed that the partner swapping was only the “tip of the iceberg” when it came to the pair’s marital problems.
While the scandal caused national headlines, as well as the dissolution of some marriages and friendships, it also launched Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The reality TV show features Paul and her MomTok community recovering from the scandal’s fallout. I suppose you could call that making lemonade out of lemons.
