One especially important mechanism for overcoming jealousy in swinging situations, is individuation. Couples who participate in swinging typically treat individuals as individuals rather than as a social category, including their spouses. Each person is seen as a unique individual. This decreases jealousy by stressing the basic nature of people. In the individuation process, attitudes and behavior are modified, and swinging couples report, rather consistently, that they communicate better than they did before swinging, and treat each other much more as individuals. They say that swinging has recreated romantic feelings they once had for each other — expressed concretely in an increase in both sexual satisfaction and frequency of sexual intercourse. This is especially experienced by older couples.
