Is Utah really the swinging capital of America? According to locals, gym-goers, and even a man we met near a remote island beach, the answer is closer to yes than most people would expect. What was once a whispered secret behind closed doors has exploded into public Reddit threads with thousands of members, viral TikTok scandals involving Utah moms, secret signs worn on fingers, and a wind-swept beach on Stansbury Island where, as one local told us, "any dream, any fantasy can become a reality." We hit the streets and gyms of Utah County to investigate just how widespread swinging has become in the Beehive State.

What Is Swinging and How Does It Work?

Before diving into Utah's specific situation, it helps to understand what swinging actually is. As one person on the street put it plainly: "Swinging is when you are sharing partners when you should be committed to one person, but you're sharing throughout the land." In more clinical terms, swinging is a form of consensual non-monogamy where committed couples engage in sexual activity with other couples or individuals, typically with both partners' knowledge and agreement.

Street interviews outside a Utah gym where swinging rumors are widespread 02:15 Street interviews outside a Utah gym where swinging rumors are widespread Watch at 02:15 →

It differs from cheating in that both partners are theoretically aware and consenting. It also differs from polygamy, which involves multiple long-term committed relationships or marriages rather than recreational partner-sharing. Despite what many assume, swinging is not a fringe phenomenon — it has existed in various forms across cultures for decades, and Utah, of all places, appears to be experiencing a very public resurgence of it.

Is Utah Really the Swinging Capital of America?

The idea sounds like an urban legend, but the evidence on the ground is hard to ignore. Utah — home to the Mormon Church and some of the most conservative social values in the country — has simultaneously developed a reputation for swinging that is drawing national attention. Local scandals have gone viral, underground clubs have been exposed and subsequently shut down, and active online communities with thousands of members have sprung up openly discussing Utah's swinging scene.

When we asked locals whether they thought the rumors were true, the responses were surprisingly candid. "People swing everywhere in the world. It's been happening for years. So yeah, I don't think it's a rumor," one gym-goer told us. Another said flatly, "We're in Utah, dude. That's like common commonplace, I'd say." Even people who said they would never personally swing acknowledged that they personally knew people who had.

The yoga room at a local gym, reportedly kept permanently locked after incidents 07:40 The yoga room at a local gym, reportedly kept permanently locked after incidents Watch at 07:40 →

One woman shared that she had been directly approached by another woman at a gym — a woman who was openly unhappy in her marriage and was essentially looking for someone to fill the gap. That kind of direct, in-person recruitment points to a scene that is far less underground than most outsiders would imagine.

Why Is Swinging So Common in Utah?

This is the question that gets to the heart of Utah's unusual cultural moment. Nearly every person we spoke to circled back to the same explanation: religion, and specifically, the restrictions placed on members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The LDS Church maintains strict commandments that include no alcohol, no smoking, no coffee, and — critically — no sex before marriage. For members who grow up inside this framework, many personal and romantic desires are suppressed for years, sometimes decades. When people leave the church, or when marriages formed under those pressures begin to crack, the result can be an explosion of previously repressed behavior.

"I think it's kind of the way people grew up here. Everybody's really repressed. They repress everything down," one man at the gym explained. Another person connected the dots even more directly: "Because people don't have sex till marriage" — implying that years of enforced restriction create a pressure cooker that eventually has to release somewhere.

The remote Stansbury Island beach described by locals as a swinging gathering spot 14:22 The remote Stansbury Island beach described by locals as a swinging gathering spot Watch at 14:22 →

It is worth noting that swinging is not unique to former members of the LDS Church — it happens across all demographics in Utah and across the country. But the cultural context does appear to be a contributing factor to why it has become so visible and so talked-about in this particular state.

How Do Swingers Find Each Other in Utah?

If you assumed swingers were operating in total secrecy, the reality in Utah might surprise you. People we spoke to described a surprisingly visible infrastructure for connecting swingers, including:

  • Gyms: Multiple gyms in Utah County have developed reputations as meeting grounds. One gym reportedly became so notorious that people were leaving keys in a jar and picking up a different set of keys to go meet someone new in the parking lot. A yoga room at one facility is now kept permanently locked — reportedly because staff caught people using it for unauthorized activities.
  • Underground club after-parties: One source described clubs in Salt Lake City that hosted after-parties where active swinging took place. Those clubs were eventually shut down.
  • Online communities: Reddit communities with thousands of members have made the Utah swinging scene more visible and accessible than ever before.
  • Word of mouth: Multiple interviewees said it would not be hard at all to find swingers if they wanted to. One woman said, "Probably not very hard" when asked how difficult it would be to locate the swinging community.

Do Swingers Really Use Rubber Rings as a Secret Sign?

One of the more surprising details to emerge from our street interviews was the claim that swingers use colored rubber rings — the kind of silicone wedding bands popular among athletes and gym-goers — as a covert signal to identify each other.

One woman told us she had been approached by someone who commented that she was not wearing her rubber ring, seemingly as a way to probe whether she was part of the swinging community. She later learned that wearing a specific color of rubber ring was reportedly a swinger identifier. "I heard if there's like a certain color of rubber ring that you wear, then you're in a swinging group," she told us. She had been wearing hers simply because she was married — unaware of the double meaning.

Whether this is a widespread, organized signal or more of a loose local custom is unclear, but the story added another layer to just how embedded swinging culture has become in everyday Utah social spaces.

What Is the Secret Swinging Spot at Stansbury Island?

Perhaps the most unexpected stop in our investigation was Stansbury Island — a remote, largely uninhabited landmass sitting in the Great Salt Lake. According to a local man we encountered near the beach, the island has become a well-known gathering spot, particularly in the summer months, for men who want to engage in activities they cannot easily pursue back in their conservative home communities.

"In the summertime they're all out here. There's people in their campers and cars and everything all the way along here," he told us. He described the beach as a place where people who feel they have to hide their lifestyle in town can come and simply be free. The last time he had seen people gathered there? August.

He also shared a story about a man who had been out hunting rabbits on the island and came over a hill with his dogs and rifle to find a large group of men — leading to a scene of mutual shock that, in hindsight, is hard not to find darkly comedic.

Does Growing Up Mormon Lead People to Swing?

The connection between Utah's dominant religious culture and its swinging scene is complicated, and it would be unfair to suggest that the LDS Church causes swinging. Millions of practicing members live entirely within their covenants and have no involvement in anything of the sort. But the cultural pressure cooker that strict religious upbringings can create — and the behavioral whiplash that sometimes follows when people leave or drift from those structures — is a real and documented psychological phenomenon.

As one gym member summarized it: people who grow up repressing natural urges sometimes swing to the opposite extreme when those restrictions are lifted. Combined with Utah's rapid population growth, changing demographics, and an increasingly internet-connected younger generation, the result is a state where a very old human behavior is finding very new and very public expression.

Whether Utah truly deserves the title of swinging capital of America is debatable. What is not debatable, based on everything we saw and heard, is that swinging in Utah is no longer a secret — and the locals know it.