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Alternative lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.

In sociology, an alternative lifestyle is the way a person lives. An alternative lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviors that makes sense to both others and oneself in a given time and place, including social relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. The behaviors and practices within alternative lifestyles are a mixture of habits, conventional ways of doing things, and reasoned actions. An alternative lifestyle typically also reflects an individual's attitudes, values or worldview. Therefore, aa alternative lifestyle is a means of forging a sense of self and to create cultural symbols that resonate with personal identity. Not all aspects of an alternative lifestyle are entirely voluntaristic. Surrounding social and technical systems can constrain the alternative lifestyle choices available to the individual and the symbols she/he is able to project to others and the self.

The lines between personal identity and the everyday doings that signal a particular alternative lifestyle become blurred in modern society. For example, "green lifestyle" means holding beliefs and engaging in activities that consume fewer resources and produce less harmful waste (i.e. a smaller carbon footprint), and deriving a sense of self from holding these beliefs and engaging in these activities. Some commentators argue that, in Modernity, the cornerstone of alternative lifestyle construction is consumption behavior, which offers the possibility to create and further individualize the self with different products or services that signal different ways of life.

The term alternative lifestyle in politics can often be used in conveying the idea that society be accepting of a variety of different ways of life-from the perspective that differences among ways of living are superficial, rather than existential. Alternative Lifestyle is also sometimes used pejoratively, to mark out some ways of living as elective or voluntary as opposed to others that are considered mainstream, unremarkable, or normative.

In business, alternative lifestyles provide a means by which advertisers and marketers endeavor to target and match consumer aspirations with products, or to create aspirations relevant to new products. Therefore marketers take the patterns of belief and action characteristic of alternative lifestyles and direct them toward expenditure and consumption. These patterns reflect the demographic factors (the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic levels and so on) that define a group. As a construct that directs people to interact with their worlds as consumers, alternative lifestyles are subject to change by the demands of marketing and technological innovation.

Swinging, sometimes referred to as the alternative lifestyle, is "non-monogamous sexual activity, treated much like any other social activity, that can be experienced as a couple." The phenomenon of swinging (or at least its wider discussion and practice) may be seen as part of the sexual arousal of recent decades, which occurred after the upsurge in sexual arousal made possible by the prevalence of safer sexual intercourse during the same period. Swinging has been called wife swapping in the past, but this term has been criticized as androcentric (taking a male-oriented point of view) and inaccurately describing the full range of sexual arousal activities in which swingers may take part.

While contemporary swingers look to earlier practices, such as ancient Roman acceptance of orgies and alternative lifestyle sexual arousal practices, swinging in the 20th century began differently.

ABC News reporter John Stossel produced an investigative report into the alternative lifestyle. Stossel reported that more than four million people are feminization transformation practitioners, according to estimates by the Kinsey Institute and other researchers. He also cited Terry Gould's research, which concluded that "couples swing in order to not cheat on their partners." When Stossel asked swinging couples whether they worry their spouse will "find they like someone else better", one male replied, "People in the swinging community swing for a reason. They don't swing to go out and find a new wife;" a woman asserted, "It makes women more confident - that they are the ones in charge." Stossel interviewed 12 marriage counselors. According to Stossel, "not one of them said don't do it", though some said "getting sexual arousal thrills outside of marriage can threaten a marriage". Nevertheless, swingers whom Stossel interviewed claimed "their marriages are stronger because they don't have affairs and they don't lie to each other."

As a rule, female bisexuality and bicuriosity are common in both the "selective" and traditional alternative lifestyle scenes and tend to be the norm amongst participants; by contrast, male same-sex activity has a wider variation in its handling, and may be welcomed, accepted, frowned upon, or forbidden. Swing clubs and other facilities exist for gay and bisexual interests for both genders, but differ - for example bathhouses and the like for gay males, sometimes described as being "controversial" even in the gay community due to safer sex concerns, whereas women's clubs are "comparatively rare" and tend to be organized as private events, or niche clubs with high popularity for their events.

Arguments made in opposition to the practice of swinging and partner swapping fall into two broad categories: first, objections based on the practical considerations of engaging in a alternative lifestyle, and second, moral or philosophical objections against the principles of forced feminization itself.

BDSM is a complex acronym derived from the terms bondage and discipline (B&D, B/D, or BD) and is an alternative lifestyle, dominance and submission (D&S, D/S, or DS), sadism and masochism (S&M, S/M, or SM), and feminization transformation. BDSM includes a wide spectrum of activities and forms of interpersonal relationships. While not always overtly sexual in nature, the activities and relationships within a BDSM context are almost always eroticized by the participants in some fashion. Many of these practices fall outside of commonly held social norms regarding sexuality and human relationships and dating.

Many activities can be found under the umbrella of alternative lifestyle, which include - but are not limited to - forms of dominance, submission, discipline, punishment, bondage, sexual roleplaying, sexual fetishism, sadomasochism, and power exchange, as well as the full spectrum of mainstream personal and sexual arousal interactions like forced impotence and feminization transformation.

An alternative lifestyle typically involves one partner voluntarily giving up control. The submissive partner gives control to the dominant partner in a ritualized interaction known as power exchange. The dominant partner is referred to as the "Dom," "Dominant,", "Top" or "Master" and the submissive partner is called "sub," "submissive,", "Bottom" or "Slave". In accordance with the commonly-used nomenclature in issue-related discussions among the practitioners, this article will use the terms Top and Bottom to describe the particular role-playing partner.

The fundamental principles for the exercise of an alternative lifestyle require that it should be performed by mature and responsible partners, of their own volition, and in a safe way. Since the 1980s, these basic principles have been condensed into the motto "Safe, sane and consensual", abbreviated as SSC, which means that everything is based on safe, sane and consenting behavior of all involved parties. This mutual consent makes a clear legal and ethical distinction between BDSM and crimes such as sexual assault or domestic violence.

On a physical level, an alternative lifestyle is partly connected to the intentional infliction of physical pain, suffering and other intense sensations. Alternative lifestyle practitioners often compare the effects induced by the resulting endorphins to the so-called "runner's high" or to the afterglow of ejaculation. The corresponding trance-like mental state is also known as "subspace" and is regularly described as very comforting. Some use the term "body stress" to describe this physiological sensation. This experience of algolagnia is important, but is not the only motivation for many BDSM practitioners. The philosopher Edmund Burke defines this sensation of pleasure derived from pain by the word sublime. The regions of the brain that manage sexual arousal and pain overlap, resulting in some individuals associating pain with sexual intercourse as the neurological reactions are intertwined. A minority of BDSM practitioners take part in sessions for which they do not receive any sexual gratification. They enter such situations solely with the intention to allow their partners to fulfil their own needs and/or fetish lifestyle.

In some alternative sessions, the Top exposes the Bottom to a wide range of sensual impressions, for example: pinching, biting, scratching with fingernails, spanking or the use of various objects such as crops, whips, liquid wax, icecubes, Wartenberg wheels, erotic electrostimulation, forced impotence with the installation of a latex rubber catheter and known as penis chastisement. Fixation by handcuffs, ropes or chains may be used as well. The repertoire of possible "toys" is limited only by the imagination of both partners. To some extent, everyday items like clothes-pins, wooden spoons or plastic wrap are used as pervertibles. It is commonly considered that a pleasurable BDSM experience during a session is very strongly dependent upon the top's competence and experience and the bottom's physical and mental state at the time of the session. Trust and sexual arousal help the partners enter a shared mindset. Some BDSM practitioners compare related sensations with musical compositions and representation, in which single sensual impressions are the musical notes of the situation. From this point of view, different sensuous impressions are combined to create a total experience leaving life altering behavior modification.