I thought I’d share an unusual arrangement my wife and I set up with another couple when we were apart for six months because of work. We’re pretty straight-laced normally, so this was definitely a new and strange experience for us.
I’m 29 and my wife, Lucy, is 27, and we’ve been best friends with another couple, Anna and Mike, who are roughly the same age, since our university days. We’re not normally open about our sex life but we’ve known each other long enough that we don’t have many secrets from each other. Anna and I are both lawyers in the same firm, which meant that when we both got seconded to another country for six months we found ourselves in the unusual situation of effectively doing an (initially) platonic wife swap. We stayed in touch with our respective partners every day over Skype, but as time went on we both admitted to each other and our spouses that we were finding the lack of physical intimacy very frustrating, especially when work was stressful and we needed a release. We spent long evenings together watching films and talking about our needs, and we shared our concerns with our partners. Fortunately, it seemed our partners were having the same issues on the other side of the world, and in the end my wife suggested that we try something new while we were abroad.