IT might involve weekly sex sessions with pals and even steamy X-rated holidays, but life as a swinger isn’t without its challenges.
Marc and Jen James, from Irlam, Manchester, have embraced the free-spirited lifestyle in their marriage for years, but admit they get grilled by neighbours over their noisy escapades.
With the nation hooked on Channel 4 thriller The Couple Next Door, which tells the story of a surburban couple who move next door to a pair of swingers, the husband and wife admit they would love to find residents on their street to get frisky with.
Jen, 35, admits: “Other couples come round to our house around once a week.
“To find a couple on the same street to swing with would be ideal – I’d love to find someone who lives on the same street to join Marc and I in the bedroom.
“If it was the right couple, forget a cup of sugar, we’d be more than happy to share each other with the neighbours.”
Marc says: “If we had neighbours who were our type and interested in swinging, we’d love to get involved in that.
“Think of the savings on travel costs.
“Seriously, though, there is something really incredible about having friends with no secrets to hide and you have seen and done everything with them.
“It brings Jen and me closer as a couple; it makes us so much stronger in terms of trust.”
And their sexy antics have even attracted the attention of their neighbours due to the regular comings and goings of other couples.
Jen reveals: “I have faced some pretty awkward questions from our next door neighbour – we live in a semi-detached house.
“One day, I was leaving the house and our next door neighbour said: ‘What goes on in your house? Last week you had a bloke staying over with a flashy car, this morning it’s a couple?’
“I just laughed and said: ‘I think you know what goes on in this house, we share a bedroom wall.’
“It wasn’t a nasty question at all, I think she was just curious. We both laughed and I walked off.
“I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. We just hear them arguing so I’m sure they’d much rather be on our side of the wall.
“We’ve never had a complaint, and we try to keep the noise down late at night.”
Sales manager Jen and Marc, a gardener, met at a bar three years ago and decided to open up their relationship shortly after – when a friend of Jen’s confided in her that she was thinking inviting someone else into her relationship.
Jen says: “This led me to talking to Marc about my fantasy of partner swapping.
“We didn’t want a third person in our relationship, but we were both open minded and up for some fun.
“We had both experienced with threesomes before when we were single, and we both thought trying it as a couple might inject a bit of fun into our relationship.”
In summer 2021 the couple went to a swingers party on the Wirral, but Jen admits she was struck down by nerves just as they were about to go in and actually came out in a red rash.
She recalled: “I’m quite a sexually open person, so I didn’t feel too nervous about our first swingers party until I was about to walk through the door.
“I got so nervous, and I got this huge red rash all over my neck. Marc and I agreed we’d go in for 10 minutes, and if either of us hated it, we’d leave straight away.
“But everyone was so lovely, we had an amazing time.
“When we’d bought tickets, we were invited into a group chat on WhatsApp; my profile pic was me with a banana so immediately people started to recognise me as ‘banana Jen.’
“It broke the ice and we were soon having fun. We went with the idea that we might have sex there in front of other people, but at the end of the night, I asked Marc if he would be happy for me to invite another man into a playroom with us.
“He was fine with it, so we went together to have a threesome.”
The couple immediately decided swinging was for them, and within a few weeks had opened up their home to other couples.
Jen said: “We still go to parties, but if we meet couples we connect with there, we’ll invite them to our house for sex sessions.
“We’re quite well-known on the scene now, so sometimes couples looking for their first experience of swinging contact us too, and we invite them to our house.
“We might have drinks first, and try on some saucy lingerie. If the other couple are experienced it might move quickly to the bedroom, but if they’re new, we’ll take things a bit more slowly.
“All the action happens in the bedroom – lots of swingers will use the whole house but we have a dog so we have to try and contain any X-rated action.
“We have a rule that we always keep each other involved – one of us doesn’t go off with another couple or singleton. We might swap partners, but we are always both in the room.
“Other swingers have different rules, but that’s what works for us.”
And just like hosting a dinner party for pals, the same rules apply before a couple comes over to their house. House-proud Jen admits she will often spend the whole day cleaning before anyone gets down and dirty in their house.
She says: “It’s probably not as glamorous as people might think. The last time we had a couple over, I spent the day before scrubbing the skirting boards – I would hate anybody to be on all fours looking at my dirty floors!
The pair say although The Couple Next Door has kept them hooked, it’s not an accurate representation of the swinging lifestyle in real-life.
The six-part thriller tells the story of couple Evie and Pete, played by Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson and Alfred Enoch, who move into upmarket suburbia to start a family.
They are soon befriended by the couple next door, Danny and Becka (Outlander hunk Sam Heughan and Jessica De Gouw), who just happen to be swingers.
Then, one fateful night, they all find themselves sexually entangled in a way that changes their lives forever.
Jen says: “Most swinging couples are really lovely, they’re laid back, and fun and you don’t really hear of people getting in too deep. People figure out their own boundaries and everyone respects that.
“Everybody knows what the expectations are, and it’s not like the cliché of swingers nights from the 70s and 80s – there are no car keys in a bowl, and it’s all a bit more well-planned than is shown on the TV.
“Consent is really important in the swinging community, nobody is forced to swap with anyone they don’t want to.
“We usually have a group chat on WhatsApp or Instagram beforehand, and you’ll have a good idea who might end up sleeping with who.
“But if anyone changes their mind, that’s fine too, everyone understands.
“Any swinger would be lying if they said they never got jealous, but we know how to keep our relationship healthy.
“For instance, even if Marc and I had arranged for a couple to come over, if we’d been busy and hadn’t had chance to have sex with each other that week, we would cancel plans and spend some time together.
And it’s not just at home that the couple like to partner swap, they even do it on holiday.
Jen says: “We’d definitely go and have a pint with our swinging couple friends, we’ve been on holiday together and genuinely like them and get along together.
“Unlike in the show, we have a healthy friendship and don’t get obsessed with each other.
“Although when we do go away together, it does usually end in at least some of us having sex with each other.
“Unlike she show, while our endings might be explosive, they’re not deadly!”
