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"  I&amp;#039;m David, and this is Amy.&amp;quot; The tall man drinking champagne gestured to the blond at his side. She was wearing a body-hugging metallic dress, but all I could see was her cleavage, cavernous and shimmering. &amp;quot;You must come to these events a lot,&amp;quot; I said, feeling stupid. Amy nodded, smiled, looked away. We weren&amp;#039;t her type. Across the room, a girl in gold pasties and a leather thong with ropes wrapped around her legs danced on a neon-lit cube. I suspected we weren&amp;#039;t her type either and wondered whether she liked her job. But it was hard to think clearly with the house music blasting so emphatically from the speaker next to me. All along the bar, couples drank bubbly\u2014gratis until midnight!\u2014and, like our nonfriends David and Amy, scanned the room: fake breasts, hair extensions, Botoxed foreheads. Tanned older men with tanned younger women, bankers with bankettes. One couple looked as if they worked at the same tattoo parlor; another could have just graduated from Penn with degrees in corporate governance. There were single women, too, including one I couldn&amp;#039;t keep my eyes off: She had a pageboy cut and wore a backless black dress not much bigger than a dishrag with patent leather stilettos. Her lips were plump and red, and she seemed to know everyone. Unlike the other single women who clustered in groups, giggling and shy, she exuded confidence, as if she could\u2014and would\u2014take home anyone she wanted, kick her conquest out of bed at 7 A.M., and be off for a bike ride in Central Park by nine. That&amp;#039;s what I was picturing, at least, as I stared at her, trying to figure out her age\u201442?\u2014and how her feet could possibly be comfortable in those six-inch heels. Mine sure weren&amp;#039;t, but then, I also don&amp;#039;t have implants and have never had Botox; if there&amp;#039;s anything on my lips, it&amp;#039;s usually ChapStick. My husband and I, both in our thirties, don&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;club.&amp;quot; We live in a quiet part of Brooklyn, go to bed by 10 P.M., and have a two-year-old daughter. I&amp;#039;m a writer and magazine editor; he&amp;#039;s a software designer and yoga teacher. On weekends, we take our dog to the park, go to the farmers&amp;#039; market, have friends over for dinner, and try to squeeze in a nap. We like the Travel Channel and Scrabble. So what were we\u2014we\u2014doing in a midtown Manhattan club, me in bone-crushing Jimmy Choos and a lace bustier, my husband in his Dolce &amp;amp;amp; Gabbana wedding suit, attempting to fit in at SKiN Party NYC, a monthly event billed on its website as a &amp;quot;classy, sophisticated, and erotic&amp;quot; experience for &amp;quot;exceptional couples and selected women only&amp;quot;? If I said we were prowling for sex, would you laugh? Before you do, an explanation. It all began with The Thought, one millions of long-term couples have had at some point, I&amp;#039;m sure, but which, nine times out of 10, they instantly shove into some dusty corner of their parietal lobes, never to be conjured again: &amp;quot;Do I really have to be monogamous? Is this it for me?&amp;quot; Not that I have The Thought very often. Mostly what I think about is the usual stuff people think about: what to eat, what to wear, how soon I can get out of work and commence drinking. But occasionally, it bubbles up from my subconscious: I&amp;#039;ll never have sex with anyone else. Ever. And that just sounds completely insane to me. Funny thing is, it sounds insane to my husband, Nivi, too. I know: Monogamy is the defining characteristic of traditional marriage. But isn&amp;#039;t it possible to love, honor, and support each other till death do us part and still get some on the side? Nivi and I didn&amp;#039;t always ask such questions. When we met, our sex life was unequivocally amazing. No two people had ever been more compatible in the history of sex. We were a revelation to each other. And for a while, it only got better. That was 10 years ago. Since then, our relationship has continued to deepen and mature. We communicate well, argue efficiently, laugh often, and want the same things for our future and for our child. Our sex life.... Let&amp;#039;s just say, there is a creeping platonic nature to the married relationship. The more emotionally intimate couples become, it seems, the less sexually intimate we are. It&amp;#039;s great to go to bed every night with your favorite person, but for some reason, it&amp;#039;s not a turn-on. That&amp;#039;s life, and I get it. I don&amp;#039;t like it, but I get it. What I don&amp;#039;t get is how hard it is to talk honestly about this\u00AD\u2014and thus someday fix it\u2014with the one person who has a vested interest in the subject: my husband. Here&amp;#039;s a guy who knows me better than anyone else. Who&amp;#039;s my best friend. Who&amp;#039;s seen me naked countless times. Who held my hand and cried while I gave birth to our daughter. We talk about everything\u2014but sex. I&amp;#039;m not alone here. I&amp;#039;ve mentioned this to friends, and some claim a similar reticence. I think it has something to do with familiarity. Now that he&amp;#039;s family, not simply my boyfriend or my lover, sex is no longer the defining feature of the relationship. And so wouldn&amp;#039;t it be weird if I suddenly want to dissect something we&amp;#039;ve done, what, thousands of times? Would it imply I&amp;#039;ve been holding back on my true desires all along? What happened to openness, honesty, trust? But there&amp;#039;s something else. Even for twenty-first-century, dual-income, sexually liberated couples, there remains a vestigial distinction between marriage and sex\u2014the former is sacred, the latter sordid. It&amp;#039;s why guys like Anthony Weiner send pictures of their wieners to strangers instead of to their wives, why men go to strip clubs with other men. Years ago, I went to such an establishment with a boyfriend\u2014big surprise, we were the only couple there. (Have I ever gone to one with my husband? No way.) Raising the possibility of having sex with other people is especially fraught. Just bringing it up can instantly suggest that a spouse isn&amp;#039;t cutting it or that something is very wrong with the marriage. Nivi and I have occasionally mentioned\u2014in passing, without eye contact\u2014that our sex life could use a reboot. We&amp;#039;ve also conceded that 60 years of monogamy sounds fairly soul killing. Until recently, that&amp;#039;s as far as we got. Then, a few months ago I interviewed a 67-year-old grandfather who&amp;#039;s been in an open marriage for nearly three decades. His current lover (who has two other lovers) lives four blocks away from the house he shares with his wife, with whom he has shared male partners over the years. He said that he and his wife have fantastic sex, that sleeping with other people has only deepened their sexual connection. So it is possible to have it all, I thought\u2014to be married, to have awesome sex with your spouse, to screw around with other people, and even to have grandkids! Their story stuck with me for weeks. When I told Nivi about it, he said something like, &amp;quot;Interesting. I&amp;#039;m not sure I can handle the demands of one more woman in my life.&amp;quot; Then he went back to playing Angry Birds. &amp;quot;But you&amp;#039;d have no problem if it was just sex?&amp;quot; I asked. &amp;quot;Sex is sex.&amp;quot; And that was the end of that. Only it wasn&amp;#039;t. Because I started scouring the Internet for swingers sites: &amp;quot;introduction to swinging,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;attractive swingers,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;how to meet swingers who aren&amp;#039;t ugly.&amp;quot; That kind of thing. I wasn&amp;#039;t looking for a &amp;quot;lifestyle&amp;quot; or a &amp;quot;community of like-minded individuals.&amp;quot; I was envisioning a cocktail party in Williamsburg with some artist types, thirties, normal\u2014like us, except that occasionally, if the mood struck, they swapped partners, then went home and had even better sex with their own. Too much to ask? In my mental rule book, swinging was strictly one night only; you&amp;#039;d never see the person again, and ideally the encounter would get it out of your system for another decade. Like Nivi, I lack the bandwidth to deal with the emotional needs of another person, and anyway, I want to stay married to the man I already love, which leads to rule number two: no accidentally falling for anyone else. That, it seemed, was the single most dangerous aspect of this kind of endeavor. How would you explain the aftermath to your child? &amp;quot;Daddy and I were bored in bed so we decided to become swingers and then Daddy left me for a large-breasted Renaissance professor and that&amp;#039;s why I hate him and why you&amp;#039;ll spend the rest of your life in therapy.&amp;quot; I realize I&amp;#039;m oversimplifying. Even a one-night stand can poison a marriage\u2014I&amp;#039;ve seen enough movies to know that. But so can complacency. Apathy, I&amp;#039;ve read, is one of the biggest causes of divorce. Apathy! To stop caring or become indifferent, no longer excited or moved by your own spouse. To accept the inevitable sexual slowdown without even putting up a fight! Is anything more depressing\u2014or terrifying? While I love playing Scrabble, I don&amp;#039;t want to wake up one day and realize I&amp;#039;ve become the kind of person who&amp;#039;d rather get a triple word score than have sex with my husband. The solution might lie in something more prosaic: taking more trips, turning off the TV more often. Maybe we should join the Peace Corps, go back to grad school, open a wine shop together. But that old spark\u2014those fireworks I&amp;#039;ll always associate with late nights and early mornings on his college-issue futon\u2014is the part I&amp;#039;m yearning for. Novelty and desire are, of course, inextricably linked. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s hard to generate excitement, anticipation, and lust with the same person you look to for comfort and stability, but it&amp;#039;s not impossible,&amp;quot; writes couples therapist Esther Perel, PhD, in her book Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. &amp;quot;I invite you to think about ways you might introduce risk to safety, mystery to the familiar, and novelty to the enduring.&amp;quot; For some people, this could entail amateur porn (am I the only person who found Zack and Miri Make a Porno incredibly erotic?) or handcuffs. Which would make us both crack up. The other extreme is a third party, a tall, dark stranger who can make me feel that after 37 years of life and a baby, I&amp;#039;ve still got it. Even better, that we&amp;#039;ve still got it, that other people\u2014who aren&amp;#039;t beholden by a promise made at the altar\u2014want us. But the more I searched, the more disheartened I became. If hipster swinger parties do exist, they don&amp;#039;t advertise on the Internet. The closest approximation I found was SKiN. Technically, this monthly $80-per-couple bacchanal was not a sex party. From the site, it looked instead like a place where\u2014while dancing sweatily in, say, a silver bikini\u2014you could meet people to have sex with later, at someone&amp;#039;s house maybe. The site stressed two things: (1) the eroticism of the party, and (2) the hotness of the (prescreened) guests. In order to get on the list, you had to submit photos. I sent a shot of us on our honeymoon four years ago, dressed up at the bar of L&amp;#039;Atelier de Jo\u00EBl Robuchon, one of Paris&amp;#039; swankiest restaurants. We look like we don&amp;#039;t care that we just spent $60 on four seared scallops because hey, we&amp;#039;re young and cool and hot and yeah, that&amp;#039;s a wedding ring on my finger! I&amp;#039;m slightly ashamed to admit to the ego boost I got when the e-mail welcome letter arrived the next day. But Nivi, with characteristic ambivalence, said he was nervous. &amp;quot;Nervous that I&amp;#039;ll meet someone else or that you will?&amp;quot; I asked. &amp;quot;Both?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not going to actually have sex with anyone; we&amp;#039;re just going to scope it out,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;And you love to dance.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I have nothing to wear.&amp;quot; That was true. What does a guy wear to an erotic dance party that isn&amp;#039;t either gay or really gay? (Turns out, his wedding suit.) I, meanwhile, assembled a look that can only be described as the antithesis of Paula Szuchman\u2014the one who wears jeans, tank tops, and clogs, occasionally breaking out a skirt for work. This included the aforementioned heels and lace bustier plus a Diane von Furstenberg cowlneck dress hiked to the very top of my thighs. It was revealing, yet semiclassy, like something I once saw Rihanna wearing in US magazine. Me and Rihanna: good girls gone bad. Looking in the mirror, I remembered a Halloween costume I wore the year Nivi and I met. It comprised a short, straight black wig (my hair is long, brown, and curly), a halter top, tight jeans, and blood-red paint splattered on my stomach and dripping from my lip. I carried a machete; when people asked what I was dressed as, I said a killer. Obviously. Nivi loved that costume. The whole night felt sexually charged, and I remember it as one of the most sensual\u2014and intimate\u2014moments of our early courtship. I haven&amp;#039;t worn a wig or even a halter top since, but when my swinger alter ego emerged from the bathroom that night\u2014lips red, eyes painted smoky gray per the instructions on a YouTube video I&amp;#039;d watched earlier\u2014Nivi appeared startled. &amp;quot;You look...amazing.&amp;quot; Suddenly, he wanted to set some ground rules of his own. &amp;quot;Like, what if I want to, you know...&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Make out with someone else?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Exactly.&amp;quot; I thought for a second. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s okay only if I do too. But if I don&amp;#039;t find anyone I want to kiss, than you can&amp;#039;t do it either.&amp;quot; And then we talked about sex. Not for a long time (the Yankees game was on), but we definitely had a conversation. We agreed that it&amp;#039;s hard to believe we&amp;#039;ll never sleep with anyone else again. But while swinging was only worth it to me if it ignited a passion that carried over into our own bed, his needs were simpler. The novelty of a different woman was an end unto itself. He&amp;#039;s always been good at compartmentalizing, that one. We weren&amp;#039;t the first to arrive at the club, but we might have been the sixth. &amp;quot;Exclusive&amp;quot;? Unclear. I immediately had the sense that I&amp;#039;d made a big mistake. The music, the loungey white walls and white banquettes, the private upstairs &amp;quot;parlour&amp;quot;\u2014it all felt very 1999 (or maybe that was just the last time I went to a New York City club?). In the bathroom, women were reapplying makeup and talking shop. These were the dancers I&amp;#039;d seen on the website wearing pasties and thongs, grinding together, and if I recall correctly, kissing one another&amp;#039;s bare breasts. This had seemed mildly hot to me; more so if, like me, they had day jobs and husbands and babysitters and were out on a Saturday night going completely nutso. But this clearly was their job; they were hired help. On the dance floor, Nivi gamely tried to get the party started by doing his signature elbow-jerking sprinkler move. I attempted to copy a very subtle pelvic-thrusting technique that a woman next to me was doing. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t move your feet,&amp;quot; Nivi shouted over the music. &amp;quot;See how her feet are firmly planted and only her hips move?&amp;quot; Thanks, Patrick Swayze. &amp;quot;Should we introduce ourselves to anyone?&amp;quot; I shouted back. But to who? Not that we&amp;#039;d ever discussed our &amp;quot;types&amp;quot;\u2014or jointly scoped out couples\u2014but it was patently obvious that no one there was it. There were plenty of long legs and tight asses but also bad dye jobs, gold chains, and even a guy wearing shorts and boat shoes. Where were the hipsters? Where were the artists? The nerds? The hippies? The literacy advocates? Home on the couch watching Game of Thrones, no doubt. We contemplated a couple sitting on a couch across from us who looked about as uncomfortable as we felt, but neither of us would make the first move. It was like being at a high school dance. At about 1:30, we gave up. There was no way we were having an orgy tonight, much less getting anyone&amp;#039;s number to plan a future orgy. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re pathetic,&amp;quot; I said to Nivi. &amp;quot;No, we&amp;#039;re not,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;We did it. We tried it. We got dressed up\u2014when was the last time we did that?&amp;quot; He was right. For a Scrabble-playing, dinner-party-going, bike-riding couple, that classified as getting out of our comfort zone. Also, in the course of planning the night, something important occurred: We had several honest conversations about sex that, in the process, pushed some boundaries we had assumed were fixed and forever after. We confessed, and there&amp;#039;s no going back. It&amp;#039;s disconcerting to know that he is not only game for sleeping with someone else, but also\u2014allegedly\u2014won&amp;#039;t mind if I do. But it&amp;#039;s also a relief to know that we&amp;#039;re kind of on the same page. That&amp;#039;s a long way from jumping into the amateur porn business (though I&amp;#039;m still pushing for it) or joining Swingers International. But who knows, maybe it&amp;#039;s the start of something. For now, just dipping our toes into an alternate reality made us feel &amp;quot;exceptional.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;ll save the orgies for next year. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a11777/the-cheating-agreement-604807/>