Real-life drama behind Channel 4 hit The Couple Next Door as swinger speaks up
It is the show that has us all second-guessing what our neighbours really mean when they wave and smile – or, in most cases, panicking about it.
Because unlike in Channel 4’s sizzling six-part drama, The Couple Next Door, we are not all living next door to smouldering heartthrob Sam Heughan. The raunchy show has become watercooler TV, with viewers agog at what can happen when you move in next to a pair of young, sexy swingers.
Starring Jessica De Gouw alongside Sam as Danny and Becka, a couple who love to open up their bedroom, and Eleanor Tomlinson and Alfred Enoch as Evie and Pete, the vanillas next door, the series has us hooked, desperate to see how the love quadrilateral plays out. With the final two episodes coming next week, the sexual tension and psychological drama seems set to spill over into murder, regret and mayhem.
Rosie Kay has spoken about her first swinging experience (DAILY MIRROR)
Rosie lives the lifestyle since visiting her first swingers' club in London 12 years ago (DAILY MIRROR)But while The Couple Next Door might be taking a sinister turn, real-life swinger Rosie Kay insists she is really not that different from the norm. The 35-year-old from Sheffield, South Yorks, has been living the lifestyle for 12 years, since visiting her first swingers’ club in London. And she has now given up her career as a chef to coach people interested in getting involved in “ethical non-monogamy”.
She explains: “Monogamous relationships are two people of any orientation or gender coming together to be exclusive to each other. Non-monogamy is the opposite of that. And ethical non-monogamy is when you decide to open up your relationship in any form but it’s done with consideration. It’s a joint decision.”
Strictly's Molly Rainford and Tyler West fuel romance rumours while on tour
Swinging has always had an image problem, though. The Couple Next Door, with its seething passions and roused jealousies, is only the latest example.
“Everybody wants a horror story,” Rosie sighs. “People don’t often ask what’s the best thing about the lifestyle or what memorable experiences you have had. They all want the negatives because sometimes people want that confirmation of, ‘You can’t have it that good!’.”
To most of us, swinging calls to mind suburban parties with keys chucked into a bowl, then fished out to claim someone else’s wife. It’s pampas grass, which myth holds is the swingers’ secret signal, standing swishy in gardens. Or not very glamorous middle-aged couples escaping threadbare marriages by diving into a bit of debauchery on a wipe-clean surface.
Danny and Evie get closer in the Channel 4 series (Channel 4 / Sofie Gheysens)Right? Wrong, says Rosie. Not any more. Or, at least, not only that. Swinging has moved on. It isn’t just lighting up our evenings on Channel 4, it’s coming out of the shadows for real. Nowadays, swingers really can be as hot as Danny and Becka in the show.
Rosie is a poster girl. She was in her early 20s and in a steady relationship with a man when she dipped a terrified toe into the scene. “I’ve always identified as bisexual,” she says. “And I’d confided in him but I didn’t want to leave him for a woman.”
Her partner suggested visiting a swingers’ club to satisfy that need. “It seemed that opening things up was a way that I could do it and keep my existing relationship intact,” she says.
But could she actually go through with it? “The thought of going to a club, swapping with a couple and seeing him with another woman, was scary and confusing,” she admits. “I was frightened. At the same time, I wanted to explore and I knew that to do that, he would also be intimate and it wasn’t fair to say, ‘I can explore and you’re not allowed’.”
She says a swinger website pointed them to the club, continuing: “After a few months of shall-we-shan’t-we, we got the courage and went. It was terrifying and I got so many things wrong but it was liberating as well to actually go.”
Pete and Becka in the show (Channel 4 / Sofie Gheysens)They “played” – swapped – that very first night. “I realised a lot of my worries were hyped up in my own mind,” she says. “A lot of people think that the minute they see their partner with someone else, the minute they go to a club, everything is going to come crashing down, because that’s where minds go. But the world kept turning, everything’s fine, we got to enjoy something fun together.”
Rosie got dressed up for the night, like Joan Collins in The Stud. “I got what I wore very wrong,” she admits. “I was very conscious I had to be sexy and wore the stereotypical stockings and things. I didn’t realise that, actually, you can wear what you want, as long as it sticks to the dress code.”
Nail salon refuses to serve disabled teen saying it 'doesn't do people like her'
Now when she goes swinging, she wears leather-look leggings, a sheer blouse with a black bra underneath and stilettos. And she soon started making a living helping others navigate the unwritten rules, much like in any dating scene.
Rosie says: “When you’re being approached by people, when you are approaching couples, you’re… ‘Am I expected to do something?’, ‘Does it mean that I have to play with them if they buy me a drink?’. Then there is fear of rejection. Everybody gets rejected. You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.”
Rosie still feels the stigma of the lifestyle and gets trolled online – but she is proud of who she is. She says: “Part of my blog, thiskindagirl.co.uk, is I wanted to tell people what it was really like as we still get those connotations of ‘keys in a bowl’. It’s very much an identity and it is part of you, you can’t turn it on and off.”
Fans are waiting to see if the show ends in tears (Channel 4 / Guillaume)And Rosie reckons more and more young people are entering the lifestyle. “I’m seeing 40 and under parties, which was never a thing when I started,” she says. Rosie has swung as a couple and also as a single woman – known as Unicorns on the scene. It hasn’t all been rainbows, though. “There’s been times when couples have perhaps not been as secure as they’ve made out,” she admits.
“They’ve argued or someone’s got very upset because another wife’s been having too much fun. And, yeah, of course there’s jealousy and times when people feel insecure – but it’s part of life.”
Rosie insists there is nothing special or unusual about her, saying: “There’s nothing in my DNA that makes me some swinger superwoman, I’m very normal!” And she dispenses her advice to people of mixed ages. Couples in their early 20s and 50s. A lot of Americans.
“I always tell people, swinging should only add to your existing relationship, never replace it,” she says. “I teach the dangers of not reconnecting afterwards, the dangers of not voicing their feelings.” Seems like someone needs to tell The Couple Next Door...
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
