Two pairs of loved-up couples say that weekly spouse swapping has been the key to their happy marriages.
When Kate LaValley, 37, opened up to her husband, Brad, 40, in 2018 about her bisexuality, his encouragement to go out and explore different avenues unlocked the door to polyamory for both of them.
Kate and Brad had been together for 15 years when in 2019 they met married couple Alex and Lexi Kraft, 32 and 29, at a local bar where they both worked.
Brad soon began a romantic relationship with Lexi and encouraged her husband Alex to peruse a relationship with Kate.
Now the two happy couples engage in "spouse swapping" every week and say it has been the key to their happy marriages - but have stated they are not "swingers", but are in committed polyamorous relationships.
Kate, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said: "Polyamory has helped intensify the love I have for my partners, along with the amount of love and care.
"Our relationships together are very much like a family structure.
"We have a 'kitchen table' type polyamory, which means we can all sit and have a meal together at the table and play board games.
"There's no tension, all love and support between all of us.
"We have switch nights and sleepover dates, which started at the beginning of COVID.
"Once a week where we switch spouses and houses. Lexi will come here and have her night with Brad, and I will go to their house and have my date night with Alex.
"Many weekends we will have a brunch together in the morning after switch night and we're all in the kitchen cooking, eating and laughing together.
"Alex and I have our date nights we go out when we can, but when we have the baby, we stay in, and order take-out.
"We've all gone out altogether but once you have three kids between you that can be quite difficult to wrangle babysitters.
"Lexi and I are Metamours, which is a partner's partner.
"We have really good relationship, we're close friends, it's fairly platonic and we joke that we're sister wives.
"We watch each other's kids and borrow each other's clothes and Tupperware."
The loved-up foursome help babysit Brad and Kate's two sons and Lexi and Alex's one child when the couple decides to go on individual dates.
Unlike Alex and Lexi who have been polyamorous since the beginning of their relationship, Kate and Brad began to explore polyamory later in the married life, with Brad encouraging Kate to explore her sexuality.
Kate said: "This wasn't something that happened overnight, there were a lot of conversations.
"At that point, we had a lot of uncomfortable conversations, we had been married for a very long time and it was either, do we want to grow together or do we want to grow apart.
"For us, it has always been that we want to grow together. I realised later in life that I was bisexual, and Brad was always encouraged that I explore that as we did get married very young.
"That was something that I hadn't been able to do for myself. I was so shy and socially awkward and didn't really know if I could do it.
"I realised I had the ability to love two people at the same time and it didn't detract from anything from my husband or my marriage.
"I told him that if he wanted to go out and meet somebody he can. I was really enjoying myself and growing and I really wanted that for him too.
"I said that if he wanted to go out and see a woman, I was ok with that. He didn't want to at first, but I really encouraged him and eventually said he'd give it a try."
Kate's boyfriend Alex said: "Polyamory has allowed me to embrace compersion.
"Compersion is often defined as the opposite of jealousy, it is deriving pleasure from others joy.
"It's an emotion that requires training, you have to learn it where jealousy is taught on a societal level.
"It is a requirement in consensually non-monogamous relationships and connects partners on a more deeply intimate level.
"Replacing jealousy with compersion is the single greatest act of intimacy one can share with a partner."
Kate recently took to TikTok to share her polyamorous life and squash stereotypes and misconceptions, however, has had to hit back at haters who say they are cheating and are swingers.
She said: "I get asked if we're swingers. I have to tell them that they're totally different things, swinging is purely a sexual relationship where we're in romantic relationships dating our partners.
"With polyamory, sex doesn't even have to enter the equation, even asexual people can be polyamorous.
"With some people, things are just so black and white, and I think it's hard for people to even consider this for a moment.
"Ethical non-monogamy, or ENM, is an umbrella term, polyamory, open relationships and swingers are all types of ENM.
"There is a term within polyamory called polyfidelity in which a group of people agrees to be sexually exclusive with each other and not have lovers outside of the group but we are not a closed group.
"Alex has other partners, it's more of a semi-quad.
"There are just a lot of bad misconceptions, another comment is that my husband is a cuck or that we're cheating and we're not."
