I feel replying to these is becoming my specialty!!!
My wife and I are 10 years ahead of you guys. We're in our upper 30's and had an open marriage for 10 years.
My wife is exactly the same as yours in that she feels very strange with the idea of "performing" in front of each other and is more comfortable alone. She's also similar in that she's gorgeous but doesnt realize it.
So we closed the marriage shortly before joining this site... Our experience was that an open marriage is VERY easy. Easier than swinging I think. As you'd imagine, for the lady, finding fuck buddies is as easy as breathing. For the guy, its not so easy, but one night stands arent really as hard as you might think (esp if you travel)
The downsides are endless. We had way too much drama over the years and singles that didnt "get it" even though they said they did. Some were cheating, most got clingy, all ended badly. Emotional attachments tend to to form also. You can be insulated from the power of these (we were) but "vanilla" singles never are.
So that comes back to this lifestyle. Swinging (which we havent done yet) is interesting, but its very difficult. We've been casually perusing and are realizing that 4 way attraction is pretty unlikely for us, I think. I have lots of theories on why this is, but to net it out, we would need a couple with a really good looking guy and a kind of average wife. LOL. (Im not picky at all, she is pure physical attraction in a fuck buddy) Not a likely scenario. The opposite is very likely though!
For threesomes, neither one of us are all that excited about MFM and are already EXTREMELY gunshy with single males. She is interested in FMF or maybe FFM, but good luck with that one! Swinging single females are called unicorns for a reason!
so that may confuse you more, but welcome to the club! feel free to PM if you want more detail on what we've been through over the years. And WELCOME! this forum is great.
To leave you with some advice...
Take a closer look at why you want this. Some things really are better left as fantasy. Also, you will ALWAYS be behind in the count (I sure as hell am... LOL) Make sure thats something that can plug into your fantasy and not cause trouble. I'm not the kind of guy that is massively turned on by my wife with another guy (although it IS a turn on, its not something I fixate on), but I'm also not bothered by her being way ahead. The other thing is, I know what we have together and I know it cant be replaced. As a result of that, everything we do starts and stops on a dime at the request of either of us. Before doing ANY of this that kind of foundation is mandatory.
If you feel you really are ready to experiment, I would say avoid the open marriage for now and attend some meet and greets to test the waters on swinging. If you find that you're easily attracting other couples that you find attractive, then you will, I think, ultimately find this lifestyle more rewarding. You can always find a more experienced couple and say that you want to start out full swap separate room (thats what we would do) Many experienced couples would be cool with that.