CAN A SEX-CATION save your marriage?

Three couples tell us why a holiday without the kids keeps the spark alive

- 

From the hotel-room window, you might see blue sea and a beach bar, a limestone mountain or a historic European city skyline. But when Joanna Lovell, 40, goes on holiday with her fiancé Jack Harland, 46, she often finds herself hiding the view while she calls her children on FaceTime. For when it comes to their many trips abroad, she and Jack don't always tell the kids where they've gone - or that they're going at all. In fact, regular holidays without the children are all part of their recipe for a happy, long-lasting and, above all, exciting relationship, she says. Call them sex-cations, if you will.

'We once checked into a hotel in Spain and didn't even get to see the pool area because we didn't leave the room. You can't exactly do that when you've got kids in tow,' she says.

A recent poll found that 47% of parents would be happy to leave their little ones behind while they headed off to a romantic destination abroad. Holidays for just the two of you, it seems, are very much on-trend. And while some feel crippling guilt at the very thought, others such as Joanna are always planning the next week or even two of kid-free fun.

'We go away so regularly that one time when we went to Palma, Majorca, I didn't mention it to the children,' she confesses. Joanna has two children aged 12 and 10 while Jack, a photographer, has a son aged 14.

'I always miss them,' she says. 'But they were with their dad, and I didn't want them to be miserable thinking about Mum being on holiday in the sunshine without them. When I did Face Time them I had to hide where I was, so that they didn't realise I was abroad.'