Did you hear about that Buddhist couple who're never more than 15 feet apart? Well, we tried it.

Introduction

Of all the relationship experiments ever tried—polygamy, wife-swapping, no-fault divorce, open marriage—the one described in the May 15 New York Timesmight be the most perverse. For 10 years, Michael Roach and Christie McNally have been together—for every single minute. The two never stray more than 15 feet from each other. When they eat, they share a plate. When they read, they share the book—the faster reader waiting for the slower to finish the page. When they do yoga, they inhale and exhale together. When "he is inspired by an idea in the middle of the night, she rises from their bed and follows him to their office 100 yards down the road, so he can work." Oh, and did we mention that 1) they live in a yurt in the Arizona desert and 2) they're celibate?

Roach and McNally, who are Buddhist teachers (though he also made a fortune in the jewelry business), consider their partnership a "high form of Buddhist practice." Roach told the Times, "It forces you to deal with your own emotions so you can't say, 'I'll take a break.' "

Slate V Video: Watch David and Hanna's day of closeness.

When we read about the couple—separately, because we would never read the newspaper together—it didn't remind us of a high form of Buddhist practice. It reminded us of a particularly sadistic reality TV show or the "Love Toilet," Saturday Night Live's commode built for two. ("Why not share the most intimate moment of them all? … Because when you are in love, even five minutes apart can seem like an eternity.")

But then we began to wonder if we could learn something from these Buddhist claustrophiles. * We've been married (extremely happily!) for almost 11 years, with two children to show for it. But the idea of enforced physical proximity seemed terrifying—not to mention logistically impossible. How could we stay 15 feet apart if one of us had to take child A to her school while the other walked child B to his? Or when David had a meeting in his office at the same moment Hanna had a meeting in hers across town? It also seemed masochistic: Given even the briefest reprieve from work or child care, we're each of us out the door for a fortifying run, shopping expedition, or Starbucks jaunt. Which in turn led us to wonder if all the solo rushing around is its own kind of avoidance. Maybe we're crippling our marriage by neglect. Maybe we've turned it into a tag-team business partnership in which we mechanically swap off work and kid obligations, each viewing the other as a shift laborer.

Inspired by Slate's "Human Guinea Pig," we decided to subject our marriage to the Roach-McNally discipline. We would follow their rules for 24 hours and see whether it would be an exercise in mutual mindfulness or protracted torture. We cut a 15-foot length of string. Then we warned the kids that Wednesday was going to be very weird. Here's what happened:

Midnight

David:I'm flossed, brushed, reading in bed. Hanna, who's putting laundry away, decides she needs to walk down the hall to deposit some clothes in our daughter's room, which means I have to get out of bed and follow her. Two minutes later, she does this again, and again I must get up. I utter some very un-Buddhalike curses. I can see why Roach and McNally moved into a one-room yurt—no hallways to negotiate, no kid bedrooms, no kids.