The 50 years old Erland lives in an industrial town, works in the local paper mill, and manages with his wife a seminar about marriage problems at the Pentecostal church. Everything is fine, until his best friend Sven-Erik introduces him his wife Karin at a party. The desire between Erland and Karin is tangible, and the situation soon becomes unbearable. Then Erland suggests a “rational solution”: to face the crisis all together, living in the same house and creating a sort of temporary commune with rules of behaviour and schifts for cooking and cleaning dishes, waiting for this out-of-marriage passion to come to an end.