Yes. It's common, it isn't a symptom of anything, and you're allowed to stop reading here.
But most people who type this question aren't actually asking whether other couples do it. They're asking whether wanting it means something is wrong with them, or with the person sitting on the other end of the sofa. That's a different question, and almost nothing written on this subject bothers to answer it. So that's what the rest of this is.
"Normal" is two questions, and only one of them is bothering you
The word is doing two jobs at once. The first job is statistical: do other people do this. That one has a boring answer. Therapists write about it, magazines run the same article every February, and the search box finished your sentence for you before you had typed six words, which means a lot of people got there ahead of you this week.
The second job is diagnostic: is this a sign of something. That's the one that kept you up, and it's a completely different question wearing the same coat.
Nobody looks this up at eleven at night because they need a percentage. You want to know whether the wanting is information about your relationship. That's a fair thing to want to know, and the honest answer depends on which side of it you're standing on. If you would rather have the broader picture of what any of this actually involves first, the overview of couples roleplay covers that ground plainly.
If you're the one who wants it
The fear here is specific, and it's rarely said out loud: that wanting to be somebody else in bed means you've stopped wanting the person you actually married.
It doesn't follow. Novelty and attachment aren't competing for the same shelf. Wanting a different Tuesday isn't the same as wanting a different person, and the proof is sitting inside the fantasy itself. You aren't picturing a stranger. You're picturing your partner playing a stranger, which requires them to be in the room. There's a reason the daydream never ends with them leaving.
There's a timing version of the same worry, and it belongs to long relationships specifically. Why now. You didn't need this at twenty-six, so wanting it at forty-three feels like evidence that something has quietly degraded in the meantime.
It isn't. At twenty-six the novelty was free. Everything was still new by default, including the other person, and nobody had to arrange any of it. What changes after a decade together isn't the appetite. It's that the supply stopped arriving on its own. Wanting to manufacture something that used to just show up isn't decline, it's arithmetic.
That doesn't clear absolutely everything, and it would be dishonest to pretend it does. If the specific appeal is that your partner stops being your partner entirely, that one is worth sitting with before acting on it. Not because it's shameful. Because it changes what you're asking for, and they deserve to know which version of the question they're answering.
If your partner brought it up and you're rattled
Almost nothing written on this topic is addressed to you, which is odd, because you're very likely the one doing the searching. Your partner said a thing over the weekend, you said something noncommittal, and you've been turning it over since.
The fear on this side is that they need something you aren't.
Here's the part worth noticing. Every scenario they could possibly have proposed ends in the same place. Whoever they're pretending to be at the door, it's your face when the door opens. That's a strange way to express dissatisfaction with you.
What it usually means is smaller and more awkward than what you've been imagining. They wanted something, and couldn't find a way to ask that didn't sound like a complaint about the current arrangement. The costume is for the request as much as for the evening. If it helps to see what the low-key end of this looks like before you answer them, roleplay ideas for shy couples is sorted by how exposed each one makes you feel.
None of which obligates you. Being reassured about their motive and being interested are two different arrivals, and you can reach the first without the second. A no here is a no. The thing worth avoiding is answering the question you invented instead of the one they asked.
The one version worth paying attention to
Every article on this subject lands on some version of "as long as it feels good, it's fine," which isn't usable advice. There's nothing in it you could ever check against. So here's a line that you can.
The concerning version isn't frequency and it isn't content. It's whether the two of you can still reach each other without the costume on. If every time anything happens one of you is playing somebody else, and an ordinary unstaged evening has quietly become the thing you both steer around, then the roleplay isn't the problem. That's a distance problem that found a costume.
The check, and it takes about four seconds: when was the last time something happened between the two of you as yourselves? If the answer comes back easily, you're fine, and this article was longer than you needed it to be. If you had to work for it, the thing to look at is the ordinary evenings, not the scenarios.
What normal actually looks like on a Tuesday
Whatever you've been picturing, the real thing is smaller. Most roleplay inside a long relationship runs about twenty minutes, is mildly ridiculous, and gets interrupted at least once by somebody breaking character to laugh or to ask where the good towels went. It isn't a production. Nobody is holding an accent for the full hour.
The part that actually stops most couples isn't nerve. It's admin. Somebody has to decide who's who, what the situation is, and how the thing starts, and that person then spends the whole evening quietly project-managing their own date night. That's the specific gap Romance & Roleplay fills. A scenario arrives in the mail once a month, already written, with a separate guide for each of you, so neither one of you has to be the one who planned it.
If your hesitation is about the wanting rather than the planning, this won't fix that. Nothing that arrives in an envelope will.
And if you're past the question entirely and onto logistics, how to start roleplay with your partner and what to say to initiate roleplay both pick up from there.
See how it works