You’d be forgiven for being a bit cynical, as I was, when I read that the author, Molly Roden Winter, lives in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. (Doesn’t everyone in Park Slope — or any liberal neighborhood in a blue state — have an open marriage these days?) But as the book unfolds, it becomes clear that location matters less than the common elements you’d expect to find when a couple decide to open their marriage: jealousy, lust, insecurity, blowups, letdowns, relentless self-examination — and a lot of therapy.
Winter is 10 years into her relationship with her husband, Stewart, when she storms out after he returns from work “early,” at almost 9 p.m., when she’s been home with their two kids all day. Her exit will feel familiar to a lot of mothers, as she leaves unshowered and without her wallet. She runs into a former colleague who is younger, single and child-free. The author accepts an offer to come along for drinks with friends, and it’s here that everything is set in motion: Winter meets Matt, a younger, deep-voiced, green-eyed temptation to stray. One, we find out later, who is cheating on his girlfriend. (Most of the names and identifying details have been changed for privacy.) Eventually, Winter branches out to hookups via Ashley Madison, a dating app with the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair.” Dedicated ethical nonmongamists will no doubt take issue with the unethical start to this open relationship, but sex is messy in all the ways, and Winter’s experience is no different.
Winter never shies from the truths and challenges of a long-term relationship, specifically a heterosexual monogamous marriage: the hard-won history and simmering resentment, the ease of a shared sexual shorthand yet the hunger for something different, too. Divorce is never on the table. Winter and her husband don’t open their marriage as a way to fix it, and throughout the book, they profess their love for each other. Stewart had told Winter, before they were engaged, that one day, she would be attracted to and want to have sex with another man. He told her that this would be fine with him, as long as she told him everything. And now here they are.
By opening her marriage, Winter also opens a floodgate of self-questioning: Is she a good daughter? A good mother? As she walks into bars she once passed while pushing her kids in strollers, Winter gets a taste of fresh attraction, desire and the potential for sexual freedom. Is this less an opening of a relationship than a desperate return to the self?
In a brilliant authorial (or editorial) decision, within the book’s first pages, we discover that Winter’s oldest child, an adolescent with a newly grown-up voice, knows about the open marriage. With this small bit of information, the author seems to be telling us upfront: The kids know, can we all please move on?
Unfortunately, this choice is almost immediately undercut when shortly after, Winter feels the need to detail how much she loves her children and loves being a mother, even on the worst days. I’ve come to think of this as the Mother Tax of memoir writing, a levy that never seems to come due for men. She goes on: “I can hardly remember the Before Times, when I wasn’t caught in a constant swirl of secret lust and mother’s guilt.”
The American aversion to allowing mothers any sort of basic sexual existence, never mind a multi-partner, boundary-pushing one, challenges the author and will challenge the reader, too. In contrast, it would be impossible to miss that her husband seems to glide through the experience of an open marriage like an alligator in still waters. Dating is simply easier for him than for her because, as he says himself: “I date women. And you date men. And as we both know, men suck.” He never seems to suffer from jealousy, self-doubt or anything remotely akin to “father’s guilt.” Is the couple’s open marriage simply a free-for-all turn-on for him or an experience that can be wholly her own? This is the question Winter wonders throughout.
One of the strengths of this book is its long view. This isn’t the glowing self-righteousness of the newly converted, nor is it the post-mortem of a couple who played with fire and burned everything to the ground. This is a marriage that has been open for six-plus years and remains so. The primary relationship that feels turned inside out is the author’s relationship with herself. To be clear, this is a good thing. Many readers will see themselves in Winter’s doubts and fury, even if they don’t quite see themselves in her shoes otherwise.
The directness of the sex scenes is unapologetic, often hot, but they can also feel a bit like hit-and-runs. Maybe Winter had to keep the action moving because there was so much of it, or maybe it’s just that I prefer to read sex scenes that take their coats off and stay awhile. Sometimes the prose gets lazy (“dumpster fires” feels more appropriate for a conversation or a text than a book) or unnecessarily mean. For someone who regularly worries about how she’s perceived, she’s unsparing in sharing her perception of others. For example, an extraordinarily nice “heavyset” woman “waddles off.”
Early on, the author’s new therapist asks a pointed yet appropriately open question about her desire to have sex with Matt: “What will this mean for you?” This question also feels appropriate for the reader. This book will no doubt find its way into the hands of many people who wouldn’t be caught dead with a copy of “The Ethical Slut” but who are curious enough about open marriage to read the guidebook first, even if they’re not quite ready to take the trip.
Kimberly Harrington is the author of “But You Seemed So Happy” and a creative director who has worked with Apple and Nike.
A Memoir of an Open Marriage
