I’ve been saying for a number of years that the Next Big Thing after transmania looks like polygamy (no doubt under some fashionable euphemism). From New York magazine:
Cats are cuter looking than actual polyamorists.
From the Washington Post:
This book about open marriage is going to blow up your group chat
Molly Roden Winter’s memoir, ‘More,’ is a very frank—and very hot—look at her non-monogamous union
Review by Kimberly Harrington
January 14, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. ESTLet’s get this out of the way right now: This book is a scorcher.
“More: A Memoir of Open Marriage” is bound to be passed furtively from friend to friend and gobbled up after the kids go to bed. It will make for an electrifying book club pick, inciting debate over what marriage means. Is monogamy the entire point? Is love? Does wanting your partner to be happy include finding happiness in the arms (and bed) of another person? Where does loyalty come into play —not just loyalty to a relationship or a partner, but loyalty to one’s self? “More” explores these questions—and more.
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?)
I strongly doubt this, but the Washington Post reviewer says so. And what do I know?
The New York Times reviewer is less enthusiastic, but can’t come out and insult the author:
How a Polyamorous Mom Had ‘a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself
In her memoir, “More,” Molly Roden Winter recounts the highs and lows of juggling an open marriage with work and child care.
“In a place like Brooklyn, you would think there would be just more sexual freedom,” said Molly Roden Winter, “but it’s reserved for people who are not moms.”
By Alexandra Alter
Jan. 13, 2024For anyone prone to experiencing secondhand embarrassment, there’s a scene in Molly Roden Winter’s debut, “More: A Memoir of Open Marriage,” that should come with a warning.
Winter is at her home in Brooklyn. She has just had sex with her boyfriend while her two children sleep upstairs. Her husband, Stewart, consented to her tryst, but feeling guilty, she dashes naked into the kitchen to text him: Don’t worry, she writes, “he has nothing on you as a lover.” But instead of texting her husband, she accidentally sends the message to her boyfriend, who leaves in a huff, and later breaks up with her. Winter, devastated, begs her husband to come home to comfort her.
“I still get a little nauseous thinking about it,” said Winter, 51, who was sipping tea in the living room of her bright and airy townhouse in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “Talk about the cringiest, cringiest, most awful thing that could happen.”
It’s far from the only agonizing and breathtakingly candid scene in “More,” which documents Winter’s often turbulent experience of open marriage—the resentment and jealousy she felt toward her husband’s girlfriends, the flashes of guilt and shame, and the challenges of juggling her obligations as a wife and mother with her pursuit of sexual and romantic fulfillment.
Winter is keenly aware that people may judge her for the behavior she describes in “More.” But she also said she felt compelled to write about her experience, in part because she felt that non-monogamy is so often depicted as something happening on the fringes, not as a lifestyle that married moms pursue.
“I felt like there were no stories from the mainstream about it, and I felt very closeted,” Winter said. “It often feels like mothers are not supposed to be sexual beings.”
“More,” which Doubleday will release on Jan. 16, is landing at a moment when polyamory is drifting from the margins to the mainstream. About a third of Americans surveyed in a YouGov poll in February of 2023 said they preferred some form of non-monogamy in relationships.
