For anyone prone to embarrassing second-hand feelings, 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 had just had sex with her boyfriend while her two children were sleeping upstairs. Her husband Stewart agreed to their date, but she feels guilty and runs naked into the kitchen to text him: “Don't worry,” she writes, “as a lover he has nothing to do with you.” But instead While texting her husband, she accidentally sends the message to her boyfriend, who leaves in a huff and later breaks up with her. Winter is devastated and asks her husband to come home to comfort her.
“I still feel a little nauseous when I think about it,” said Winter, 51, sipping tea in the living room of her bright and airy townhouse in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “Talk about the worst, worst, most terrible thing that can happen.”
It's far from the only excruciating and breathtakingly candid scene in “More,” documenting Winter's often tumultuous 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 balancing her responsibilities as a wife and mother with her pursuit of sexual and romantic fulfillment.
Winter is keenly aware that others might judge her for the behavior she describes in “More.” But she also said she felt compelled to write about her experiences, in part because she felt non-monogamy is so often portrayed as something that happens on the fringes, rather than a lifestyle that married mothers enjoy track.
“I felt like there weren't any mainstream stories about it, and I felt very closed off,” Winter said. “There is often a feeling that mothers shouldn’t be sexual beings.”
“More,” which Doubleday will release on January 16, lands at a moment when polyamory is drifting from the fringe into the mainstream. About a third of Americans surveyed in a YouGov poll in February 2023 said they prefer some form of non-monogamy in relationships.
In addition to novels, television shows, and films depicting throuples, polycules, and other varieties of open relationships, there is a growing body of nonfiction that explores the ethical and logistical hurdles of polyamory. Recent titles include memoirs such as journalist Rachel Krantz's 2022 book “Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy” and self-help and inspirational books such as “The Anxious Person's Guide to Non-Monogamy” and “The Polyamory.” Paradox” and “A Polyamory Devotional” with 365 daily reflections for polyamorous people.
Jessica Fern, a psychotherapist who counsels people in open relationships, said Winter's report adds a new layer to the growing catalog of nonfiction books about polyamory.
“Her story about what it means for a mother to be erotically charged, I haven't seen enough of that story,” said Fern, author of “Polysecure” and “Polywise.”
Fern noted that there may be a lack of books by mothers in open marriages because they are simply too busy: “When you're a parent and you're polyamorous, who has time to write?”
Winter admits that polyamory can be stressful — especially when she has to balance it with marriage, childcare and work as an 8th-grade English teacher.
“I didn’t sleep much,” she said.
Opening a marriage isn't just about doing whatever – and whoever – she wants, she said. She had to shed internalized sexism and her tendency to put others' needs ahead of her own, issues that she worked through in therapy. What began as a search for sexual thrills unexpectedly led to self-discovery.
“I thought non-monogamy was just about sex,” she said. “I thought I was going to have a big sexual adventure and it was going to be super exciting. And that was it until it wasn’t.”
To be clear: “More” is also about sex. Winter recounts her experiments with butt plugs, fisting, and anal sex, and catalogs her extramarital relationships – which range from brief encounters in seedy hotel rooms to years-long romantic partnerships – in great detail. She changed the names of her and her husband's respective partners to protect their privacy, but often leaves little else to her imagination.
There's “Karl,” the generous German lover who seems eager to please her in bed, then pressures her into a threesome with him and his fiancée, and then ghosts her. There's “Laurent,” the French-Argentinian lover who refuses to wear condoms and enjoys having sex in public toilets and co-working spaces – a fetish that gets Winter banned from a shared office for life.
And there's “Jay,” a 29-year-old with a shockingly large penis. After they have unsatisfactory sex, Jay tells Winter that he normally cannot orgasm during intercourse, but that he plans to masturbate in memory of her. “You’re cute,” she tells him.
Winter grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and was in her early 20s when she met Stewart Winter, the man she would marry. He made them laugh and was enthusiastic about his work, composing music for television shows and films.
In 2008, they had been married for almost a decade and had two young sons when Winter met someone else. Frustrated after a tiring day of caring for her boys while he worked long hours, she went for a walk one evening. A friend invited her for a drink and she struck up a flirtatious conversation with a man at the bar.
When she told her husband later, to her surprise, he wasn't angry. Instead, he told her to sleep with her new acquaintance and tell her the details.
After Winter started dating, it wasn't long before Stewart started seeing other women. Although she agreed that it was only fair, she was overcome by jealousy and occasionally demanded that the marriage be consummated.
Stewart confirmed that he initially found the open marriage easier.
“Molly was maybe more sophisticated than me at that point,” he said, comparing his dating experience to “at a salad bar.”
In the early years, many of her sexual adventures proved unsatisfactory. At the time, most online dating sites did not cater to polyamorous people, so she sometimes resorted to dating men who cheated on their wives and girlfriends. “Not my finest hour,” she said.
Some of her closest friends feared that she would sabotage their marriage and get hurt.
“I worried that she was so focused on the sex part that she wasn't really thinking about the emotional element,” said Rebecca Morrissey, a friend for more than 25 years, who added that her concerns subsided when Winter began to develop healthier relationships with her lovers.
Eventually, Winter swore off men who were unfaithful and started dating people who were also in open relationships – a demographic that became easier to find when online dating services added non-monogamous offerings to their offerings have. Even then, the options were limited.
“There were so few people that I was constantly paired with Stewart,” she said.
Winter and her husband struggled with when and how to tell their sons about their agreement and wanted to wait until their children were mature enough to handle it. That plan fell through when her eldest son, then 13, saw his father's online dating profile on his laptop and texted his mother in a panic, asking if they were in an open marriage. Her youngest son experienced it in a similar way several years ago when he was 14, she said.
Meanwhile, her sons, ages 19 and 21, are indifferent to their parents' sex lives. Her oldest read her book and told Winter that he skipped some of the “smallest” sex scenes, while her youngest chose not to read it, she said.
It took a few years before Winter felt comfortable revealing the details of her open marriage to a wider circle of friends and family.
As she told her mother about her adventures in non-monogamy, she learned more about how her parents, who have been married for nearly 60 years, also had an open marriage.
Her parents, Mary and Philip Roden, were somewhat unhappy with the intimate details their daughter revealed in her memoirs, but ultimately approved of the book, they said in a video interview.
“On the whole, I completely agreed with what she said,” Mary Roden said, although she noted that she was put off by “the crude sexual descriptions.”
Stewart, for his part, is excited about the memoir but worries that people will think he manipulated his wife into opening their marriage.
“To be completely honest, all of my reservations stem from me being selfish and wondering how this will make me look?” he said.
“More” ends in 2018, with Winter’s boyfriend, whose wife recently divorced him, breaking up with her after she rejected his ultimatum to end their own marriage. Winter was heartbroken but moved on and has had other serious romances since.
She has become more confident that her 24-year marriage has benefited from her outside relationships. She's considering another book about her open marriage – which will, among other things, focus on the surprising connections she's made with the “other women” in her life, including Stewart's girlfriends and the wives of the men she dates .
For now, Winter is bracing for the impact the book will inevitably have on her and the people around her — but she doesn't seem daunted by it.
“I spent a lot of time reassuring everyone else,” she said. “This doesn’t feel like something to be afraid of.”