Rating:

“My heart is open enough to hold it all.”

Author: Molly Roden Winter

Molly’s late-night disagreement with her husband opens a door to a new kind of marriage. In More: A Memoir of Open Marriage Molly ostensibly tells the story of encountering freedom in her marriage, but the actual truth of this supposedly ethically non-monogamous relationship seeps from between the chaotic lines of love sought and lost over the Internet and in shady meetups. What we really get is a story of less: a story of gaslighting and a woman trapped in a bad marriage that she desperately wants to both close and save. The complication: the author doesn’t know it, and while she tries to spin her rocky sexual journey into a story of liberation and newness, we instead see a train wreck of epic proportions and are left closing the book with a sense of sorrow for Molly. She deserves better.

It all starts when Molly, fed-up with a husband who is never at home, never helps with the kids, never does anything, ditches him at last with the children just to get out of the house for a while. She goes to a bar with friends and meets a young man who flirts with her. She goes along with it, finally feeling seen, gets the man’s phone number, and immediately confesses to her husband (probably hoping he will be jealous and maybe show up in their marriage a bit more.) That’s when the book does a 180. Molly’s husband, the despicable Stewart, is more than into it, and encourages Molly to set up a fake relationship with her bar pall. Stewart enjoys hearing about his wife with other men, and while Molly is uncomfortable (and also completely lying to her bar man), she goes along with it.

This is where the gaslighting begins, because it’s not long before Stewart points out that he let her cheat – encouraged her and asked for details and even left the house so she could bring her boyfriend home. Turn about is fair play, right? So, Stewart should get to hook up with his recently divorced ex-girlfriend, right?

It doesn’t take a genius or a psychiatrist to see that Molly, the people pleaser who for some odd reason loves Stewart and would do anything to make him happy, was completely hoodwinked. Her marriage is now open, and Stewart is thrilled. Dating life is going great for him, and he promptly breaks every rule that they have laid down in the newly minted open marriage, including no exes. Molly breaks her own rules too: no falling in love.

What is infuriating is that Stewart is having the time of his life. Endless girlfriends, easy relationships, and forcing Molly to give all the sexual low downs of her escapades (which she hates doing) for his own pleasure. This guy is happy. Molly, however, is very much NOT happy, and repeatedly asks for the marriage to close. But, of course, Stewart ignores this, and Molly’s useless therapist is in on the gaslighting. It appears, during one of their few couple’s sessions, that Stewart is HURT because Molly was a NAG, and so he avoided coming home, helping with the house, and helping with the kids for 8+ years. Awwwwww, poor little baby. Someone get out the tiny violin please.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

As the story goes on, Molly is shockingly open with us, her readers, even though she is closed with herself. She seeks out men who are cheating, instead of others in open relationships, but never introspects on why. Every man she meets is usurious and cruel. She becomes increasingly daring, having sex in public, at work, etc., telling herself that she is having fun, that she is liberated, but you can feel the depression between every sentence. Molly wants to be loved. Instead, Molly becomes a plaything for every man around, and while she may get some sexual pleasure, this too feels like a lie she is telling herself.

Meanwhile, the poor kids suffer. Indeed, one has to wonder how Molly and Stwart have time for work, three or four all night dates a week, and raising kids. This tempered my sympathy for Molly somewhat, because I’m left worried about the fallout for the children. Is anyone ever with them? Is anyone raising them? Have their needs been totally forgotten by two self-absorbed parents? We don’t know.

In the end, the memoir concludes like most do, in the middle of life. It’s not satisfying at all, but it was frank and open, and the rubber-necking site seeing tourist in us all is drawn to the train wreck. But it’s not the message the author is proclaiming. Indeed, many of the things she highlights about traditional (yes, I use that word wryly) ethical non-monogamous relationships are flagrantly violated by both herself and Stewart (umm, open communication for example, which from the way Molly tells it is supposedly the #1 rule.)

I can’t speak on whether this is an accurate representation of the complexities of open marriage or not. What I can say is that it certainly doesn’t sell it at all. Instead, this is a perfect story of gaslighting, of a woman being used as an object continually at the whim of men. The writing is well rendered, the author open about everything, but the story under the story that she herself doesn’t seem to fully see is tragic and heartbreaking. The entirety of More reads like a cry for help, and we as readers find it difficult not to respond. It’s hard to rate something like this. It was interesting and entertaining, but it didn’t say what it thought it was saying. Maybe that’s best. Maybe that is the only truly honest thing in this sad house of lies that is slowly crushing this woman.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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