00:10:46.120We are told that we should subvert our own desires, be they sexual or otherwise, in order
00:10:55.340to raise our children, but I don't think it's serving our children either.
00:11:01.860I don't think it serves the children. I don't. I absolutely don't.
00:11:04.740And it certainly doesn't serve humanity. We need moms to be their full selves.1.00
00:11:09.680Yes. Yes. Yes and yes. So this happens. How do you then move into an open marriage? What1.00
00:11:17.540are the conversations like that get you from there to there?
00:11:22.480Yeah. I mean, we went through a lot of different evolutions and there were a few times when I did
00:11:27.080want to close the marriage. My husband said to me more than once, Molly, you're going to change
00:11:34.800your mind. As soon as you meet someone, you're going to change your mind. And he wasn't wrong.
00:11:40.840But the other person that I had in my ear was my mother because my mother also had an open marriage,
00:11:46.800but she never told me about it. So part of the reason that we persevered for so many years,
00:11:54.580even when things were hard, is that my mother was there on the other side of all this, still
00:12:00.400happily married to my father, saying to me, oh, honey, yeah, I remember those conversations.
00:12:06.560I remember those feelings. You know, don't worry. You know, you could close your marriage. You could
00:12:13.240leave it open. It's all about just paying attention to yourself and continuing to talk
00:12:19.000to your husband and it's going to be okay. So I was getting this like kind of curiosity about
00:12:25.060myself and wanting to push through it. So many ups and downs. But really it went from me fearing
00:12:32.420falling in love with another person and fearing my husband falling in love with another person
00:12:37.900to finally being at a place where I understood, for myself anyway, that that could happen and it
00:12:45.320would actually make us stronger and love each other more, which is what has happened.
00:12:52.100It doesn't make any sense in some ways, but that's what happened. But we had lots of rules
00:12:58.720at the beginning that were all meant to contain it. Our big rule was no falling in love. We had
00:13:05.480lots of other rules. And when I say we, it was really me who was dictating the rules.
00:13:10.840And over time, those rules shifted and my own understanding of what I wanted shifted. I was
00:13:16.860also in therapy during these 10 years. And a lot of the evolution came from our conversations,
00:13:24.720but I'd say even more of the evolution came from my own inner dialogue and my discovery of what it
00:13:32.000was I was looking for the whole time. What did you think you wanted in the beginning? What did
00:13:37.940you think that this was going to accomplish? I wanted to escape. I wanted some excitement
00:13:44.660and adventure. I wanted to be the anti-mom. So I was think I was think I used to go on trips with
00:13:52.520my friends to Las Vegas, too. Like the first time was probably when my kids were one and four. We
00:13:58.900went away for the weekend um so it was before we opened our marriage but it was so exhilarating
00:14:04.380we thought of if anybody knows park slope it's like so mom centric and everybody has a stroller
00:14:11.000and so my friends and i who are also park slope moms like we thought of vegas as like the anti
00:14:16.780park slope too where it was just like because it is yeah totally irresponsible yep nobody made like
00:14:24.320like the goal was to make zero good decisions you know what I mean to be totally irresponsible and
00:14:30.460we had a blast so but that would be like we did that a few times but it was like three days and
00:14:36.240then you'd come back and you'd be like you had seen this glimpse of this self that was you know
00:14:41.600it was just kind of running the it was a it was polarity though it was like bouncing from one
00:14:46.500extreme to the other as opposed to finding a place in the middle so I thought I just wanted to run
00:14:52.720to the other end of the spectrum of irresponsibility. But I think what I really was craving and what I
00:14:59.420have achieved to a degree now anyway, is like an integrated self where I can be my whole self
00:15:05.680all the time. We're going to take a quick break here. When we get back, we'll talk about the
00:15:11.440rules that Molly and her husband set for their open marriage.0.77
00:15:22.720after you meet the guy in the bar you come home you talk to your husband what were the main rules
00:15:33.660besides don't fall in love yeah we had um i for example didn't want him in particular to date
00:15:43.180anybody that he might fall in love with so they had to not like live nearby
00:15:48.160you know no no exes although the first that rule came after he dated his ex and then i was like oh
00:15:55.620i don't like this you know uh-huh sometimes something would happen and then i would make
00:16:00.960a rule about it to like make sure it didn't happen again it feels like no playing chess
00:16:05.600with anybody else because that was our thing yeah i mean that that one that one is so fascinating
00:16:10.600to me because you know i mean obviously you read read read things like this and you're like well
00:16:14.880what would my rule be? What do we like to do together? Right now, it's nothing. We did like
00:16:22.460to do things together before we had a one-year-old. But the no chess, I liked that rule.
00:16:28.900But if you can imagine something you did used to do that you don't have time to do anymore,
00:16:33.400if you started doing that thing with somebody else, even just like, if I had thought of it,
00:16:39.140I would have done like no reading the Sunday Times in Central Park with anybody else,
00:16:44.540because that's what we used to do. We used to like bring a picnic to the park and the newspaper and
00:16:49.180hang out all day. You know, if he were to do that with someone else, I would want to kill him.0.98
00:16:55.280Totally. Well, I mean, that brings me to another question that I have always had for friends who0.95
00:17:01.260have opened their marriages. And I'm essentially living in the park slope of Philadelphia.
00:17:05.860So every, every neighborhood, every city has their park slope.
00:17:09.760Every city has their park slope. But, you know, we are seeing more of our friends opening up their marriages and more women that I know having affairs. And when I've talked to them, I'm like, you know, I am a jealous bitch. And I know this about myself so well that I don't know if I could personally handle it because I think I would seethe with rage all the time.
00:17:38.820Yeah, I did. I did. Part of the reason that I tolerated it is because I did it first. You know what I mean? With his permission. And so then when he wanted to see people too, I knew that wasn't, I knew I couldn't say no because I, you know what I mean? That was, I'm not, I'm not illogical.
00:18:02.060So I was like, all right, if I am seeing other people, I need to let him see other people. But it has taken a very long time for us to get to the understanding that it is still harder for me than it is for him in terms of jealousy. It never really made him jealous in the same way that it made me jealous.
00:18:25.020But what I read this book right away, not right away, but early on called The Ethical Slut.
00:18:47.120I hope my book will be helpful just as an individual deep dive into what it was like.
00:18:52.240but um i loved the line they had that jealousy is just a mask for whatever you have going on right
00:18:59.900now and so for me when i dug underneath the jealousy you didn't have to go very far there
00:19:06.500was anger and you said seething with rage there was anger that that i didn't feel like i had
00:19:12.440enough freedom and he did um and there was insecurity that he was going to love somebody
00:19:19.800else more than me. But when we dug under there, that led to some real changes, because
00:19:26.920if he if he was staying at work, for example, and I was home with the kids.
00:19:33.640That felt like, well, that was just the decision we made, right? He made more money. I was a teacher.
00:19:39.700It makes sense for me. You know, eventually I did go back to work, but I didn't have to. You know,
00:19:44.640I was a teacher, so I still picked the kids up from school and had their vacations off and all
00:19:48.940Yeah. You're the primary parent. Like, yeah, 100%. Right. But once he started dating, I could say, wait a minute, if you're going out, I'm going in. You know, as opposed to my feeling like I was supposed to stay at home with the kids.
00:20:07.400It just changed enough for me that I started giving myself permission to do something that wasn't kid-centric.
00:20:17.220And there was still a lot of guilt around it.
00:20:19.580But ultimately, I discovered this is better for me.
00:20:23.320I am not walking around as an angry, migraine-riddled person.
00:20:28.780And as I started to feel better in my own skin, I started to realize this is actually
00:20:37.340good for my kids, too, and for my family and for my marriage.
00:20:40.120But that wasn't like really the prime motive.
00:20:42.460The primary motive was like I felt broken and I needed I needed to reestablish some
00:21:37.380It's like I had the adrenaline at that point anyway.
00:21:41.800But there were some things that started to become more balanced in our relationship that made me appreciate what was happening for him.
00:21:53.040I started to see some change, too, in him based on, honestly, some of the women he was dating, too. Some of the understanding he was getting around what it's like to be a mother, because a lot of the women he was dating were also mothers.
00:22:11.100And so my next book, actually, spoiler, is going to be about the relationships with these other women. In polyamory, there's a term called metamore, and it's your partner's partner. And I haven't always met my partner's partner, but I have a lot to thank them for in terms of what they have taught my husband. And my partner's wives always tend to love me, whether they've met me or not, because I am their biggest advocate.
00:22:35.340I'm like oh no you're not going out tonight your kid is sick hell no go home you know that kind of
00:22:41.720thing so we kind of have each other's back too in this weird sister wife kind of way oh I'm very
00:22:47.400into that I'm very into that well because it does a marriage a marriage requires a village
00:22:52.200and I think that in America we've lost that village we've siloed ourselves into these0.74
00:22:58.560very small nuclear units absolutely we no longer have the brothers the sisters the cousins the
00:23:05.600aunties the uncles giving you advice you know pushing you in the right direction like we we
00:23:11.240think that we can do this all ourselves and the fact is we can't yeah I am so appreciative I
00:23:16.860didn't marry my husband until he was I think he was 42 yeah he was 42 um because he's turning 50
00:23:22.480this year and I was 35 and I'm so appreciative to all of the women that dated him before yeah
00:23:27.700because they fixed him i you know they did i mean i still had to do so much work and there's still
00:23:34.780much more to do but these women like already did put in all of the work that i had been putting in
00:23:42.800with these terrible men for years while i was yeah yeah so i got him as a fully formed human
00:23:49.080in the world and the other interesting thing i have to say about this is we live in a society
00:23:56.580where I don't think men have nearly enough space to have relationships with women.
00:24:01.800If you had more of, like, a council or a coven of female friends,
00:24:07.840then they would be telling you how to better be a partner in the world.
00:24:13.260That is so good. I love that idea, Jo.
00:24:15.860You know, male-female relationships are always only sexual.0.99
00:24:19.340And that's actually kind of a joke in polyamory,
00:24:22.780that, like, people say swingers have sex without talking0.95
00:24:26.620and polyamorous people talk without having sex.
00:24:30.260And, like, I do have partners now that, like,
00:24:33.640maybe we used to be sexual in the past, but we're not anymore.
00:24:36.800But, like, we still hang out because there's also something lovely
00:24:41.160about the intimacy that has been established early on.
00:24:45.500Five of my husband's ex-girlfriends were at our wedding.
00:24:48.940Like, he always has stayed friends with his exes.
00:24:51.540same same i had we had four of his exes at our wedding and we had three of mine
00:24:57.080very nice we had zero of mine because i only had one ex and i no longer could talk to him
00:25:03.160no so i hadn't ever really dated widely i got married i met my husband when i was 23
00:25:08.680so i also you're a baby i was and yeah so he was is five years older he had dated more but was
00:25:16.220also, you know, he was 31 when we got married. So I feel like you're so right. And, you know,
00:25:24.080I think it was Mike Pence who said in an interview, like, he wouldn't even have lunch
00:25:28.440with a female colleague or something like that. Like, think about when men have no interaction
00:25:35.900with women, what are they think the world is? Come on. Come on. No, exactly. Exactly. And it's
00:25:44.780So many of the women that I've interviewed for She Wants More Say, it's just been world opening for everyone.
00:25:51.760The kinds of connections that you can make are not just sexual.
00:26:12.660Yeah, but usually, I mean, there is this paradigm that when we get married, we shut ourselves off to opening up like that in that way, except for couple friends and things like that. So I do, I think there is so much that we can learn. People who don't even want to open up their marriages just from the model of polyamory about what all of us are missing out on as human beings.
00:26:37.140absolutely and yeah a good friend of mine who's monogamous but is still close friends with one
00:26:42.440of her ex-boyfriends she said like reading my book actually helped her talk to her husband a little
00:26:47.680because like she really wanted to go away for a weekend trip with her ex-boyfriend because like
00:26:53.580they miss each other and so they did and it was just like it was just like revelatory they have
00:27:01.960such a good time and they came back more kind of like juiced to be with their partners too and
00:27:07.100she was like and nothing sexual happened i'm not attracted to him anymore but he's like my brother
00:27:11.540and the fact that like i can't hang out with him unchaperoned anymore or something it's like it's
00:27:18.180upsetting you know so i love this idea that we're gonna broach that kind of thing too and my parents
00:27:26.580also who who had an open marriage they are still close friends with some of their former partners
00:27:32.400And that's like what my mother's main partner when I was a kid, I knew him as her best friend.
00:27:39.540I didn't know anything else was going on.
00:27:41.600I didn't find out till my aunt told me when I was 28.
00:27:44.580And I was like, oh, yeah, we'll tell the audience a little bit about that moment that you found out that that your parents had had an open marriage.
00:27:51.560Yeah. And it was it was before we had opened opened. But after we had done some of the like, you know, a couple sex clubs, threesome or two kind of thing that I was like, oh, I'm not into it. And then my aunt told me that my mother had had an affair with her best friend. It took me a year to confront my mother about it. And when I did, I asked her if my dad knew. And she said, well, it was your father's idea. But she never used the term open marriage.
00:28:19.840And so it wasn't then we didn't have another conversation about it until after I had opened my marriage and wanted to talk to her because it took a while for me to realize what I was really looking for was that kind of connection that she had with a guy.
00:28:37.360You know, I love I loved the friendship she had with this guy who I call Jim in the story.
00:28:47.620So I feel like that is part of what I have gained.
00:28:50.640But it took me a while to get there because I was also so afraid of falling in love or of my husband falling in love that I was trying to keep my my contact with other men very superficial for a while.
00:29:02.520So I feel like the first half of the book is almost sad in some ways because of I didn't quite know what I was looking for, but I wanted to show readers kind of like what the trajectory really looked like for me.
00:29:16.180So I wrote it in present tense to really be in that place and not look back with a more with a wiser eye.
00:29:25.800I wanted to really show what was happening for me during those years, which was really from age 35 to 45.
00:29:34.500And part of it was looking for friendship, looking for connection.
00:29:38.740Right. Yeah. Yeah. And in the beginning, how was the sex? Was it satisfying or were you trying lots of different things and not necessarily getting what you wanted? Or was your mind blown right away?
00:29:52.340My mind was not blown right away. No, my mind was blown occasionally by things I discovered I liked. You know what I mean? Things that were, you know, I still consider myself pretty vanilla overall, because once you dip a toe into this world, like, I don't know if anybody's ever been on the field app.
00:30:11.300but i went on field when i was in london partly because i just wanted to see if there was an
00:30:15.440open marriage scene there yeah and seeing i was non-monogamous everybody kept inviting me to like
00:30:20.920dungeon parties and i was like oh no no oh i'm not into that and the assumption was if you're
00:30:29.200non-monogamous you're like into bdsm and i'm like no that's not what i was into um so i'm pretty
00:30:36.300vanilla i think but one man's vanilla is another man's kink right so i mean i i i'm actually i'm
00:30:42.840working on an essay right now uh as i'm promoting my new my new novel the sicilian inheritance because
00:30:48.880i put some some steamy sex scenes in it but i'm like yeah i mean steamy enough right like average0.56
00:30:54.040person sex and uh but i'm writing an essay about how do you write steamy sex scenes when you0.97
00:30:58.300actually really like vanilla sex like when i'm just like i'm like whoa i get off on missionary0.95
00:31:04.020sorry what's hilarious is people when people describe my book as like steamy or like raunchy
00:31:11.780i'm like are you joking it shocked me it shocked me because i don't think it's that raunchy i just
00:31:18.680i don't think it is either it's just honest it's honest about sex that it happens in the world and
00:31:25.320It's not, it's not painted over with some sort of like gauzy filter.
00:32:20.420No, I, but it like taught me something about myself.1.00
00:32:23.340It taught me to, like, look at my anus, which I had not done before, and, like, explore a little bit and realize that sometimes shit comes out during sex.0.99
00:32:34.560And, you know, nobody talks about that.0.99
00:32:37.640And the truth is, if you can't be comfortable with someone, if a little shit comes out during sex, that's not going to be good.0.99
00:32:46.660I don't know if they're the shit during sex scene might have gotten cut from my book, but there's sometimes this shit.1.00
00:32:51.520they're shit and they're shit and yeah i mean bodily fluids galore galore yeah yeah and it's1.00
00:32:57.680funny sometimes and if so part of what i learned in this exploration was i need something i can1.00
00:33:03.200laugh with and i need someone who's not going to take it all too seriously and i need it to not
00:33:10.220feel like a performance but that's partly because i felt like it was a performance for a lot of years
00:33:16.420Not with my husband, but I was, you know, I was exploring. I hadn't done the whole dating thing in my 20s ever. I hadn't really ever done it. And for friends of mine who were single throughout their 20s, they may not want open relationships, but they still might want male friends or they still might want freedom in these other ways.
00:33:37.020So I think it looks different for different people, what you're going to want. But I didn't ever get that. So it was something I think I needed to do to get in touch with my own body and my own physicality and my own eroticism in a way I never had.
00:33:50.200yeah yeah i hear that when it is amazing how many similarities i hear and that's why like so many of
00:33:57.080this does feel universal to the female experience and yet we haven't talked about and yet we haven't
00:34:03.360talked about it but yes so many women especially women that got married young said i didn't even0.60
00:34:08.560know what i liked to do i just started having this kind of sex because i thought that's the
00:34:13.980kind of sex I wanted to be having and I didn't know what turned me on um and yeah and you know
00:34:21.140are like this is why exploring now in my 30s and 40s that's that's part of why I had to do it
00:34:28.700yeah and it doesn't and it feels like as you were saying before with mothers that we're we're
00:34:35.000I've used this line before but you know it feels like we're we're meant to put on this one size
00:34:41.600fits all mom suit. And we have to lop off the parts of ourselves that don't fit inside. And
00:34:48.080it's just minimizing for such a big swath of the female population that we are denying our society1.00
00:34:59.320the full vitality of like feminine energy. It feels that vital to me. The more women I've talked
00:35:07.420to, even in the few weeks since my book came out, I've been feeling it more stridently, you know,
00:35:14.600that you don't know how much your story is going to resonate with other people until people start
00:35:19.320responding to it. But because of the responses I've been getting, it seems really quite critical
00:35:25.760to me now that this is something that women's full expression, whether that's through open0.93
00:35:31.980marriage or not, I don't have a vested interest in everybody being polyamorous. I haven't written
00:35:36.720a manifesto. But I do think our society has a vested interest in the full expression of women0.81
00:35:44.500and for men to be exposed to more that I led. So I love your idea about more men having female
00:35:52.020friendships, like more, more, more women. That's not what I meant initially when I have the word
00:35:59.460more in my book as my title, but I think it's more a lot of things and more feminine energy
00:36:05.740is one of them. Yes. More feminine energy, more conversation, you know, more, yes, more, more,0.99
00:36:12.280more. How did you come up with the title for the book? Yeah, well, my title was initially The
00:36:17.320Experiment because it felt like this grand experiment. But it sounded, yeah, that my
00:36:23.660publisher didn't like that. And so then we switched to Open. But then Rachel Krantz wrote a book called
00:36:29.160Open about her own open relationship, which is very different from mine. And I'm a big fan of
00:36:35.460having lots of different takes. She was, you know, single, not, not with kids. And so it was just an
00:36:42.340open relationship, which led her down a very different road than it led me down. So, um,
00:36:47.720but this, we needed a new title and I was like, oh no, I don't have a new title. I don't have
00:36:52.280another title. And then it was during, I meditate. I started meditating after the period that the
00:36:58.580book takes place. And the title came to me in a meditation. And I was like, my mother says to me
00:37:04.040more than once in the book. The first time was when I was breaking up with somebody. And I love
00:37:11.580it that when I was breaking up with someone, the two people who really consoled me were my husband
00:37:16.860and my mother, usually the two last people you could tell. But my friends couldn't really handle
00:37:22.340it at the time. They couldn't wrap their heads around what I was doing. Everybody gets it now
00:37:27.400because they've seen that my life didn't implode and now they actually seek advice from me all the
00:37:34.180time because they think I'm actually pretty good at this relationship thing. But my mother said,
00:37:39.980oh, sweetie, don't worry, there will be more. And she had more than one partner. But I think
00:37:47.940I come to understand that there will be a lot more of a lot of things when you open yourself up
00:37:56.520to the truest expression of yourself. Yeah. And the good and the bad, right? Yes. And how else
00:38:04.360are you going to grow if you don't have some pain? Right. I think in our society, too, we think
00:38:10.080and I get this question a lot, like, well, it seems like you were having a lot of difficulty
00:38:16.240in the early stages of opening up your marriage. Why didn't you close it? Or why didn't you get
00:38:21.960a divorce. And I'm like, well, I also had a lot of difficulty in the early stages of motherhood,
00:38:26.860but nobody says, why didn't you give your children up for adoption? Yes. Yes. Like we know
00:38:33.260that sometimes things are hard, even when they're valuable and maybe especially because they're
00:38:39.620valuable, maybe that's where we learn and grow. So if we only avoid the things that are hard,
00:38:46.480not a lot would happen. And we wouldn't, I think, do what we're supposed to do on this planet.
00:38:51.960which is learn about ourselves through relationship.
00:38:56.300I think that's a big part of the human experience.
00:39:00.540So I knew I could tell, and therapy helped.
00:39:05.600Conversations with my husband were essential.
00:39:08.520But I could tell something important was happening,
00:39:13.640And I didn't want to turn my back on that
00:39:16.080and try to go back into some safe space
00:39:18.400because I also knew I was at a breaking point
00:39:21.960when this all began. So reverting to something that also hadn't been working for me didn't feel
00:39:28.100like a great idea. And I loved my husband and I did not want to divorce him. People have a hard
00:39:34.220time believing me. Do you get that? Yes. Yes. I mean, that's, that is the number one thing that
00:39:40.460I've heard from people before they listened to the podcast. They're like, if, if you're not happy,
00:39:46.300get a divorce. Yeah. Yeah. And that feels like the most simplistic thing ever. I mean, it's almost
00:39:53.480in, you know, I've compared it to if you're not happy with your job, quit. There's a lot more to
00:39:59.100a job than your happiness. There is supporting your family. There is the fact that maybe you
00:40:05.900do enjoy some parts of what you do. Like it is not all black and white, but people love that line.
00:40:11.480They do. And I've been accused not a lot, but a couple of times of being anti-divorce because one of my partners was going through a divorce and I said something disparaging. But it was also like I didn't want him to be in a divorce because then he wanted me to be monogamous. So it was like it was going to be complicated. But I am not anti-divorce.
00:40:32.940I feel like the best marriages, though, and the best partnerships are those in which both people are giving each other freedom to grow throughout their lives.
00:40:43.960Because I can't still be the same person I was when I was 23 when I met my husband.
00:40:50.660If that were the expectation, then I would get a divorce.
00:40:54.680If he didn't want me to ever become more than I was at 23, I wouldn't be able to stay in my marriage.
00:41:00.900but he was encouraging me to do things and to grow in ways that I do think I needed to grow.
00:41:09.380And I was also trying to give him the space to do that, even though it was really, really hard
00:41:14.480for me. Right. Because I feel like that's what a good marriage is. You let each other grow. And
00:41:20.540if we had ended up growing away from each other and not being in love with each other anymore,
00:41:25.460then I think we would have gotten a divorce. But that's not what happened.
00:41:28.900So I think we have to redefine what makes a good marriage, too.
00:41:32.900We think that monogamy automatically makes a good marriage, and I don't think that's
00:41:39.540true, nor do I think non-monogamy makes a good marriage.
00:41:43.120I've seen a lot of non-monogamous marriages end, and for good reason.
00:41:47.320But, you know, we have to think about what it is that we're trying to achieve as human
00:41:56.080And can we change the container as needed to make marriage work for people?
00:42:04.680And maybe by introducing some more flexibility and some more conscious decision making about what will our marriage look like as opposed to everybody adopting the same model that they were handed by their parents.
00:42:18.480right right i mean it is interesting because we have uh you know blown up so many other models
00:42:25.960and so many other industries and evolved and yet marriage does remain this kind of one institution
00:42:32.460that people get very nervous when you talk about doing anything different i heard like dan savage
00:42:40.620talking about this on the savage love cast that like i didn't know this that um there were like
00:42:46.680right-wing conspiracies out there that like all this talk about polyamory was you know some sort
00:42:53.900of like takedown of the nuclear family and he was so he mentioned my book and was like no it's just
00:43:02.500like a really good PR campaign by this woman who wrote a message you know what I mean and I'm like
00:43:07.740thank you publicist at Doubleday and it's true in some ways but I'm like I had no idea that people
00:43:14.540were like it's been crazy people are like really upset and i'm like i just told my story i didn't
00:43:21.360even it's not a how-to manual it's not in anything except my story and it's so threatening to people0.76
00:43:27.760this is just your life but yes and i think that women's stories are threatening to people
00:43:34.780i do i saw that so much we had a lot of hate thrown at us for even daring to publish podcasts
00:43:43.860about women having affairs yeah and we were told very similar things that we were undermining the
00:43:49.640institution of marriage that we were undermining the nuclear family that this was some kind of
00:43:54.460liberal agenda as opposed to a woman just talking about her life and crying for help sometimes too
00:44:03.260you know what i mean like help sometimes in many ways that that my opening my marriage was started
00:44:09.120out as a cry for help, you know, and it could have gone a number of different ways and I could have
00:44:17.300learned everything that I needed to learn about myself and then closed my marriage. And that
00:44:21.460would have been fine too, you know, or I might've cried for help in a different way. It turned out
00:44:27.160that this was something that I, I, I changed the way I was doing it many, many times. And the way
00:44:34.500it looks now is different than it looked even at the end of the book, which ends in 2018.
00:44:40.320But that's because life is long and I'm changing as a person. And that's me that I keep evolving
00:44:46.920and growing. I love being 51. It's way better than 41, which was way better than 31, which was
00:44:54.260way better than 21. So I can't like I'm loving my 50s. And I feel like we also need to model for
00:45:01.620younger women that life doesn't end when you get married and life doesn't end again when your kids
00:45:10.700leave like I cried for a little while when I dropped my youngest at school to college but then
00:45:20.500it's been kind of fantastic I have to say and I feel like you're kind of not supposed to say that
00:45:26.140either but it's better for my kid that i'm not like calling him constantly and sobbing and like
00:45:32.960what will i do with myself like why would we do why would i waste all of this potential all the
00:45:40.400things i've learned by just sobbing over my empty nest for the rest of my life which is kind of what
00:45:46.960the the image that i was shown yes well also just the way of do you just described it an empty nest
00:45:54.060you're empty now yes i'm empty right or the other one i love is the selfless mother the mother who
00:46:00.080has no self right like you're just a void you're just a void i mean i think about that too with
00:46:07.780words like stay at home mother yeah oh you're not you're not you're not a work at home mother
00:46:12.840you're just staying just staying and not allowed out yeah yeah i know the words we use to describe0.70
00:46:19.280women are terrible. And we can only break it with stories. That is the only way we can fix0.85
00:46:24.600anything. It is true. It is so true. We are going to take a quick break here. And when we get back,
00:46:31.680I want to talk to Molly about when she first talked to her kids about having an open marriage.0.77
00:46:49.280When did you first talk to your children about having an open marriage?
00:46:55.760Yeah, well, I didn't handle this great.
00:47:01.080I was trying to hide it from my kids, just like my mother hid it from me.
00:47:07.520Even though I came to see that it was like I was glad I knew.
00:47:10.840But I always had a little ambivalence.
00:47:12.480Like, did I want to know when I was a kid?
00:48:37.980It's kind of also like if you're married and living with your husband and you don't, you know, you don't necessarily announce, hey, kids, we're going upstairs to have sex.
00:48:51.000Although there was an article about this, I think it was in The Atlantic recently, about like, how do parents get it on?
00:48:57.100I didn't read it yet. I should read it.
00:48:59.020Yeah, it's pretty good. But it was like, it was an interesting kind of poll. There were like 20% of parents said that they tell their children that they need time to be intimate or something. But they use kind of like coach, you know, couch it in, I don't know, vague language.
00:49:15.640right but that's also kind of like you know nobody knows kind of how to talk about sex with
00:49:21.640their kids period or even just acknowledging that you have sex with your with your the father of
00:49:30.660your children you know what i mean let alone having sex with people outside of the marriage
00:49:35.380So I think there needs to be more done collectively to normalize this. I feel like now that my kids are older, I'm glad they know that I'm a sexual person because they have told me about some of the stuff that's going on in their own lives.
00:49:55.880they don't want to tell me details i don't need them to tell me details but there have been some
00:50:02.180things that they've like confronted that um i'm glad that they feel comfortable talking to both
00:50:09.180me and to my husband about stuff and it's not a completely sanitized pearl clutching household
00:50:17.940and i think that's important so ultimately i think it's it's good to talk to your kids about
00:50:24.800what you're doing. It's never easy, no matter if you're in a monogamous or a non-monogamous
00:50:29.900relationship. One thing I did feel, though, was I was glad by the time my son found out,
00:50:35.060I was in a slightly more stable, balanced place with it, where I was able to talk about it
00:50:42.180cogently because I had been doing enough therapy to understand kind of what this was and what this
00:50:49.160wasn't. And by the time my youngest found out, way more comfortable. So that's important. I don't
00:50:58.820know that I would have told them everything I was, you know, it wouldn't be appropriate for them to
00:51:04.680know. No, of course it wouldn't. Everything I was up to. So what we landed on for both of them is
00:51:11.140like that I have a right to privacy. Both of them asked me to not tell them when I was going out on
00:51:16.120a date. But at this point, my oldest has met my current main partner who I've been dating for over
00:51:22.360three years. And I wanted to invite him to my birthday party. My husband was there too. And
00:51:26.980my son was home. So I was like, are you cool with that? And would you like to meet him? He's like,
00:51:31.600sure, I'll meet him. And then he introduced me to his girlfriend and I had never met her. So
00:51:36.660he's kind of, he's a much more like keep it to himself kind of guy, my oldest. So it was kind
00:51:42.120of nice that we were able to do that and we're establishing a more adult relationship now that
00:51:47.120he's in his early 20s. Yeah, now that he's a grown up, right? He's grown up. Yeah. And if you think
00:51:53.800about it now, it's like, how often did you think about what your mother was up to when you were
00:51:58.320like 19, 20, 21? Like, not at all. Never. Literally never. I thought about it more when I was a kid,
00:52:05.160I think. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like once that kind of anxious phase was over, I think it was
00:52:11.640a little uncomfortable when they were going through puberty, but it was a little uncomfortable
00:52:15.200anyway. Life is uncomfortable. The idea that anyone has sex ever is disgusting. Yeah. But
00:52:23.000and also awesome. So like it's very confusing to them. Right. And we want to model for daughters
00:52:29.100that you can still be a sexual person when you're a mom. We want to model for sons that their1.00
00:52:35.040mothers are whole people and they are not carbon cutouts there to serve you. So I feel like
00:52:42.540ultimately I'm very happy with all of the messiness that happened. I don't have regrets
00:52:49.140about really anything that happened because it's all brought me to this place and I have
00:52:53.360strong relationships with my kids now and I'm happy about that. Which is great. Which is great.
00:53:00.220the book takes place over 10 years and as you said it ends it's 2018 that it ends right yeah
00:53:08.200yeah where are you where is your marriage now how what how how are how are things i guess is
00:53:16.100that the best question how are things our marriage is the best it's ever been and um you know i'll
00:53:23.280be honest the kids for some people I think when the kids leave the marriage goes through some
00:53:30.440pressure because maybe there's no triangulation anymore or there's no common focal point but
00:53:38.620because we've had our own things going on the kids leaving has made it like awesome so we're like
00:53:46.040really enjoying time together and time apart which we always have um the sex is better with my
00:53:52.940husband than it's ever been. Did the sex get better when you opened up your marriage?
00:53:59.520Yes. And not for the reason that everybody assumes. I mean, in part, I think it's because
00:54:04.860we were exploring with other people and figuring out what we wanted. But also, I write about this
00:54:10.600in the book. There are some facets of my husband's sexuality that do not match with some facets of
00:54:18.960my sexuality. And until I started seeing other people, I couldn't really put my finger on what
00:54:25.540that was. But ultimately, he's more dominant than I prefer. I need him to tone it down with me.
00:54:34.260And so I now, though, don't feel like I have to compromise with him. He can take he doesn't need
00:54:42.500that all the time, but you can get that elsewhere. So I don't have to change my boundaries for him.
00:54:48.520and he doesn't have to negate this whole part of his sexuality for me. And I think that's a really
00:54:56.420beautiful thing that we're able to give each other. So because of that, it's just so much
00:55:01.720less fraught. We kind of know the kind of sex we like to have and it's awesome. And it's not the
00:55:08.480only kind of sex we like to have. And so we have that other kind with other people. And so it's
00:55:15.340just taken all the pressure off of us um in a way that's actually opened us up we've we we have been
00:55:22.580a little more experimental with each other because we're like yeah maybe we'll try it with the you
00:55:26.580know things that i didn't think i would like with him but i do like with other people sometimes does
00:55:30.880happen stuff like that so overall it's just kind of given a freedom to our sex life that um
00:55:39.320that has benefited our relationship as much as it has our other partnerships yeah i you know
00:55:49.200you're talking about it with regards to sex but i say all the time i'm like your spouse cannot be
00:55:53.660your everything they are not going to be your soulmate and your best friend and the person
00:55:56.800you play tennis with and the mind-blowing sex right and so yeah but there is yet another myth
00:56:01.280that deserves to be busted yeah is that they should satisfy every single need absolutely
00:56:07.920Maybe you're happier when they satisfy the needs that they're good at.