Customer Reviews

Survivors of an Open Marriage

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a good book for anyone who wants to explore some of the potential problems associated with an open marriage, but there's an important caveat: Jennifer and her husband are not a good couple. They start sleeping together for the wrong reasons; get married for the wrong reasons; don't really want to be together (especially him); and stay together for the wrong reasons (i.e. I can't afford the house without him).

Given this backdrop, it's interesting but not fully insightful to follow Jennifer through the various challenges that her marriage encounters. Yes, she and her husband sleep with other people, but these couplings rarely reflect playful, sex-based encounters. More often than not, one or both of them is actively engaged in a romantic affair; on several occasions, her husband tells her that he's falling in love with his newfound partner, and he says it not as a concern but rather as a "Well, I didn't love YOU anyway" observation.

So, get this book if you're interested in understanding what couples may go through if they choose to sleep with other people. It has a lot to say. But understand that what these two people go through is far more the result of a poorly conceived marriage, something that would have led them to despair regardless of their sexual choices.

I purchased this when exploring the Lifestyle (Swinging). This book, while well-written enough to read very easily, is NOT about Swinging, or the emotional components of a couple who chooses to bookend playful encounters with others with a rock-solid relationship. The events, while illuminating, were cyclical in nature, and though each vignette or affair (and each one had more of the air of an "affair" about it then a swing encounter) has its own meaning, after several each one seemed to be "more of the same." It is interesting reading, but it is not illustrative of a couple having chosen the Swinger Lifestyle. Because it reads so well, though, it can be valuable to understand how one person reacted emotionally to that corner of our lives called "sex" or "intimacy" that people try to cordon off from the rest of the world.

This is an EXCELLENT book and it could easily be called Life 101, or maybe Marriage 101. The author openly discusses the arrangements of her open marriage with her husband and all the downfalls that resulted. In the end (after many hurdles) the open arrangement ends and their marriage begins anew.

It's a heart wrenching story that's jam-packed with events that keep you reading. But it's not that you read it for the frank sexuality that is discussed. You can't put the book down because you feel at one with Jennifer Gates and have the desire to know more and more as you read.

I'd recommend this book to all my friends. It's well written and flows easily. It's a must read for anyone who loves to understand the human condition!

By K. Bernard Jay (Enola, PA United States)
This review is from: Survivors of an Open Marriage (Paperback)

Let me give it to you real and raw, like Jennifer Gates does: BUY and READ this book. It will move you, touch you, appall you, disgust you and enthrall you.

The author deserves two awards, really. One for writing such an elegantly and elaborately painful masterpiece of human frailties seen up close.

She also deserves a Medal for staying married to a husband who comes across on every page as the most selfish, self-centered and uncaring psychopath on the planet. Although I did not expect a fairy-tale, happy ending, I found myself hoping for Jennifer to divorce the idiot and find someone who would look into her heart for once and see the depths of her feelings, love and intimacy that have yet to be appreciated.

LESSONS:
1)"If you're looking for something that's missing in your marriage by having relationships outside of marriage, you're looking in the wrong place."
2)"We knew we were destroying our relationship with our outside affairs, but we were both too hooked on the gratification and both too selfish to stop for the sake of our marriage."
3) "Or did [our marriage] change . . . when we stopped trying to please each other more than ourselves?"
4) ". . . the turmoil we had brought into our marriage."
5) "I knew what it was like to want more than you could have."
6) "She made him feel desirable, which all of my familiar love, however passionate on occasion, could not achieve."

This book is more than a cautionary tale. It is an indictment of open marriage as a fantasy that only exists in what we carry between our ears and between our legs. Real life is never fair and equitable. Real relationships, especially marriage, are never neat and simple.

In the end, you know that nothing really "survives" from the wreckage of what was obviously never a truly "open"/fair/equitable arrangement. (From the beginning, the so-called "rules" favored her husband: Colin could sleep with as many women as he liked, BUT Jennifer could NOT sleep with other men, only other women.) This was not a loving, kind or considerate "deal." He did not propose the idea of an "open marriage" in order to "improve" their own marriage or deepen their own commitment to each other. Rather, he did it to blamelessly and shamelessly screw around in front of his wife without even a remote concern about who he hurt or how little he cared about the one woman who (somehow) really loved him.

The book ends with such resignation because of the high expectations she had tried to meet as the "perfect" wife/lover in bed. She could certainly fly that high trapeze - but her dysfunctional husband never had any intention of being up on that same wire . . . totally vulnerable . . . hanging on for dear life . . . stretching his heart farther than "half-way" . . . reaching out at great personal risk . . . to safely catch her in his arms.

Jennifer at least "survives" what turned out to really be her husband's insecure, dysfunctional gigolo experience with her heart still intact. This book shares her insight, her tenderness and her regrets in a very moving story that will stay with you.

I found this book fascinating and had great difficulty putting it down.

I ordered this book to gain insight into the dangers of open marriages since my work sometimes involves assisting service members who have experienced difficulty coping with the consequences of divorce. Often these divorces are related to infidelity and sometimes open marriages that have become unmanageable are precipitating events for these divorces. This book served this purpose well and I think a good book to illustrate risks associated with opening marriages for anyone who is curious about altering conventional marriage boundaries.

Reading this book it became apparent that the difficulties that the author experienced were much deeper than that of a marriage at risk of failure because of the stress of infidelity. I think that the open marriage was perhaps a symptom of the underlying pathology of the marriage, which was her husband's sexual addiction. She is very lucky that she began to change the course of her behavior from the role as a martyr wife to someone who is willing to set firm boundaries with consequences for continuing with destructive behavior, otherwise her husband would have likely destroyed his marriage was well as those of some of his lovers.

1. Her husband's dysfunctional family background with insecurity associated with dating seemed apparent early in the book. The author `s willingness to compromise her moral beliefs regarding engaging in premarital sex to accommodate her husband's sexual desires because of fear that he would leave the relationship seems to indicate early on that this marriage was likely to be difficult.
2. He convinced his wife to become bisexual to bring women into the relationship to satisfy his sexual desire, while avoiding the insecurity that he had regarding her involvement with other men.
3. As a couple they took advantage of the author's vulnerable young relative; when she was experimenting with sexual behavior with which she was to young to cope.
4. He repetitively engages with sexual affairs involving a married woman, sometimes with young children, while disregarding the well-being of the woman's husband or children. Is including a married woman with a spouse that has not agreed to an open marriage a breach of etiquette for those engaged in an open marriage who believe that this is a harmless lifestyle choice? Furthermore even if the spouse of an affair partner is a willing participant with an open marriage; what is the responsibility for informing the husband's lover's spouse that her lover is trying to destroy her marriage? I don't think that the author, her husband or the husband's married lover are without an obligation to notify spouse who's marriage has been placed in jeopardy by allowing this deception to continue. This seems classic for addictive behavior as well as those who allow this destructive behavior to continue by failing to set firm boundaries.

It is hard not to give this book a 5 but I think it is not complete without more insight regarding the nature of the husband's sexual addiction. Some insight regarding the sexual promiscuity arrangements of the husband's lover's marriages may also help us to understand the nature of the open marriages involved with this fascinating story, more about the husband's path to recovery as well as the success of his recovery from a sexual addiction would make this book a five.

I also found it somewhat disturbing that the husband so quickly perused a path to ordination when so many with similar conditions are in need of this type of ministry. I `m not sure that someone can focus enough attention with a ministry for sexual addicts with the tremendous burden of being a priest added on. Also recovering so soon from a sexual addiction may also be a disadvantage for a priest as sexual temptation has been the downfall for many very capable and talented members of the ministry who were placed in positions of authority for which they were not adequately prepared for or screened.

This book is useful for anyone injured by the affair of a partner. What makes this book unique is that it is from the perspective of a woman who had an open marriage. When the sexual relations of her husband became emotionally intimate (not just sexual), she went through the same cascade of feelings (betrayal, hurt and anger) of any love partner who partner loves another. This is more about how injurious affairs are than about open marriages.

This is an incredibly engaging book... if you want to hear about a pair of childish, stupid, and probably psychotic asshats in a variously open relationship. Seriously, the idiot who wrote this book married the first guy she dated/slept with, and they immediately decide to have an open marriage - although initially, she is only supposed to have extramarital encounters with women. Of course, she meets and "falls in love" with several guys, and her similarly idiotic, though not quite so insane, husband does the same with several women. The really appalling things are her numerous descriptions of having sex with a man whose death she prays for, while alternately inflicting pain on herself, for distraction, and having violent fantasies to get herself off; and the fact that these two wastes of space end up re-getting religious (surprise) and reproducing. The absolute worst is her last few pages of BS moralizing wherein she opines that no one should have an open relationship - it didn't work for these two, so it can't for anyone else. Lady, the openness was the least of your problems.