Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "This is a story about a girl who grew up believing what many girls believethat one day she would fall in love with the man..." (more)
Key Phrases: look both ways, life open marriage, own happily, Sophie Anne, Triple Oaks, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Jenny Block is your average girl next door, a suburban wife and mother for whom married life never felt quite right. She operates from the assumption that most couples who are curious about or engaged in open marriages are in fact more like her—normal people who question whether monogamy is right for them; good people who love their spouses but want variation; capable parents who are not deviant just because they choose to be honest about their desires.

In Open, Block paints a down to earth picture of how an open marriage can work, and specifically why it works for her and her husband. In dissecting other people’s strong reactions to her choice, she explores the question of why cheating is more socially acceptable than open marriage. In part, she concludes, the lack of models for successful functional open marriages is such that the general public is not yet equipped to handle treating it as anything other than abnormal.

Open challenges our notions of what traditional marriage looks like, and presents one woman’s journey down an uncertain path that ultimately proves that open marriage is a viable option, and one that’s in fact better for some couples than conventional marriage.

About the Author

Jenny Block writes for various US publications including Women's Health and www.ellegirl.com. She also has work published in the books It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters and Letters to my Teacher, as well as in the forthcoming book, Have I Got a Guy For You: Fix-ups and Blind Dates Coordinated By Our Mothers. In addition, her writing has appeared in Chow, Pointe, Virginia Living, Style Weekly, Tango, Richmond Magazine, and Literary Mama. The inspiration for Open stems from the piece, "Portrait of an Open Marriage" (attached), which ran in Tango, and was reprinted by Cosmopolitan Germany and The Huffington Post. Jenny holds both her Bachelor's and her Master's Degrees in English from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she taught composition for ten years. She lives in Dallas, Texas --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (June 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158005241X
• ISBN-13: 978-1580052412
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #448,580 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Memoir, June 5, 2008

By	John Storhm "Radical Publisher" (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jenny Block has produced a stunning memoir in "OPEN: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage." In writing about relationships and marriage, Block writes what other authors rarely put into print. Her's is not a memoir about finding Mr. Right, nor is it a comic memoir about finding a string of Mr. Wrongs. This is not about her experiences going through an awful divorce, and it is not about how she discovered herself after leaving her husband. This is not a traditional coming out story, neither is it a tortured tale of her life lived deep in the closet. Jenny Block's memoir is about challenging conventional wisdom. This memoir is an attempt to shock the reader awake with the clear message that anything is possible, as a couple, as long as it is engaged in openly and honestly. She admits that her story could have been a more traditional one of infidelity and divorce had she lacked the courage to think in radically different ways. At the same time she acknowledges that her solution, a polyamorous marriage, may not work for everyone. What she is adamant about, in retelling her experiences, is that no one has to settle for the standard answers. When your marriage is on the verge of divorce, when the boyfriend whom you love dearly is just not satisfying you anymore, these are not merely times when one should despair, according to Jenny, these are the times when one should get creative and get honest.

This begs the question, has Jenny Block saved her marriage or destroyed it? How one answers this question, after reading this memoir, is really a testament to how one feels about monogamy. If one feels that monogamy is essential for a marriage then the only answer one may accept is that Jenny Block's marriage ended when she took other lovers. She may not have gotten divorced, yet she is certainly not still "married," because, committed monogamists would argue, marriage requires a monogamous relationship. In response she spends time in her memoir discussing the statistics on infidelity and the pain caused by the lying and deceptions which accompany the infidelities. The unwritten question asked in much of this memoir is - wouldn't we, as a society and a world, be better off if we spent less time hurting each other with lies and deceptions regarding sex? Throughout her memoir she challenges the reader to think about what is the worst thing that could happen in being honest with each other? Yet not wanting to dwell on the negatives, Jenny uses her life and experiences as she retells them, to argue that the best outcome is that your spouse or partner will be fine with you having other lovers.

And why not! Sex may not be just sex, and romantic entanglements may occur, but Block suggests that everything can be worked out as long as you and your primary partner are able to maintain open and honest communication. Block returns to the theme of honesty often in this memoir. It reminded me of Bertrand Russell writing in his 1967 autobiography about how he no longer loved his wife, "I had no wish to be unkind, but I believed in those days (what experience has taught me to think possibly open to doubt) that in intimate relations one should speak the truth." Which leads to the next most common theme in Block's memoir which is, speaking the truth is not easy. It requires each person in the relationship to really listen to each other and to speak with gentleness yet from the heart.

The most stunning argument presented by Block is that no one should be insecure if they can't fulfill 100% of their lover's needs and desires. "I began to think" she writes "it was unfair-ludicrous, really-to expect my husband to fulfill me on every level. Outside of the bedroom, I don't have those standards for him. We have different friends for different things." When I read this, I immediately realized the truth in what she was writing. Block's approach is a much more mature and loving way to think about ones spouse or partner. When teenagers date they date obsessively. They need to do everything together and being apart even for a short time can seem like they are loosing the one they love. As we mature in our ability to love we realize that the people we love are their own individuals and that they have their own needs and wants. Space, and the ability to be ones own self, is not only important but can be crucial to maintaining a relationship. Wives give their husbands the space to go golfing while husbands give their wives the space to attend yoga classes, and their happiness as a couple increases when each can engage in these fulfilling activities. Block's radical, and truthful, approach is to ask why do we not behave the same way with regard to sex. If one partner wanted oral sex and the other did not, would not the relationship be happier if the one desiring the oral sex could find satisfaction with another? In theory, we all have to recognize that the relationship would be happier. The problem with agreeing with Block on this point is that no one wants to imagine that it is this simple. Block would be the first to agree that open and honest communication is difficult and that there are pitfalls to an open relationship which must be avoided, but, if there were any motivation for writing this memoir, it was to demonstrate that it is possible to work through and around these difficulties and to achieve happiness and sexual fulfillment.

Now to my criticism of the book.

If relationships are about more than one person then a memoir about living in an open marriage must represent more than one voice. Up until Chapter 3, Just Pick Someone Already, Block was fine writing solely from her perspective. From the point of her marriage onward the book would have been better, had we as readers, been able to hear, at least sometimes, from her husband's perspective. The one page letter that Christopher contributes at the end of the book is not sufficient to overcome this glaring omission. I think that the book would have been given more credibility if they had written about opening their marriage as a couple rather than solely from Jenny's voice. Writing only from her voice opens the prose up to the criticism of being too self-centered, a criticism that is enhanced because it is Block, herself, who desires the additional sexual relationships and her husband who seems content without them.

When Block's lover Jemma is added to the picture in Chapter 7, You Can't Run Out Of Love, her voice too should have been added to the prose. If living in a polyamorous marriage is about maintaining an open and honest dialog between partners, then Block missed an opportunity by not showing us, the reader, that dialog in action. The inclusion of Christopher's one page letter at the end of the book stands in stark contrast to the missing letter from Jemma.

If anything these omissions leave Jenny standing alone to face her critics accusations that her husband and girlfriend are not really OK with the situation.

The omissions may not be that troubling, however, if one can accept that not everyone is ready at the same time to tell their story. While Jenny Block may have been ready to proclaim her open relationship to the world, Christopher and Jemma certainly may not want to be that public. Should we distrust Block's motives because of this, no. Is the book less compelling, yes, but marginally so. Block herself does not shy away from writing from her own truth. The fact that she is only one, of three persons in this relationship, able to be so open and honest should not lead to criticisms of her or distrust for her. Instead, it should lead every reader to recognize the courage it took to write this book and to value more, her lone voice.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding., August 1, 2009

By	B. Smith - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage (Paperback)

"Open" is about open marriage, in case you were confused. The book, itself, is very good. It's got the issue of doing something like this down and really engaged me as the reader. It was nice to find something like this because it is so hard to come across these books. I think the author did an excellent and courageous job writing this one. It's a must read. Another good read that also explores this subject quite well is Playtime.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's wonderful we can have this discussion, August 15, 2008

By	Jared L. Hansen "stormculture" (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jenny does a wonderful job of articulating seemingly every facet of the journey a person makes to open relationships. I wish everyone would read this book - even those that don't want to have an open relationship can at least come to a much better understanding of those that do. But for those that are "open" to the idea, this book presents a very compelling case for a higher-level of happiness, and is therapy for those needing help over personal hurdles.