"Open relationships: Love without strings"

The Independent (U.K.) and others

Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage (2008) gets star billing in a long, positive article in one of Great Britain's most respected papers. (This is the article that prompted the Irish Independent cluelessness described in my previous post.) She tells us, "It was reposted all over the place, including Forbes and the Canberra Times in Australia."

Open relationships: Love without strings

You're happily married, but both free to have sex with other people. Are open relationships the answer to modern matrimony — or just a recipe for divorce?

By Gillian Orr

"Open marriage destroyed Ashton and Demi's relationship!" cried one tabloid. "Did Ashton and Demi have an OPEN MARRIAGE?" spat another. When Hollywood couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore [shown here] split last month amid rumours of having an alternative union, the press had a field day. The astonishment and bewilderment over a couple engaging in such a lifestyle was screamed from the front pages.

We live in a society that is more sexually liberated than ever before, yet open relationships – a relationship in which both partners are allowed to have sex with other people – still have the propensity to shock. It is one of the last remaining taboos.

...So can open relationships work? Jenny Block, the writer and author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage certainly thinks so. The 41-year-old mother of one is currently the poster girl for open marriage in the US, describing herself as "the most average-looking, regular soccer-mom type". Having married her husband, Christopher, in 1997, Block embarked on an affair with another woman three years later. When she finally came clean to her husband, she found his response fascinating. "What was so interesting to me was that he said, 'I can't believe you lied to me', rather than, 'I can't believe you had sex with someone else'," she says.

"It was the trust thing rather than the sex thing that had hurt him and so I began to ask myself which was more important and what was marriage really based on?"

They decided to embark on an open marriage, albeit with certain ground rules: complete honesty and strictly no carrying on with someone else from their neighbourhood. Currently Block has a girlfriend, Jemma, who has her own apartment but is also considered part of the family. While Jemma and Christopher don't have a sexual relationship, he is free to date other women. Keeping up?

...What irks Block is that we live in a society where cheating is acceptable (if not exactly welcomed), whereas open relationships are scrutinised. "Isn't it better to be honest about your desires?" she asks. "I'm not claiming that this is possible across the board or that we're all ready for this yet, but I'm suggesting that this is something that works for us and other people."

Her 13-year-old daughter is aware of the situation and the couple have elected to answer any questions as they come....

...Despite Block extolling all that open marriage has to offer, it shouldn't come without certain warnings; jealousy being the most obvious catalyst for causing cracks. "It really depends on the couple and what their values are but generally it doesn't work because eventually somebody will form an outside attachment and that will cause problems with the primary relationship," Mandy Kloppers, a relationship psychologist and counsellor, says.

On her decades-long relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir wrote: "We were two of a kind and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people." It was Sartre who proposed the open relationship and he was the one who engaged in numerous affairs, while de Beauvoir rarely did. Critics have observed that her fiction, so autobiographical in nature, suggests she suffered deeply from jealousy, going along with Sartre's plan merely to please him.

This, Kloppers points out, is often the outcome of such arrangements. "It's common to see one person coerced into it because they want to keep their partner happy and want to keep an eye on them," she says. "If you have an unstable relationship to begin with then you're asking for trouble by doing this type of thing."...

...It might not be for everyone, but maybe we have to accept that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to love and commitment. And for those who find the arrangement emotionally fulfilling and feel it breathes life into long-term relationships, perhaps it's not such a shocking set-up after all.

Read the whole article (Dec. 6, 2011).

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"Making honesty the cornerstone of your relationship": Open marriage advocated on China coast

Macau Closer

Jenny Block gets around. The author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage visited Macau on the coast of China last year and ended up being interviewed by the glossy women's magazine Macau Closer for its annual wedding issue. She spoke on a wedding topic close to her heart:

The Open Alternative

Can you briefly explain why you feel so strongly that open relationships should be considered an acceptable alternative to conventional marriage for those who choose them?

I believe that individual choice is the cornerstone of the human experience. There are so many different kinds of people. So it only makes sense that there would be all different kinds of relationships too. I feel strongly about the rights of consenting adults to live and love in a way that feels authentic to them. (As long as it does no harm to others, of course.)

How do you think local culture impacts on the social acceptance of open relationships, particularly in Asian countries, which tend to be more male dominated and conservative?

I think culture plays a huge part in the acceptance of less common relationship styles. I do think it will be difficult for open relationships to become widely accepted in a male dominated conservative culture. Change can be slow, and it can even be painful, but it is necessary. And, in the end, in this case, I believe it will also be good. Very good.

...Being open is about communicating with your partner, evolving as a couple, and making honesty the cornerstone of your relationship.

...What advice do you give individuals or couples who are considering the idea of open relationships? Does this advice differ depending on whether a person is currently single or currently in a relationship?

The advice is the same. If you are interested in pursuing an open relationship you need to arm yourself with as much information as you can. Read everything. Join online newsgroups, and be prepared to talk, talk, talk with everyone with whom you are involved or want to be involved. Being in an open relationship is just like being in any other kind of relationship. If it’s going to work well, you have to commit to making it work well....

Read the whole article (April 2010 issue). It's available in English or Chinese; Macau is a port city that, like larger Hong Kong nearby, is a former European colony (Portuguese) and now a semi-autonomous "special administrative region" of China.

Also: Block writes that she's gotten a regular gig writing two columns a week for "Fox on Sex" at the Fox News website. Fox News gave her a trashing when she appeared on the show last year — but no hard feelings; Rupert Murdoch's properties don't care about their collapse-of-civilization rants, they know sex sells and are happy to bring their trashees on board accordingly.

And here's a brief TV appearance Block had earlier this year on "Virginia This Morning" (WTVR in Richmond, Virginia).

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Speaking Up on BBC radio: "World, Have Your Say"

BBC World Service

On its worldwide radio call-in show, Great Britain's BBC posed the question "Is fidelity overrated?" and took listener calls from Siberia, Kenya, India, Nigeria, Uganda, Egypt, Jamaica, Texas, and elsewhere. The host picked up on actress Angelina Jolie, who's been in the news about her longterm open relationship with Brad Pitt.

"She’s not talking about dishonesty, she says open romances can work just as well as monogamous relationships – if both partners agree to it," said the host. "Is she right? Do we set too much store by being faithful? Or isn’t being loyal a fundamental part of any relationship – or why bother to have a relationship at all?"

Many guests and callers — coming from the old-school paradigm in which loving (or boinking) more than one can only be callous, cruel, shallow, and destructive — spoke eloquently against being callous, cruel, shallow, and destructive. Then on came our own Jenny Block (author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage) to say it doesn't have to be that way. She's a fine talker and bold in the face of opposition, especially the clueless variety, and especially when describing the arrangement between her, her husband, and her girlfriend.

The sex isn't really the important issue, it's the lying part....

What's really at issue here is what is the agreement between the couple. I absolutely believe that trust is of the utmost importance. But the question is what is the agreement between the two people. If monogamy is the agreement, then breaking that would be betrayal. But couples make agreements about all sorts of things — about religion, about how they're going to run a household, about how they're going to raise children — and whether they're going to be a monogamous couple should be up to them.

Listen to the show (53 minutes; Dec. 23, 2009). Jenny comes on at 35:15 and stays to the end.

Here's the BBC's blogsite for this episode. Read comments from the far corners of the world, and add yours.

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Jenny Block on Tiger Woods and unchosen monogamy

Newsweek online

"First they wrote about me. Now I've written for them," e-mails Jenny Block. The author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage got an opinion piece accepted at Newsweek online (with a headline on the magazine's homepage), on the elevated subject of Tiger Woods.

In case you've been living under a rock, the champion golfer got caught cheating on his wife; she apparently chased him with a golf club, he took off from home and crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree just outside, and she used the golf club to smash out its windows.

Utterly stereotypical unevolved mono/cheater drama, yeah; a New Yorker cartoon from the 1930s. The whole world is gossiping — but do people even imagine there might be another way? This begs for a poly perspective, and Jenny provides it:

The Case Against Monogamy

Why is everyone so surprised about Tiger Woods? When it comes down to it, monogamy doesn't always work.

By Jenny Block | Newsweek Web Exclusive

...I'm not saying cheating is OK. I'm saying it shouldn't be a surprise. I was a cheater myself once. Three years into my marriage, I had an affair. She was blonde and freckled and made me blush. Yes, she was a girl — but that was beside the point; I'd been open about my bisexuality for years. My husband, meanwhile, was crushed when I told him — and I hated myself for not being strong enough to say no. I figured surely this must have meant I'd married Mr. Wrong: why else would I have the desire to step out?

As it turns out, desire is exactly what's at issue here. Human beings desire variety. We desire multiple partners. It's a simple fact that's built into our biology. And while some choose monogamy simply because it feels right, I think many more of us choose it because we think it's what we're supposed to do. You don't want to end up an old maid or a lonely bachelor, do you?

Monogamy just isn't always realistic. There's nothing wrong with admitting that. It simply doesn't work for some. And just as people choose different religions, eating habits, and places to call home, I believe we should be able to choose different ways to live out our relationships.

Several years after my affair, my husband and I jointly decided that monogamy just wasn't for us. We love each other and want to be together, but monogamy is not the cornerstone of our partnership — trust is. So we decided to open up our relationship to other people.

First we both dated the same woman. Then my husband dated her and I saw other people. And then they broke up and I dabbled until I met a woman who, like my husband, I cannot imagine being without. And so now it's her and me and him and me, and we are all fabulous friends. Everyone gets their needs met. No one feels left out or guilty, and the only time any of us questions our lifestyle is when we let those Disney movies come creeping back into our heads.

Let me be very clear here: I have no problem with monogamy. I think conscious, honest, true monogamy can be a wonderful thing. What should not be tolerated is hypocrisy — and that's where Tiger’s vow of marriage got him into trouble. If you want to be monogamous, great — but don't think you can claim it while you sleep around. It's not fair and, quite frankly, it's exhausting.

Monogamy is a choice. But until it's treated like one, cheating scandals will continue to pop up and the public will continue to eat them up. Because misery loves company. And in the end, that's the only thing cheating will bring you.

Here's the whole article (Dec. 10, 2009). Near the beginning Newsweek has put in a big video insert of its film of Terisa Greenan's poly family in Seattle — great stuff, watch it if you haven't already. And there are links to Newsweek's online feature article about polyamory as "America's next romantic revolution" that appeared last July 29.

Also: see Anita Wagner's take on the Tiger affair on her Practical Polyamory blog (two posts):

Whatever way people arrange their intimate lives, committing to monogamy by rote because it's what we are "supposed" to do is clearly a bigger risk than most people realize....

Though we polyamorists are often vilified for our choices, I am proud to say that I will never cheat on a partner, and neither are any partners likely to cheat on me, because none of us has to. We make relationship agreements we can stick to, and if we find we no longer can, then we talk with our partners and renegotiate the rules of the relationship. In this way trust is maintained.

Also see Jay Michaelson's commentary at the Huffington Post: "It's Not Just Tiger: Monogamous Marriage Is An Anomaly".

And here's a cute post at an adult sexuality education website on honest poly as the way to do non-mononogamy.

This requires a very high level of relationship skills, as it takes an ongoing commitment to clear communication and the ability to negotiate to discover win-win solutions, often including compromises. Conscious relationships are not for cowards. To do it well takes balls! (And great skill if you’re going to use your putter properly and safely.)

The argument always goes that a sports star with lucrative corporate sponsorships, or a politician who has to appeal to voters, can't afford to be openly poly. I think the day is coming (or could be here already?) when being forthrightly poly would be less detrimental to careers and public images than getting caught cheating.

-------------------

¹ The reported statistics for cheating in marriage are actually all over the map, so I don't believe any of them. Except I suspect that the higher numbers are more likely true — because I bet more people will lie to a pollster and say they're faithful when they aren't, than will lie to a pollster and say they're cheating when they aren't.

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Jenny in the Lion's Den

ABC's Nightline

You gotta admire her pluck.

Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage (see my review) will march into the most hostile situations to speak up for honesty in open relationships and the possibilities of poly in marriage. She went on Fox News during Fox's mini-jihad against triad relationships last May. And last night, as broadcast by ABC's Nightline, she went onstage at the enormous Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, for a Nightline-sponsored "Face-Off" with the church's pastor — about adultery and the Ten Commandments. In front of several thousand of the pastor's charged-up, cheering followers. On national TV.

Moreover, she shared the bad-guy role onstage with an actual creep: the CEO of the Ashley Madison cheat-on-your-spouse dating site. (He was intelligent and well-spoken, but IMO still a creep.) Sharing the stage on the pastor's side was another evangelical, a self-described reformed sex addict who founded a ministry to help fallen souls like himself — further diluting Jenny's time to talk.

"It was an hour and a half long and it was wild," says Jenny on her blog. "The paper reported that more than 4000 people were there and I'm here to report that only a handful took a liking to me."

Nightline's half-hour edit of the debate aired 11:35 p.m. (Sept 24, 2009). Watch it here. Nightline also put a video of the entire debate on its site.

Jenny didn't get time to say much. But when she was on she handled herself very well. Nightline also put up a short introduction clip in which she has a chance to explain herself excellently.

Also on the Nightline site is an article about the event:

Born to Cheat? Tempers Meet Testimony at Debate on Adultery

..."I don't believe that what I'm doing is committing adultery, because everyone knows what's going on," [Block] said. "We consider our relationship an open marriage. I don't think there's anything wrong with outside sexual relationships in marriage, [but] I do think there is a lot wrong with lying inside of a marriage."

...Block, who said she thinks adultery is a terrible thing, also isn't sold on the ideal of marriage.

"I don't think it's a bad idea," she said. "But I think the way we've designed it, this Cinderella fairy tale -- happily ever after -- that 40 percent of people fail at, and one out of three men cheat on, it doesn't work for everyone. It works for some people fabulously! Some of my very best friends are monogamists. But it doesn't work for everyone."

Read the whole article (Sept 24, 2009). As you can guess, comments are pouring in. Add yours.

In anticipation of the show, Jenny got a nice writeup in her original hometown newspaper:

“I think they wanted me to be the bad guy, but they really didn’t know what to do with me,” she said [of the debate format].

Block has gotten a barrage of “mean, nasty, poorly-written” e-mails, including people saying she was destroying her family.

But she has also had people say, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to thank you. I thought I was a weirdo.”

Growing up in Aberdeen and Bel Air, Block, who graduated from John Carroll, always dreamed of a traditional, “Cinderella” marriage and never expected to be disillusioned by monogamy.

...The book chronicles her discovery that monogamy just wasn’t for her when, three years into her marriage, she ended up having an affair.

That event set her on “the path of inquiry,” and Block, 39, is in a relationship with both her husband of 12 years and a woman whom she has been with for the past three years.

...“I really had a fantasy that, in sharing my story, other people would feel comfortable coming forward and sharing their stories,” she said about the book. “I have accomplished what I think I was supposed to, which was just to let people breathe easier.”

Read the whole article (in The Aegis of Harford County, Maryland; Sept. 23, 2009).

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Newsweek fallout? Jenny Block on AOL

AOL Health

The Newsweek online article two days ago — the one that billed polyamory on the magazine's home page as "America's Next Romantic Revolution" — continues to set things in motion. Buckets of commentaries are happening all over the place. The right-wing blogosphere is up in arms against Newsweek for printing the story, not to mention us for existing. Momlogic was moved to repost its interview with Loving More's Robyn Trask from a year ago about her life, partners, and children.

Jenny Block (author of "Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage") just wrote, "An interview with me went up on AOL.com Health a week or two ago, and then all of a sudden they put it on their homepage and my inbox is suddenly flooded!" Excerpts:

Love, Sex and Parenting in an Open Relationship

By MARY KEARL

AOL Health: Why do you think monogamy isn't for you?

Jenny Block: The simplest, light-hearted answer is what my father always says, which is that I'm a lot. I'm just a lot. I have a number of different jobs, I have lots of different hobbies, I always have a lot of different friends that are all very different. So in some ways it would be really, kind of crazy for me to just pick one person. I tried. I figured everybody else does it. How special am I? Am I such a rarity that I need more than one person? But [now] I don't think I'm a rarity. I think I'm just about as typical as it gets in the needing more than one person part. It's the honesty part that I think makes [my husband and me] unusual.

AOL Health: You had several monogamous relationships before your marriage turned into an eventual open relationship. Can you explain how you progressed toward this?

Block: ...I finally approached the subject with him. I said, "I've done a bunch of reading and a bunch of research and we're really not that strange. People have open relationships. People opt to have other partners." My very sweet husband said, "Theoretically you could do that, but there are feelings and emotions and realities of life." We went back and forth for probably a year at that point. [We asked ourselves] "Does this really work? Are they these crazy people who are not like us, so it would never work?" We had this do-or-die moment. We invited my friend [Lizbeth] to join us [in a threesome] and it worked and she hung around for about six months and the three of us dated. We all kept looking at each other saying, "Is this weird? Should this be weird? Is it weird that it's not weird?" It's kind of like going to summer camp for me. I used to go to summer camp every year and everybody got along....

AOL Health: You have a daughter who is 10 years old. How much of the nuances of your marriage does she understand?

Block: I don't know. We answer all of her questions and we don't lie to her. My girlfriend is still my best friend, so it's not like she wouldn't be around. She has asked me some very pointed questions, which makes me think she's putting the pieces together. One day she asked me if three people can get married. She asked me if I love Jemma [my girlfriend] as much as I love Daddy. She said to me in the middle of dinner, "I'm really lucky because some people only have one parent and I have three." I said, "Why, do you consider all of us parents?" She said, "Sometimes Jemma makes me dinner and sometimes she picks me up from school. When Daddy cooks dinner, he says to set four places at the table. So we're a family." Kids see the truth and the happy family. That's what they see. If they see screaming and yelling and you keep saying, "No, Mommy loves Daddy," I don't think they buy it.

AOL Health: At some point are you going to tell her more about the details?

Block: Definitely. She keeps asking me when she's going to be old enough to read the book. I don't even know yet. I'm going to ask some writer friends who also have memoir pieces [what they've done]. When she asks about it and starts showing more curiosity about it and I think she's at an age when she can piece it all together, I think yes. I think it'd be kind of crazy to try to hide it.

AOL Health: Do you think she'll feel like you were lying to her?

Block: I don't think so. We told her that the book is about marriage, and about how grownups choose to love each other and some people don't agree with what Mommy says in the book. We say, "It's about grownup things and that when you're ready to talk about it, we'll talk about it." She gets the kid thing, grownup thing. She gets that stuff.

AOL Health: Have you raised her to be aware of alternative marriages and relationships?

Block: Yeah, definitely. I think that's the other thing. We have friends who are gay and lesbian. We talk about adopted families and extended families. We talk all the time about how people can choose to love who they want. Now the law doesn't always recognize those choices and she knows that too. She'll ask us questions, like we have friends who are a lesbian couple who were over one day and they were talking about other parents at the school and Emily asked, "Why do they not want [their children] to play with your daughter?" And I said, "Some people have a problem with two women being married." Her child response was, "That's just stupid." I said "Right, exactly." It's really that simple....

Read the whole long brassy interview. (It's a three-part article and the navigation may be tricky; here's all the text in one piece.)

And join the 1,000-plus comments pouring in below the interview. Remember, be polite and respectful, and represent us well; "be a credit to your kink."

Update, August 15: Jenny writes,

When AOL put their interview with me on their homepage, I received such wonderful replies, with personal stories, kind words, and questions. Because I can't answer each email personally (I wish I could...) I have partnered with yourtango.com to respond to as many of your insights and inquiries as I can. I hope you'll stop by to read my blogs and to share your own thoughts and ideas. Looking forward to seeing you there!

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"Polyamory in practice"

Briarpatch Magazine

An old and venerable alternative magazine in Canada ("fighting the war on error") conducts a long discussion with poly authors Tristan Taormino and Jenny Block:

Polyamory in practice

By Mandy Van Deven
March/April 2009

Conversations about polyamory — the practice of having more than one intimate partner at a time — are slowly finding their way into public consciousness. Two [recent] books, Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage and Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, reflect an increasingly popular postmodern view of love and relationships led by post-second-wave feminist and queer communities.

In Open, Jenny Block uses personal narrative to shed light on the complex normality of open relationships. Her book nicely complements Tristan Taormino’s “how-to”-style Opening Up, which provides practical advice on making open relationships work....

Briarpatch: Open relationships seem to be making their way into mainstream media of late. Why do you think that is?

Jenny Block: People are becoming more open-minded about all sorts of things. They are also becoming more and more fed up with relationships that never seem to work for them. I believe that, ultimately, all most people really want is to be happy. People have that right, and they are coming to recognize that right....

Tristan Taormino: As long as people have had relationships, some of those relationships have been consensually open. Many things that were once considered taboo — queer sexuality, anal sex, BDSM — gradually gain more visibility and acceptance in the mainstream. Open relationships are part of the shifting dialogue about love and sex in our society.

How do you each define “open relationships”?

Taormino: Definitions of polyamory usually characterize polyamorous relationships as both sexual and loving, because polyamory involves not just sex, but emotional relationships. But based on my research, “sexual and loving” doesn’t capture the nuances and complexities of polyamorous relationships. Those terms also don’t communicate how polyamory can not only reject mainstream models, but expand ideas about what constitutes a relationship.

I define polyamory as the desire and practice of having multiple significant, intimate relationships simultaneously; the relationships may encompass many elements, including love, friendship, closeness, emotional intimacy, recurring contact, commitment, affection, flirting, romance, desire, erotic contact, sex, and a spiritual connection.

I use “open relationships” as an umbrella term to encompass many different styles of non-monogamous relationships. There has been a lot written about swinging and polyamory, but people who are practicing non-monogamy who don’t identify with those terms... identities and communities have been left out of the discussion. I wanted my book to cover a diverse array of styles of open relationships.

Block: My husband and I are open to change. We are open to new ways of seeing ourselves, of viewing sex, of defining marriage, and of being. We are open to outside partners. But more than anything, we are open to thinking about new ideas and looking at the world in a new way instead of simply saying, “That’s the way it is, so I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be” when it comes to love and sex and marriage and relationships....

What fears do people have about open relationships?

Taormino: People fear they will be jealous, that their partner will find a “better” partner, that they will be replaced, that their relationship will end. These are pretty deep, intense fears that are intertwined with our feelings of self-worth and security. It takes a lifetime of work for people to work on their self-esteem, but it’s a crucial part of maintaining healthy relationships, whether they’re open or not.

Block: People are always comparing the worst of open relationships to the best of closed ones. I challenge those comparisons by living openly and honestly....

You both suggest that open relationships may be an antidote to the decline of marriage and the prevalence of adultery. Why is that?

Taormino: The decline of marriage and the prevalence of adultery are two strong indications that traditional monogamous marriage does not work for a majority of people. Cheating is a way that some people identify that they are unhappy or unsatisfied in their relationship, but it’s by no means the most common way people come to choose an open relationship. Some people begin as open, others discover it after many years of monogamy, and some are faced with a significant change that compels them to open their relationship. Open relationships aren’t the only antidote; crafting unique relationships, letting go of the happily-ever-after fairy tale and working hard at your partnerships are really the antidote.

Block: ...Heterosexual, monogamous marriage simply doesn’t work for everyone, but society all but demands that we live in one - or, at the very least, in the illusion of one....

There are currently very few, if any, scripts or models for open relationships. Do you see your book as the beginning of script creation?

Taormino: I hope so. Society still does not accept or support non-traditional relationships. Many people feel that there is too much at stake - friends, community, parents, custody, employment - for them to come out about being non-monogamous.

Block: Open is an invitation for others to share their stories and experiences. So many people write me and come to see me at readings and say, “Thank you for being visible. Now I feel like I can be visible, too.”...

Read the whole interview.

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Fox News raises group-marriage hysteria; Jenny Block holds her own

Fox News

Fox News hosts have been on a tear about triad marriages in the last few days: not just Bill O'Reilly and Gretchen Carlson (see previous post) but Glenn Beck and Steve Doocy. The thrust of this mini-jihad is that allowing gay marriage will lead to allowing polygamy and then marrying goats (and/or turtles, ducks, and dogs). The whole Fox circus in the last few days is chronicled here on Media Matters.

In the midst of this, Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, went on yesterday against Carlson and a director of Focus on the Family. Jenny held her own, though I wonder about the wisdom of letting herself be used this way. From the May 12th edition of Fox News's "Fox & Friends":

GRETCHEN CARLSON: Now for a very interesting debate: While gay activists continue to fight for same-sex marriage rights, a new group demanding legal recognition. They call themselves polyamorists, and they want the right to marry into a triad, otherwise known as a threesome.

Is this crossing the line, and how far will we take this? Jenny Block is happily married to her husband -- and her girlfriend doesn't mind at all. She's the author of Open: Love and Sex and Life in an Open Marriage. Also with us, Glenn Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family. Good morning to both of you.

...CARLSON: All right, Jenny, so a lot of people are trying to wrap their head around this concept, that the triad concept, I guess in your mind and explanation, this is the new marriage, or is it not?

BLOCK: Well, I think it's one way to do marriage. I mean, I think this conversation is really about honesty and about choice. Marriage as we know it now doesn't have the best success rate, as you know. And so this is just another way of doing this. There are all different kinds of families, and I think that's a good thing.

CARLSON: All right, so help me understand how this works. You are married to your husband. You have a girlfriend on the side. And you want to all be legally recognized together as a triad?

BLOCK: Well, to be honest, in my situation -- I can really only speak to mine -- I'm very happy with being married to my husband and having a girlfriend as well. But a lot of people want the legal protection of having all three people married. And, in my mind, marriage is a civil institution, and so if people want that choice, I feel like they should be allowed that.

CARLSON: Glenn, I know you disagree with this.

STANTON: Yeah.

CARLSON: Speak from the side of traditional values with regard to marriage and where you think this may be heading as far as a slippery slope.

STANTON: Well, it is a slippery slope. And the idea is, if you think about the argument that these people made for the radical kinds of marriage that they want, they are exactly the same kind of arguments -- justice, equality, things like that -- that the same-sex marriage people have made.

And we have said for a long time that same-sex marriage would open a Pandora's box that would lead us to who knows where. It's not just about triads; it's about four, five, six people. I mean, go on the websites and look at some of these organizations, and you see pictures of five people, six people. So it's not -- I mean, where does this stop?

And it's an amazing thing. And the point is that monogamy is a very, very important social value. We have to understand that cultures that fail to recognize and support the idea of monogamy end up to be cultures where women are things merely to be collected and used and thrown away at the end, not seen --

BLOCK: Gretchen -- Gretchen, I'm sorry. I have to --

STANTON: -- as full citizens. And that's why monogamy --

CARLSON: Yup.

STANTON: -- that's why monogamy is an important idea, and these people don't like it.

CARLSON: Right, Glenn, and I wish that I had another three hours to discuss this, because it needs it. But Jenny, I'll give you the final word on it.

BLOCK: Well, again, I just don't see any slippery slope. The fact that I could love more than one person does not mean that my neighbor is going to want to marry his dog. I mean, in the end this is about love and choice, and this isn't going anywhere but equality for everyone. And, as far as I'm concerned, equality is a wonderful thing.

CARLSON: All right. No doubt, as I said earlier, people have a variety of opinions on this issue, and it's something that we will continue to revisit.

You can watch the clip here.

Once again: legal marriage of more than two would be extraordinarily complicated and would require many new laws and precedents — unlike same-sex marriage, which maps right onto existing marriage law (at least, it has ever since courts started regarding men and women as marriage equals). Complex new legal regimes, when a changing world requires them, generally take decades to evolve, and the discussions I've heard in the poly community quickly run into the impracticalities. As I've said before:

How would the law mandate, for instance, property rights and responsibilities in partial poly divorces? What about the rights and responsibilities of marriages that merge into pre-existing marriages? Setting default laws for multiple inheritance in the absence of a will, allocating Social Security benefits, it goes on.

And because there are many different basic kinds of poly relationships, compared to only one basic kind of couple marriage, each would need its own legal regime — and we know how good the state is at regulating complicated personal matters.

Moreover, unlike couple marriages, poly relationships can change from one kind to another kind while continuing to exist. An equilateral triad can become a vee or vice versa, or something in between. The flexibility to adapt — to "let your relationships be what they are" — is a core value in the poly groups I know. How would the state keep up with your particular situation?

I've also heard it argued that opportunities would abound for unscrupulous people to game the system in ways that the law couldn't easily address: for people to pretend that their poly relationship is a different kind than it really is, or that they're in poly relationships when they're not.

In poly meetings I've been in, the discussion quickly comes around instead to business-partnership models for poly households, such as subchapter-S corporations or family LLCs or LLPs. These are already well developed to handle a wide variety of contractual agreements between several people.

Looking farther ahead: Good law follows reality rather than precedes it. Fifty or 100 years from now when poly households are commonplace and their issues are well understood, I'm sure an appropriate set of law will have grown up organically to handle the issues that arise. At least that's how it works when civil society is allowed to go about its business, free of religious or ideological compulsion.

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New Book: One Big Happy Family

Rebecca Walker (yes that one — the estranged daughter of Alice Walker, the one Time called one of America's most influential young leaders circa 1995) has a new book being released today: One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love. The poly chapter is written by Jenny Block.

I find it interesting that of all the situations listed in the subtitle, Walker (or her publisher) apparently thought polyamory was the most arresting and put it first, even though it's probably the least common.

And it does warm my heart to see the word next to "One Big Happy Family" on a book cover that will be looking out at people from shelves everywhere.

Here's a review of the book in ColorsNW, "the premier diversity resource" of the Pacific Northwest.

And here's a review in the venerable lefty magazine In These Times, which has this to say about Jenny's chapter:

The anthology begins with what some may consider the book’s most radical piece, Jenny Block’s “And Then We Were Poly.” Instead of Block approaching her polyamorous lifestyle as one on the fringe, she normalizes her relationships with her husband and girlfriend by pointing out the many ways in which they mimic monogamous couplings, addressing the questions she has no doubt been asked numerous times: How did you decide to be polyamorous? Does your husband get jealous of your girlfriend? How do you explain your relationships to your daughter?

Block doesn’t get bogged down in the different types of poly arrangements, and she’s not proselytizing, either. She simply speaks her piece and lets the reader sort out the rest.

The need to give priority to open communication and honesty — with one’s self and others — is a recurring theme throughout the book....

Incidentally: Jenny's own book, Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage, which was published in hardback last June, comes out in paperback March 1st.

And the expanded second edition of The Ethical Slut is finally due out from Ten Speed Press in March or April.

Updates: Nice review in the Dallas Morning News (March 3, 2009). The book got panned in the Honolulu Weekly (February 25, 2009).

Listen to a radio interview with Rebecca Walker on New Hampshire Public Radio (March 12, 2009). She has nice things to say about Jenny's sensitivity to how her open marriage may eventually affect her young daughter's desire for family normalcy.

Another review.

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Poly books in the news

A nice thing about getting a book published is that it can reach people who never read books. Talk shows, newspaper and magazine articles, and new-media chatter (pushed, hopefully, by the publisher's publicity department) can all spread your stuff around.

Here's a roundup of recent media prompted by books on polyamory.

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Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino (371 pages, Cleis Press, May 2008).

Sex author Tristan Taormino keeps adding to her list of media appearances for this book, which was published last spring.

A new addition to the list: in Montreal's weekly newspaper Hour, a columnist muses on the meaning of Taormino's book and also Jenny Block's Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, which was published at nearly the same time:

By Laura Roberts [Nov. 6, 2008]

...Both Jenny Block and Tristan Taormino make the argument that human beings, like many other animal species, just aren't cut out for lifelong relationship commitments. In her book Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, Block discusses her own decision to open up her marriage. Taormino's book, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, is a sort of how-to manual that focuses on the history and various kinds of open relationships. Both writers agree that monogamy is rarely an option that is chosen these days so much as dictated by society. Indeed, the society we currently live in would have us believe that the perfect couple is one in which neither partner needs nor wants anything outside of the relationship.

This is, of course, insane....

...Certainly, open relationships aren't the answer for everyone, but these two books urge us all to communicate more about our own wants and needs — sound advice for couples of all kinds.

Read the whole article.

In the UK, The F Word, "contemporary UK feminism," presents a long review of Opening Up:

By Red Chidgey

Once past the salacious opening of Taormino admitting she enjoyed public sex parties, the writing style and presentation of this book is textbook detached. The romantics amongst us might prefer the more poly-as-gift approach of Wendy-O Matik’s Redefining Our Relationships, which speaks to the creative, focused-attention side of open relationships and anarcha-dating styles. Or there’s the juicily imaginative Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of Hearts, by Raven Kaldera — a witch’s look at building a community of lovers which deals with the obstacles and challenges of polyamory from an astrological/Pagan approach: from communication processes of Mercury to the transformations of Pluto.

This said, Opening Up is a much-welcome addition to the polyamory fray and deals expertly with the philosophical and manifold reasons for giving up on the ghost of monogamy.... In terms of breadth, it rivals other books on the market for providing working models for all kinds of non-exclusive permeations and for being transparent about the demographics of its research informants (the appendices include a breakdown of age, occupation and so on for the hundred or so people who contributed their stories to the book). For open-relationship beginners, it is an excellent first port of call; for those who greedily snap up anything on poly-loving that they can find, it might not offer anything new, but it will refresh your memory about stuff that is worth revisiting.

Yep, Opening Up may skimp on lurid details of play mates and sex adventures, or fall short on suggestive ideas about the erotic/cute things you can do for the lovers in your life (take a look at the poly bible The Ethical Slut for that); but it does provide a comprehensive journey for relationship self-starters. Demonstrating that non-exclusive relationships aren’t just for the queers and self-confessed perverts, Taormino weaves interviews, analysis and in-depth profiles of poly practitioners to represent and eulogize how everyday “people make room in their beds, lives, and hearts for other people”. Count me in.

Read the whole review (Sept. 4, 2008).

Taormino is currently back out on the book-tour trail, with public appearances coming up in Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington DC, and Baltimore; see her schedule of events.

Taormino maintains an Opening Up book website that's especially notable for its big, up-to-date listings of poly resources — including local and regional poly groups and poly-friendly professionals (therapists, doctors, lawyers, etc.).

Also, don't miss her sex-advice site Pucker Up (NSFW), and her Double-T Newsletter. Sadly, she was recently laid off from her longtime Village Voice column.

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Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage by Jenny Block (276 pages, Seal Press, May 2008).

Meanwhile, Jenny Block appeared last week on "Good Morning Texas," a TV talk show in her home area, Dallas/Fort Worth. Watch it here (Nov 6, 2008).

The Tyra Banks Show has put up a quick video of Jenny giving a few sentences of open-relationship advice, and the comments are burning up. Add your own.

She has also gotten a new gig writing a weekly Sex Talk column in Quick, a free weekly paper put out by the mainstream Dallas Morning News.

The best-selling lesbian magazine Curve interviews Block in its November issue. The interview is not on the web (yet); it's in the paper magazine only.

Block has a column in the Huffington Post. She also has a new video up on Tango magazine's website, for which she has written several articles.

She also contributed the lead chapter to a new anthology titled One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbands, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love, edited by Rebecca Walker (Riverhead Books). The book is due out February 19, 2009. "These plainspoken, cage-rattling essays... address how dramatically the traditional nuclear American family has changed," writes Publisher's Weekly. Read the whole review; scroll 1/8 of the way down (Nov. 10, 2008).

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The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and "Catherine A. Liszt" (Janet Hardy) (279 pages, Greenery Press, 1997) is now 11 years old and getting dated. A revised and expanded second edition is due out next year. But the current edition is still selling well and getting occasional media notice, such as this from Time Out New York:

Free love: Is getting intimate with more than one person really so wrong?

By Julia Allison

I first heard of the 1997 cult-favorite book The Ethical Slut almost a year ago, when the guy I was seeing at the time referenced it to support his case (more like plea) for an open relationship. I found the title intriguing, but only recently purchased a copy. The premise is that polyamory (being romantically involved with more than one person at a time) is our natural state — monogamy, not so much.

...The authors argue that it’s not inherently unethical to have simultaneous partners; what is unethical is treating your partners badly.... “We measure the ethics of a good slut not by the number of his partners, but by the respect and care with which he treats them.... One-night stands can be intense, life-enhancing and fulfilling; so can lifetime love affairs,” they write.

They take issue with our culture’s prevailing sentiment that “If you’re really in love, you will automatically lose all interest in others,” and the corollary “If you’re having sexual or romantic feelings toward anyone but your partner, you’re not really in love.”

...On a personal level, the authors might have convinced me that any hurt I’ve experienced is just the grief over what I’ve considered to be another strikeout in the relationship game. Perhaps I should take a look at it from their point of view: “Our monogamy-centrist culture tends to assume that the purpose and ultimate goal of all relationships — and, for that matter, all sex — is lifetime pair-bonding, and that any relationship which falls short of that goal has failed.... All relationships have the potential to teach us, move us, and above all, give us pleasure.”

...Honestly, if all men I dated treated me with this much respect and love, I’d probably have slept with a lot more of them.

Read the whole article (July 17-23, 2008).

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In yet more poly book news: Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli posts that her new young-adult novel Love You Two (Random House, October 2008; 307 pages; ISBN 9781741660715 paperpack) "has been published here in Australia. It is the first to address polyamorous and bisexual relationships, particularly for young adults, in Australia. Any critical feedback is most welcome!" (It's now available on Amazon.)

Here is the publisher's description:

When Maria was a little girl, her mum used to sign cards and notes to her and her younger brother Leo with the crazy line, Love you t(w)oo. It was supposed to make them feel like their mum had heaps of love for both of them, that she loved them equally. Well, that's okay when you love all your kids. Actually, that's the way it should be. But what happens when your mum decides that her turning-40 revolution is going to be the announcement that she loves your dad as much as ever, but is also in love with someone else! Maria's mum has always been strong and funny and maybe a bit too cool for a mum. Maria's always loved her mum for fighting the 'old wog ways' and making sure Maria has an easier time growing up and discovering love than she did. But can Maria's love for her mum deal with this? Is there a limit to love and can it easily turn to hate? Does love end? What is love anyway? And what does it all mean for Maria's own feelings about her new guy?

From the author:

Love You Two was inspired by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli’s 15 years of community work and academic research and publishing in sexual, family and cultural diversity in Australia, with an emphasis on adults and adolescents, and parents and their children.

She says, ‘There were lots of people I’d met, events I’d witnessed, that just hung around in my head and heart begging to be taken out, aired and affirmed. I wanted to write a comforting, funny, challenging and realistic book for young people and the adults in their lives who love “differently”, whose families are misunderstood, misrepresented, and hidden, so that they could find themselves and know that what matters is how people love, not who they love.’

And this is from a review by an English teacher:

...Here, [she] encounters a different style of living where openness and acceptance are the norm: ‘Where people are multicultural, multisexual. Where knowing how to love is what matters, not who you love.’ Love You Two is an absorbing coming-of-age novel about the complex nature of identity: the false fronts that people present to the world and the secrets they keep hidden. The ideas presented in it are radical and challenging — perhaps too much so for some — with homosexuality and bisexuality, polygamy and sexual intimacy discussed in a frank and open manner. At times, this makes for discomfiting reading. Ultimately, while Love You Two is to be commended for its bravery, it should be recommended with discernment.

Five speeches from Poly Pride Weekend

More of the great people who spoke at Poly Pride Weekend in New York earlier this month have put their talks online. Here are excerpts. Click each title to get the whole thing.

1. Tristan Taormino's Poly Pride Rally Keynote Address, delivered from the stage in Central Park:

Marriage as we know it is changing. Conservatives would say it’s under attack; under fire. I say it’s under construction.

...People ask me a lot, “What did you learn from the people you interviewed for Opening Up? What do they all have in common? What makes open relationships work?” There are some common principles. Honesty. Self awareness. Trust. Communication. Boundaries. Commitment.

And this may be what is scariest of all to our enemies: we practice what they preach. We have values.... We need to reclaim the word values. We need to rip it out of the hands of pundits and bigots and stand up to defend our polyamorous values.

Our society is poised to change dramatically in the next decade. Like other minorities before us, polyamorous people need to come out when it’s safe to do so and educate our loved ones, our neighbors, our doctors and others around us about our lives. We need to tell our stories. I’ve had the privilege to hear the stories of hundreds of people in non-monogamous relationships. Like Leslie from Minnesota whose two husbands supported her through chemotherapy after she was diagnosed with cancer. Or Cat in Oklahoma, who lost custody of her children for being polyamorous. Or a poly circle of four in the Pacific Northwest who have owned a house and raised their kids together for over fifteen years. We must speak our truths....

We are at the forefront of those who will redefine love, commitment, and family in this century.

2. Jenny Block: "I Have Learned That It's Worth It":

You represent a community that has welcomed me in and supported me in a way I could have never expected or imagined.... You see, I never set out to be a spokesperson or poster child for polyamory. I'm a writer and what I write about is my life. And so when I was asked to write a book about the fact that I was in an open marriage, I was thrilled. And then, I was terrified.

...How can you ever be ready for the wrath of some people, the pity of others, and the surprising amount of love and community that comes as well?... The scathing comments [were] the biggest shock of all, of course. The first ones on the web called me a whore, implored my husband to leave me, damned me to hell, and caused my cheeks to catch fire, my nerves to clench, and my stomach to heave. But then the comments of support came rolling in....

And that has been the thrill of the last four months, for nowhere else could have I experienced the power of a skill we have come in many ways to take for granted.

...Those reactions brought out, I think, the best in me. Their comments — no matter how harsh or unkind or unfair — make me calmer and stronger and smarter. And they honed the skills that I had been working on in my marriage. In turn, I brought those skills back to bear on my marriage and my relationship with my current girlfriend Jemma. Being with her has taught me once and for all that love isn’t a limited commodity. That being poly is about honoring one’s sexuality not exploiting it. And that just because you feel like you’re alone in the world, alone in your views about love and sex and life and relationships, doesn’t mean that you really are.

All of this has made me acutely aware of how much the people who came before me in this fight have done. How much all of you have done just by living your lives without compromise. How tirelessly those who have long been fighting the good fight have inspired all of us to communicate honestly in all of our relationships, with intimates, friends, or family. How they have taught us how to communicate with the rest of the world so that there might be more acceptance and less hate as we move forward.

3. Anita Wagner: "The Mainstreaming of Polyamory":

Today we are witnessing the mainstreaming of polyamory. We’ve come a long way from the early days of polyamory and its roots in the free love movement. For many years polyamory stayed on the fringe of society, with some of its more radical denizens taking pride in keeping it there. Some were clearly resistant to the idea that polyamory as a model for relationships is a concept to be shared with people living traditional lives....

For a time polyamory stayed well below mainstream radar. As time passed and as the divorce rate held high and steady, legitimate mainstream media interest began to shine an ever-brighter light on polyamory and asked the question, “Is polyamory a legitimate alternative to traditional monogamy?”

...Via online resources, people in monogamous relationships found out that there is an alternative.... Along the way, dedicated organizations like the Institute for 21st Century Relationships have devoted their energies to teaching workshops at professional conferences attended by sex researchers and marriage and family therapists to increase awareness of the legitimacy of this alternative to traditional monogamy. Professionals are beginning to understand that open relationships can and do work for many people and are learning how to counsel their clients more appropriately and competently....

Today the picture is brighter than ever. The mainstreaming of polyamory is well under way, and as community organizers and advocates it is our duty to be prepared to continue to effectively participate in the ongoing public dialogue about alternatives to monogamy in a way that debunks misconceptions and helps mainstreamers understand that they do indeed have options as to how they arrange their intimate relationships....

We are proud of who we are, proud of our poly families, and proud to share the truth about legitimate options in intimate relationships. Let us commit ourselves to facilitating the growth of mainstream polyamory.... The poly mantra is said to be “Communicate, Communicate, Communicate”, and this is wise advice as to the way we conduct our relationships. Similarly, my poly advocacy mantra is “Facilitate, Facilitate, Facilitate!” I invite you to join me in pride in who we are and as we work together to let everyone know they have options by facilitating the mainstreaming of polyamory.

4. Leanna Wolfe: "On Kittens and the Very Invented Culture of Polyamory":

...Deciding to set your lover free into the wide world of polyamory also has its consequences — consequences so overwhelming that the vast majority of Americans simply say “no.” In that biologically humans are a pair-bonding species, short-term monogamy can feel like the high road and the right road. And certainly romantic-love brain chemistry conforms to this template and approach.... Poly people view this phase of romantic love with a wide-angle lens. They know that the sensations caused by their dopamine highs won’t last and that at best such a love will convert to the attachment phase, which is more relaxed, being supported by the brain chemicals vasopressin and oxytocin.... Once in the attachment phase poly people comfortably invite in new attractions and new loves.

Mainstream Americans put NRE [New-Relationship Energy, or love-struckness] on a pedestal and thus consider polyamory to be supremely foolhardy. It’s been noted by anthropological observers that American society’s attitudes towards romantic love are very adolescent. As lovers Americans behave like teenagers. We take our crushes seriously and we measure our self worth by being able to demand the fidelity of our partners and the health of our relationships by the intensity of passion we’re able to co-generate.

...Over the last five years I’ve conducted research (including a doctoral dissertation) to better understand the components of compersion.... What might give a couple in an open-polyamorous relationship the sense of non-possessiveness that would cause them to embrace their partner’s extra-relationship exploration?... Those who were highly enculturated in the world of polyamory (reading books, joining e-lists and attending conferences) were most likely to contend that compersion was possible.

...[I] consider that polyamory is an absolutely unique cultural invention.... Like life-long monogamy, polyamory goes completely against our biological wiring. It took me a long time to realize this. As a scientist with a poly agenda, I was forever using biological examples to argue that polyamory was natural. What I failed to note was that the culture of polyamory is a true blue human invention — a cultural construction.

...As for why polyamory is a very weird cultural construction, it’s because poly people seek to tell the truth — not just to their trusted friends but to their longtime partners, their sizzling new lovers, subscribers to their internet blogs and livejournals, as well as pretty much everyone else who will listen. They seek to tell the truth even when it hurts. We humans, being members of the biggest-brained primate species, typically withhold information when it’s not to our advantage to share. While endeavoring to be truthful is perhaps the most significant hallmark of polyamory, it’s honestly not very human....

5. And in case you missed it the first time, my own speech: "Steering the Bandwagon":

People who push for years to get a bandwagon rolling are usually unprepared for what to do when the bandwagon finally starts to move. No longer is it all about a few devoted people grunting and straining from behind to make the bandwagon’s wheels move half an inch. When the effort begins to succeed, the bandwagon starts rolling on its own, faster and faster.

And unless the people with the original vision stop just shoving the rear bumper and run up and grab the steering wheel, pretty soon the bandwagon outruns them and leaves them behind. And their elation turns to horror as they watch it careen downhill out of control, in disastrous unintended directions.... Think of what happened to the psychedelic drug movement a generation ago....

The defining aspect of polyamory, I'm convinced — the thing that sets it apart and makes it powerful and radical and transformative — is in seeing one's metamours not as rivals to be resented or even as neutral figures to be tolerated, but as, at minimum, friends and acquaintances — perhaps family even — for whom you genuinely wish good things. And beyond that, of course, there's no limit to how close you can become. This is what differentiates poly from merely having affairs. In this way it becomes a generalization of the magic of romantic love — into something much wider, and more widely applicable, than the dominant paradigm of a couple carefully walling away their particular love from anything to do with the rest of humanity.

Please pass along this link to anyone who doesn't take this subject seriously. Here's the permalink.

Open Marriage Pro and Con on Tyra Banks

The Tyra Banks Show

The Tyra Banks Show this morning (Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008) ran a segment titled "They're Married, but They Sleep with Other People!" Tyra Banks is a daytime-TV talk show host with a reputation as being not quite as dumb and insipid as others.

Among the show's guests were several successful poly folks and two of our best spokespeople: Birgitte Philippides of Polyamorous NYC, and Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage. Also featured was a survivor of an open marriage gone bad.

I didn't see the show (yet). It should eventually be available online.

Meanwhile, as Jenny puts it, the show's comment site is "burning up." Take a look, and chip in!

For the record, here's the show's promo description:

They're married, but they're dating other people! Meet couples who tied the knot, but still have sex with other partners! First, Tyra talks to Kamala and Michael, a married couple who loves their open relationship -- even embracing each other's additional sexual partners! But it's all not all fun and games as guest Kelly reflects on her experiences with open relationships, and why she's now totally opposed to the lifestyle. Finally, engaged couple Monique and Keith ask their unsuspecting friend to join them in an open relationship!

Update: Anita Wagner describes the show in detail on her Practical Polyamory blog. Her conclusion:

The bottom line is that there were no train wrecks here and I don't think we could have asked for this one to have turned out any better.

Update: Now you can watch it on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

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Open Marriages on Fox's "Morning Show"

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet

On Fox TV this morning, Jenny Block (author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage) got a minute or two to enthuse about her relationships to the skeptical hosts, followed by two people who called open marriage a formula for disaster because people can never control their emotions. (Editor's note: It's not about controlling your emotions, it's about controlling your actions.)

The whole thing was fast, superficial, and I would say unhelpful. It was over before the idea at the heart of polyamory — supporting your lover's other relationships, not just tolerating them — could even get onto the floor. So the show was totally old-paradigm. Bleh.

At least it may help sell Jenny's book.

Watch the segment here: Part 1; Part 2.

Update: See the excellent discussions about this show at Joreth's journal and Anita Wagner's Practical Polyamory blog.

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Jenny Block gets us more good ink

Baltimore City Paper

Baltimore's big, much-read alternative newsweekly turns a book review of Jenny Block's Open into a long feature:

Redefining Intimacy

Jenny Block — and Other Spouses in Open Relationships — Refuse to Let Monogamy Ruin Their Marriages

By Heather Harris

Whom and how would you love if no one ever told you how it was "supposed" to be done?

...Think about it for a moment. Would you love men or women? Would you love for life? Would you love in series or in parallel? If you loved in parallel, would you tell each partner about the others? What would you do if you had to create the rules from scratch?

The circumstances of author Jenny Block's life led her to wrestle with these questions as few of us do. In her new book, Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage (Seal Press), Block traces her path from monogamy to infidelity to polyamory, being in an intimate relationship with more than one person....

Polyamory may have an established presence in urban "alternative" communities, but Block is telling her story from the suburbs. The thirtysomething girl next door, the one with the handsome WASP-y husband and the adorable young daughter... has her husband's blessing to engage in sexual relationships outside of their marriage. And what she has learned by flouting relationship convention so thoroughly is surprisingly, universally relevant.

...Block convinced her husband to try a threesome with her and her friend, a much-younger firecracker named Lisbeth. Christopher agreed, not without some reservation, and one night the girls tag-teamed him. "I was watching them," Block says on the phone from her home outside Dallas. "And I had this moment of, `Are you completely insane? She's 16 years his junior. She's hot. She's much more fun and entertaining than you are. How long do you think it's going to be before he leaves you for her?'"

But Lisbeth didn't want to be a wife and mother right then, and Christopher didn't want to be married to anyone but Block. So while their first foray into polyamory hit a few snags, it didn't threaten the integrity of the marriage or cause either spouse to question his or her desire to be there. It was a watershed experience for both of them.

...Block isn't trying to sell polyamory as some sort of utopia. "My husband can leave me just as easily as anyone else's," she says. "It's just that if he wants to see if the grass is greener, he can jump over the fence, that's all. In some ways I think being allowed that freedom keeps him from running off into the next pasture. There's no fantasy about what else is out there. Go ahead, look, have at it." She stops to think for a minute. "In the end, I think marriage and relationships all bear striking similarity to one another in that we all face the same issues once we settle down with one person. Yeah, you can leave your wife for your secretary, but it won't be long before your secretary turns into your wife."

..."I totally see why people follow convention," she says candidly. "People don't want other people to be different and they don't want them to be happy when they're different, because then the implication is that they could live differently, too. A lot of people just can't face that."

Block's larger goal for her book is to make it easier for people to live differently in all sorts of ways. Open doesn't just explore polyamory; it explores what it is to be a woman, a wife, a mother, a bisexual, a breaker of convention, and a married person in America. And with each exploration, Block suggests that people should have more latitude and responsibility to do what feels right and works for them.

Read the whole article (July 30, 2008).

Next up: in Charlottesville, Virginia, the alternative newspaper The Hook did a nice writeup prior to Block's appearance and reading in town:

"It was weird that it wasn't weird."

That's how Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage, describes the first sexual encounter she and her husband had with a mutual friend as part of their open marriage. According to Block, the friend was "a younger, hilarious, intelligent woman," and their relationship lasted for years....

Whole article (July 17, 2008).

Here's a short interview with Block in the June 12th Quick DFW, a free weekly paper in her Dallas hometown (published by the mainstream Dallas Morning News).

Keep up with her media notices and book-tour adventures at her book blog.

She is also writing regular columns for Tango magazine and The Huffington Post.

The "FOXSexpert" weighs in

Fox News

On America's conservative-movement TV news show, "FOXSexpert" Yvonne K. Fulbright ruminates about polyamory in a surprisingly nonjudgmental way. She asks "Can you be in love with more than one person?" Her answer: Yes and no.

She's trying to be intelligent. Ignore that she drags in reality TV; she works for a trashy program, she has to reference the trash for form's sake.

...Somewhere along the line, reality TV took an interesting turn in dishing out polyamorous programming....

If you’re not familiar with it, polyamory (which means “many loves”) is the practice of having more than one open sexual, romantic relationship. Typically characterized as loving, poly-relationships don’t just involve sex, but emotions as well.

This practice of maintaining multiple significant, intimate relationships simultaneously encompasses love, intimacy, commitment, friendship, affection, flirting, desire, sex, romance, eroticism....

People who support the claim that humans have the potential to simultaneously love more than one person tend to highlight other matters. In “Open,” Jenny Block, herself in an open marriage, criticizes Americans for being limited in their thoughts around love. She has a particular issue with society’s view that the only relationship that counts is the heterosexual, monogamous marriage.

Block argues that humans are capable of loving as much as they allow themselves. This is particularly important given that no relationship is static....

While I certainly understand many of Block’s points, as somebody who doesn’t like to share when it comes to sexual partners, I wasn’t convinced that she had a case until it came to the matter of defining love. Whether trying to sort through the latest season of “The Bachelor” or attempting to comprehend another couple’s structure, the fact that there are different types of love needs to be considered in understanding polyamory....

...A great deal of biological research alone supports the structure society has in place for monogamous love. One could argue that, when you’re truly falling in love with somebody, there can be only one. [For example,] researchers like [Helen] Fisher have shown how dopamine in the brain increases greatly when we fall in love with somebody. This neurotransmitter is what makes for a person having extremely focused attention, incredible motivation, and goal-directed behaviors when it comes to winning over a crush. Lovers consumed with feelings of romance are known to focus exclusively on a beloved and no one else.

Everyone is going to have their own take on whether it’s possible or not — whether it’s right or not — to love more than one person at the same time. Perhaps of greatest concern, however, should be how the one juggling multiple partners is treating the suitors involved. In being sexually promiscuous, is this person using others for his or her own gratification?

Better known as “players,” these individuals are generally chalked up by psychologists as having relationships that are immature, incomplete, and sexually focused. Reality TV or not, that’s polyamory at its worst.

Read the whole column (July 21, 2008).

Ménage Your Time; "Why is this stuff so hot right now?"

Style (Richmond, VA)

"Greater Richmond's alternative newsweekly," located in Jenny Block's old hometown, reviews her new open-relationship book and also Tristan Taormino's:

Ménage Your Time

By Valley Haggard

At one time a band of gold was the fashion choice for monogamists everywhere, but for a growing number of people, that ring has gone out of style: For them, polyamory is the new monogamy.

Increasingly, it seems, people in committed relationships are choosing to let the neighbors in on their richer, their poorer, their sickness and their health. The new CBS series “Swingtown” and HBO’s “Big Love” present alternate bedroom realities. And now two smart, unsmarmy books about polyamory are on the shelves, all of which begs the question: Why is this stuff so hot right now?

The writer never tries to answer that.

...“I think we’ve gotten sex and love really tangled up,” Block says. “We’ve gotten really possessive; marriage has become all about sexual ownership, but there’s not necessarily emotional support. That’s not to say I have a problem with monogamy. If it’s a conscious choice, hey, more power to you.”

...“Open” is a memoir, but at times it reads like a critical analysis of evolving lifestyle choices. (It even has footnotes.) “I started out writing more pure memoir, but my editor thought it would be too indulgent and racy,” Block says. So she approached her writing in a more intellectual way, supporting her thesis with the details of her life....

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“We haven’t seen a good book about non-monogamy since ‘The Ethical Slut’ in 1997,” says Tristan Taormino, a Village Voice columnist and author of the newly released “Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships.”

“The more I look around, the more I see two things,” she says. “People seem to be struggling with traditional monogamy — in the news every day, there’s a sports figure or politician struggling with monogamy. Some of the most successful relationships I know in my community are not monogamous. People seem to be willing to go off the beaten path to create relationships that work for them.”

Taormino, 37, has been in an open relationship with her partner, Colten (a transgender person, born a woman, who has not undergone any type of surgery but who prefers male pronouns), for eight years. “Like any relationship, it’s been very dynamic,” Taormino says. “It started as polyamorous, and now it’s partnered non-monogomy [meaning a central committed couple who have casual sex with other people]. Marriage is a point of negotiation. The landscape is constantly shifting in terms of what’s legal and what’s not.”

...Is there any demographic more likely than another to be open? Can you look for an “O” crocheted to the lapels of nontraditionally partnered Americans?

“Oh God, no, not at all,” Taormino says. “In terms of age, race, gender, class and geography, it’s all over the board. I interviewed an enlisted member of the Army, a pastor in a mainline Christian church, phone sex operators, elementary school teachers, lawyers, doctors. And a whole bunch were from Virginia.”

But if non-monogamy is happening successfully in so many ZIP codes, why do so many people find the arrangement threatening?

“I think it’s because we have collectively been told this fairy tale about our one true love, our Prince Charming, our soulmate — and it’s been reinforced in the media and every part of society. And whenever you challenge such a prominent institution, it’s terrifying,” she says. “But on the flip side, it’s courageous to say, ‘You know what? This isn’t working for me.’”

Read the whole article (July 16, 2008). You can send a letter-to-the-editor to letters@styleweekly.com.

Here are my own reviews of the books.

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> Why is this stuff so hot right now?

Okay... deep breath... here's my take:

1. It's been building slowly for 20+ years — ever since Ryam Nearing, Deborah Anapol, and others created the modern poly movement from the ashes of the 1960s and 70s — and now the momentum is finally reaching a tipping point.

2. The invention of the word "polyamory" in 1990-1992 gave it a name. I remember when there was no name — when it was called all sorts of unsatisfactory, un-memorable mouthfuls: ethical nonmonogamy, multilateral marriage, utopian swinging, polymorphous perversity (per Sigmund Freud), polyfidelity, "the Harrad Experiment lifestyle," synergamy, waterbrotherhood.... Only when a movement gets a clear name can it take hold.

3. The internet is letting people find each other and form communities as never before.

4. In the last three years, Loving More has done a lot of media outreach — and when one newspaper or TV show does something others copy it (see "herd journalism"). This matters, because media coverage has become more effective for movement-building in the era of Google. All it takes is one mention of the concept and the word, and an interested person can discover the whole poly scene.

5. A lot of today's polys are well-educated writers and communicators. A survey by Loving More of about 1,000 of its members a few years ago found that 40% had post-graduate degrees, compared to 8% of the general population (see the survey data, page 424). Such people are good at spreading new ideas and memes. Quotable quote here: "There were only a few thousand people in all Europe who brought about the Renaissance." —Paul Tillich.

Other thoughts?