- Molly Roden Winter wrote a memoir about opening up her marriage while mothering two young children.
- She said creating a list of how she wanted to be more self-serving helped usher her into non-monogamy.
- She shared how making mistakes in sex and love allowed her to create the life she desired.
Nearly a decade ago, writer and former English teacher Molly Roden Winter got banned for life from the coworking space Breather for violating their terms of service, ones that would likely be true of most offices.
She felt embarrassed for a moment but went on to have more public sex with her French-Argentinian lover at another coworking space in New York City.
Just a few years before, Winter would have considered herself hyper-responsible. She counseled her English students about their middle-school drama while balancing lesson plans, maintaining her marriage, and raising two young boys in Brooklyn. By societal standards, Winter was living a fulfilling life as a mother, career woman, and wife — and someone who almost always followed rules.
But Winter didn't feel satisfied, so at the urging of her therapist she gave the idea of disobedience a try. For her, this meant doing things like having sex with her then-lover, a public-sex fetishist, in one of Breather's coworking rooms while her husband was at work.
"My whole life, I had just been very, very responsible and I wanted to give myself permission to do some irresponsible things. I didn't do anything that had dire consequences, but I think I needed that," Winter, the author of "More: A Memoir of Open Marriage," told Business Insider.
Now with 15 years of an open marriage under her belt, Winter's memoir chronicles her trial-and-error approach to creating the marriage and life she desired.
She credits a suggestion from her therapist for giving her the ability to take the leap. After discussing her motivations for wanting to have sex and relationships outside of her marriage, her therapist urged her to create and act on a "freedom to-do list" to better understand how to achieve the feelings she craved.
A craving for freedom and an unexpected meet-cute led to an open marriage
In 2008, Winter and her husband of nine years, Stewart, agreed to formally open their marriage.
Years before they wed, Stewart mentioned that he would be OK with Winter exploring sex outside of their relationship, but she didn't act on it for nearly a decade of their marriage.
However, when Winter became a mother with two young children at home, she noticed that she craved experiences outside of parenting and marriage, ones that centered her desires. So when she had an unexpected flirtation with a man she met while grabbing a drink with friends, Winter decided to pursue the connection. At first, she had no clue how to navigate dating outside her marriage.
But when she began to — with Stewart seeing other partners too — Winter realized that she was unsure about why exactly she wanted to pursue other men. At the urging of her therapist, she created her "freedom to-do list" to get to the bottom of her ultimate yearning for freedom, and how extramarital sex played a role in that desire.
Winter vowing to 'do dumb shit' catapulted her into an open marriage
In making her list, Winter learned how openness in a relationship is often about more than sex.
"You don't have to jump to, 'I want to be free to have sex with other people.' It can be, 'I want to be free to go on a trip without you, or I want to be free to kiss somebody else, or I want to be free to have my Saturdays to myself once a month,'" Winter said.
Ultimately, the exercise showed her that she was seeking experiences she could call all her own, separate from her roles as a mother, wife, and teacher.
One of the first things Winter said she put on her list was "the freedom to do dumb shit," an item that she conquered with sexcapades like public sex and being the other woman. Doing this allowed her to see the beauty in letting go, she said.
Winter told BI that having sex outside her 24-year marriage over the years has also helped her feel more at peace with her life as a mother and wife. She now has 15 years of non-monogamy under her belt.
But before that, Winter also experimented with other freedoms, like quitting her teaching job, picking up guitar, and running a race — a feat that ended disastrously when she injured her hip mid-race and had to add physical therapy to her jam-packed schedule of raising kids and spending quality time with her husband. These experiences helped Winter understand the feeling she craved — self-autonomy — and how to create more of it in different parts of her life.
Eventually, non-monogamy became another way for Winter to feel that sense of freedom to explore herself outside her existing identities.
Now, when friends and acquaintances ask Winter about her advice for opening up a relationship, she points them to the to-do list method that helped her get started.
"Often, we think that we're supposed to be with our partner all the time, and if we want time alone or apart from them, there's something wrong," Winter said. "Making this list and having a frank conversation about it is a great way to begin.