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Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage | 
 enlarge | Author: Jenny Block
Publisher: Seal Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $15.37
You Save: $9.58 (38%)
New (15) Used (7) from $15.37
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 24484
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 280
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 158005241X
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.84
EAN: 9781580052412
ASIN: 158005241X
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081007210729T
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 There's no perfect model for relationships. October 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Being sexually incompatible is no one's fault, but that doesn't make it any less of an issue," writes Jenny Block in this memoir of how she and her husband Christopher came to the decision to open their own marriage. This book is more than just a heartfelt memoir, but also an investigation of monogamy itself (and why it so often fails). Jenny Block also explores the dilemma of women in relationships and the schizophrenic expectations that a woman can be wild, free, and uninhibited in bed, while at the same time be that perfect demure wife and mother.
For most couples, the sexual incompatibility, Jenny's bisexuality, and her previous affair coupled with the desire to have other partners openly might spell doom for the marriage, but Jenny and Christopher bravely find that the relationship and marriage, with all its good aspects, is worth preserving and look for a way to make it work without deferring to socially acceptable norms. What they find is that relationships do not have to be an all or nothing arrangement, but that they can share a deep, meaningful relationship with each other while other relationships meet other needs.
Jenny Block provides advice in the final chapters on how couples might go about opening up their own relationships, and although she doesn't provide a particular model that a relationship has to take, she offers up good guidelines for how to move toward an open marriage based on her own experiences, although a more comprehensive guide to designing an open relationship would be Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships. I recommend this book to anyone tired of reading about and struggling to build the perfect monogamous relationship. Even if you remain monogamous it is freeing to realize that there is no one relationship standard to aspire to.
It's wonderful we can have this discussion August 16, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
 Great look at open marriage August 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book does an excellent job of weaving Jenny Block's personal journey and an overview of the arguments for and over open marriage. Although I suspect women might find more in it than men -- it is written, after all, from the women's perspective -- I recommend it to men, who will come away with a better understanding of the possibilities.
Can open marriages work? (4.2 *s) July 30, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
In this heartfelt book, the author elaborates at length on some of the difficulties and contradictions of conventional, monogamous marriage and the solutions that an open marriage provided for her and her husband. A factor in the appeal of the book is that the author is not "far out"; she is basically the girl-next-door.
Strictly monogamous marriages based on love have become widespread only in modern times. That development has placed considerable pressure on marital partners to meet the many needs of their partners throughout a lifetime - an impossibility for many. Sexual roles for young females are confusing: how are they to be both seductive and virginal or upon being wed to abruptly lose interest in men after being encouraged to play the field. These difficulties and contradictions give some understanding to the high divorce rates and widespread infidelity prevalent in our society.
The author, as do most women, fell sway to the notion that there is one perfect man for her, which would then permit her to enter the state of house wifedom and motherhood - a rather sexless state to be sure. But after marriage, her interest in others did not diminish, nor did her love for her husband. An affair gone awry forced her to persuade her husband to try an open marriage. After various forays with different partners, her marriage has stabilized with her acquiring an exclusive girlfriend and her husband remaining monogamous.
The author readily admits that establishing and maintaining a successful open marriage takes considerable effort. Virtual total honesty is required of both partners, as well as emotional maturity, feelings of security, and coping with inevitable jealously. She fittingly refers to her husband as an "egoless man." It certainly would have been interesting for the author to comment on whether men or women are more tolerant of open marriages. Is there any truth to "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" or taking a backseat to another woman? Actually, the author admits to feelings of jealousy early on in their arrangement. Perhaps not insignificantly, her husband is not sharing her with another man.
The book does leave unaddressed any number of questions. She claims that her stronger libido is the primary basis for her need for more partners, although she has shifted more to a desire for another relationship. One wonders if this is not really more a case of marital mismatch than a basis for an open marriage. She does not really deal with the issue of actively seeking other partners, perhaps online, versus more inadvertent meetings. Being thirty-something, how will this or a similar arrangement be working at age sixty-five? Also, her young daughter seems to be largely unaware of her marital arrangements, but obviously there is some potential for problems. And there are legal issues. Common law spouses do have legal rights, but how do the courts deal with both a legal spouse and an alternative spouse? Her repeated reference to the lack of any biological basis for monogamy is unnecessary. The question is there a sociological basis for monogamy beyond the expected moralistic reaction?
The book is an interesting look at alternative marriages. Married partners do meet other people where there may be considerable attraction. Can or should marriages honestly accommodate such. What we have now is rampant dishonesty.
Brilliant. July 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Jenny Block should be recognized, especially with this work, as not only a voice for open relationships, but also as a voice for society and what it means to love, and to do so without judgement. This book is far more than a "how to" guide for getting your partner to have a threesome. No, it is a practical guide and, in essence, a diary of Jenny's own struggles and emotional roller coaster throughout her life and the struggles of being a woman in the 21st century and being in an open marriage in the process, and all the judgements and stereotypical connotations that goes along with it. I think Jenny should be applauded for her efforts in shining a light on and being an almost spokesperson for people who have alternate lifetyles. With a graceful, descriptive, and almost unwavering voice, she lets you know the intracacies and ins and outs that go into an open relationship without perverting it with explicit details. Coming from someone who is in the infancy stages of an open relationship, I can tell you that it was more than a relief to find this book. In a world filled with judgement, fear, and hatred, to have someone like Jenny putting her name on the line for so many, is a rare commodity these days. I thank Jenny for writing this book, and I will continue to reference it as my own questions about my relationship arise. Bravo Jenny.
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