From "How a Polyamorous Mom Had 'a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself/In her memoir, 'More,' Molly Roden Winter recounts the highs and lows of juggling an open marriage with work and child care" (NYT).
It's hard to write a memoir and publish it into the minds of everyone you know.
There must be moments when you think, this is just for me, or this ought to be rephrased as fiction, and then the great breakthrough, where you realize, no, this is memoir, and I will be heard.
And let's be fair. The sons didn't learn about their parents nonmonogamous relationship from their mother's memoir. They learned it from their father's online dating profile. The mother's memoir was just an inroad into mother's mind, and they didn't even want to go there.
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53 comments:
How quickly we have gone from “Heather Has Two Mommies,” to “,Danny’s Mommy is a Ho.”
WTF.
"Well, you know, we was cruisin’ down the highway in a Greyhound bus
All kinds-a children in the side road, they was hollerin’ at us, sayin’:
“Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)
Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)
Get your rocks off! (Get ’em off!)
Get your rocks off-a me!”
Shorter: Garbage people doing garbage things while destroying their children.
Man oh man the Bridge and Tunnel NYT crowd are really really trying to normalize this now huh? By my recollection they've been hyping poly for almost 10 years, but it seems to intensify in and around Susanna Gibson type episodes when the thin veneer of their marketing efforts experience significant cracks.
Not genuine. Not organic. Not an optimal lifestyle. 99% of people who don't live in Manhattan or buy Becky's latest money-laundering paperback already know this.
--- “I still get a little nauseous thinking about it,” said Winter, 51, who was sipping tea in the living room of her bright and airy townhouse in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “Talk about the cringiest, cringiest, most awful thing that could happen.”
How perfect. Bright, airy townhouse. Brooklyn. Sipping tea. Sex.
If this person didn't exist, the NYT would have invented her. The apex of Cosmopolitanism.
Fact-or-fiction, this book will probably sell well. There's a big market for soft-core porn among middle-aged white women who would not otherwise admit to being attracted to erotica. That it's presented as a memoir adds a "personal element" to the tale; I suspect that's how she arrived at the decision to do it that way.
Too busy fucking to parent. Why is the son looking at online dating profiles at that age.
self centered narcissists
Just because teenagers act blasé didn't mean they're okay with it. It would not surprise me if they have difficulty forming romantic relationships of their own.
13 and 14, eh?
The Left's goal is to deprive children of their innocence. And, of course, push sexualization down to a younger age so that the likes of Bill Clinton can have their fun.
The macro goal of the Left - from the days of Lenin and Marx - is to destroy the nuclear family. It has worked out real well.
And who - in their right mind - thinks about their parents' sex lives; especially in high school.
(Aside: What self-respecting woman dates a married man?)
Pat Monyihan had it right: Defining deviance down.
To restate an old song: I'm proud to be a Jaysker from Nebraska.
When NE was going through its debate on child mutilation, the Left was keen on letting minors destroy their lives before age 19.
One of my main comments was: Leave the kids alone.
By now, her sons, who are 19 and 21, are blasé about their parents’ sex lives.
I'm curious who says this. The author? Her sons?
Maybe the sons can give away copies of the book as wedding favors.
She has that handsome look of a big handed woman with high testosterone. A real bucking bronco to go along with the horse face. I don't have a problem with their lifestyle as long as it's mutually consensual. However I don't think the kids had much of a choice. That seems a bit unfair to me to put that on tweeners.
her boys know her number (304)
Why do these people think anyone gives a flying f about their lives?
Ugh.
I can't remember where I saw this - I think it might have been the depressing movie Sunshine, from 1973. Here's what "this" was:
On the screen, a man and a woman, dressed in loose-fitting flowy clothes. The woman's hair is shoulder length, the man's not much shorter. They have that "clean hippie" look. They want to have a second child. They go together to the backyard and collect their extant child, aged about 3-ish, take him by the hands and bring him into into the house. All three walk together into the bedroom, toward the white-linened bed.
I saw this movie late at night on television while babysitting, so it was probably ten or twelve years after it was made. Bringing their child into bed with them was of course intended to indicate that the parents wanted their first child with them while they conceived their second child, and it was presented as THE most "family" thing they could have done.
Lord, what a weird time the late '60s and early '70s must have been. I'm so glad I was too young to know firsthand.
But that strange scene seems as innocent as the April showers song in Bambi compared with what New York parents of today apparently get up to.
"Just because teenagers act blasé didn't mean they're okay with it. It would not surprise me if they have difficulty forming romantic relationships of their own."
Right? I had my fill of my parent's sex life by 14 and didn't believe her contention that good sex was the Most Important Thing in Life, worth throwing over my dad for.
But it was the only way of life I'd seen.
Man oh man the Bridge and Tunnel NYT crowd are really really trying to normalize this now huh? By my recollection they've been hyping poly for almost 10 years, but it seems to intensify in and around Susanna Gibson type episodes when the thin veneer of their marketing efforts experience significant cracks.
-----
I've been saying for years that they'd push it this way, not via Muslim or Mormon polygamists. The goal is to sell it to the upper middle class white crowd who are just progressive enough to be concerned about seeming hip, and who want the progressive cred that comes with it.
Hopefully her sons are so fucked up by it that they never marry. And she can die knowing the heartbreak of never having grandchildren.
I’m sure the kids are really well adjusted, normal people, voting democrat…
Why is the son looking at online dating profiles at that age.
-----
Simplest explanation is that the son went to use the laptop and discovered that dad had left the browser open to his profile.
"Winter recounts her experiments with butt plugs, fisting..."
Hey kids, I really think you should read Mommy's memoir. It will really allow you to plumb the depths of her soul.
yuck
gilbar said...
"Her boys know her number (304)"
Which is also the area code for Charleston, WVa.
Bonobos are our closest related species. Once called Pygmy Chimpanzees, they are now recognized as a separate species. We share 98.7% of our DNA with them. Bonobos are also known for having lots and lots of sex between all of the different members of the bobobo society. The only exception is incest between siblings.
Bonobos are also threatened with extinction: there are only about 15-20k left. There is a lesson in there for us humans.
Jim kinda nailed it at the outset.
Poor dears. They did something they didn’t want their sons to know about.
Jim kinda nailed it at the outset.
Commitment to spouse or child is a hard problem. That said, #NoJudgment #NoLabels #HerToo. Throw another baby... "burden" on the barbie, social progress is indefatigable.
Why do these people think anyone gives a flying f about their lives?
1/17/24, 8:53 AM
I love reading about other people's lives, memoir or memoirish fiction, especially if they lived through something I missed or was too busy to pay attention to. Or wasn't born yet.
That said, I don't think I'll read this one.
What shitty parents
I'm an old man on the outside looking in. I have disapproved of sex for many years now. The sex drive is hard wired into the reptilian brain, and people seldom act out their sex lives in edifying or selfless ways. If you try to be moral and high minded, you miss out. If you try to get in on all the action, you waste a lot of time and, more often than not, screw up your life. I suppose someone somewhere at sometime has had an idyllic sex life and that someone somewhere wasn't a liar....I recently read William Manchester's book, Goodbye Darkness, about his time as a combat soldier in the Pacific. In that book, Manchester saw fit to mention that he was dropped from OCS because he masturbated in his bunk too much at night. Should wankers be dropped from OCS? Should people in open marriages confide their status to their children? It's all very confusing and entwined with the mores of the time.
I don't care about their sex lifes, but if I were the husband here, I would have the two sons tested for paternity.
These NYT articles seem kind of rote by now, don't they? Cut and paste The Next Weird Thing into a feature meant to help kick another leg out from under civilized society.
"Jim and Nancy knew dabbling in [INSERT DEVIANT BEHAVIOR HERE] would attract criticism from friends and family, but they saw it as a way to live their lives honestly. They are careful not to [INSERT NOD TO SOMETHING APPROACHING A LINE NOT TO BE CROSSED], not because they judge it wrong, but because it doesn't comport with their vision of their true selves."
People have always done weird, selfish shit. Having it promoted by the elite is new. Sixty years of Destroying Norms for Fun & Profit.
Mr Wibble said...
Simplest explanation is that the son went to use the laptop and discovered that dad had left the browser open to his profile.
"accidentally"
"By now, her sons, who are 19 and 21, are blasé about their parents’ sex lives."
I'll bet they are.
As usual, can't read it.
But does she have a budget for STDs?
Why had the Winters "struggled" as to when to tell the kids? If the arrangement was good, a positive benefit for the children, then there should be no struggle. The struggle would only exist if they suspected it would hurt the children, which in spite of the kids blase attitude it probably has.
Her sons should get her a ring tone that has a funky bassline.
Who cares?
"Winter and her husband struggled with when and how to tell their sons about their arrangement..."
I wonder what exactly the nature of that struggle was. They were too inhibited? Too shy? Too straight-laced and Victorian? Or, were they too cowardly to accept real moral consequences that might be uncomfortably durable?
One thing I know: It wasn't out of concern for their children.
Just looked at some images of Molly Roden Winter. Over the past 20 years, I've looked at *lots* of online dating profiles. I would NOT meet up with this woman under any circumstances. This woman doesn't make the cut.
And this NYT piece is all about her getting more dick. A free advertisement.
Molly will be in Chicago on January 24. I might drive up and personally find out how "open" her marriage is.
Wouldn't that be a hoot?
"Hey, Molly. Let's head on over the Hilton after this for some action. What do you say?"
Molly is from Evanston. I bet the Chicago event will be full of all the high school boys who fucked her.
This is too perfect.
From the event website page, "Masks and vaccination required."
I kid you not.
And I'd have to put a bag over old Molly's head anyway.
and texted his mother in a panic, asking if they were in an open marriage.
If that's his immediate question at age 13 -- as opposed to the more natural reaction of "Daddy's a cheating cad!" -- then the idea of open marriages and polyamory was probably part of the tempora and mores they grew up with.
Balfegor at 1:56 PM,
I noted that, too, when I read, then I assumed (maybe wrongly) that in the dating profile the father wrote about the nature of his marriage.
The article mentions that the husband encouraged her to taste the forbidden fruit and that would be OK as long as she told him about it. A WaPo book review says that little incident happened before the couple were engaged. A foretelling, a prophecy.
And later on in the NYT piece, husband confesses he was anxious about the book because he feared it would look like he had maneuvered her into the open marriage.
No further details, so, unless you care so deeply that you will read the wife's Big Bang Book, we may never know how the Bad Man maneuvered the Good Wife into becoming the Bad Girl, and Liking It.
What do they do now? Now that their thing is all over the media.
When in the bed-hopping did she plan her book? Isn't one result that this is more likely to mark the end of the affairs? Was this their ultimate goal? To be the Coolest of the Cool in Park Slope? Think of who might be knocking on their door now, ringing on their phone. Notoriety can be such a ... drag.
Of course, there's always Manhattan. New worlds to conquer. Except few of those people want to be in the NYT. Nor visiting a Park Slope townhouse.
Is monogamy out of the question now? Can they ever go back -- or is that not an option now, too boring? One way, they're too known. Who wants to be in that chica's next book? Other way, they've had to settle for their crummy old marriage.
Sucks to be them.
My mother was a WWII Army Nurse serving in the ETO. She graduated Highschool, went directly to nursing school on the military scholarship, came out a 2Lt. (I always assumed the nurses were made officers to allow them to pull rank, to keep control. Maybe someone can confirm that)
All this to say she come from an entirely different time. A more modest time. In the middle of rural America.
But one of her favorite retorts was. As long as you keep it out of site of the kids and dont spook the horses, have your fun.
That was in the sexual vernacular. gays, multiples, swapping . . .Its all good as long as you do no damage.
Ruining your kids from healthy personal relationships, is lots of damage.
So when's the donkey show? That's gotta be the next boundary to push.
When I hear about polycules or open marriages, my first question is: "Which one is the sociopath?"
Not that the answer can't be "all of them," but there's always at least one at the root of it.
Her sons should get her a ring tone that has a funky bassline.
For the mom, "bowm chicka bowm bowm."
For the Dad, that Yello song "Oh Yeah."
And MikeM at 12:02, YAHTZEE.
What a boring world it would be, were we all the same. That said, why is there always a sense of YUCK involved in learning details of such semi-private behaviors that should have been fully private?
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