More

What happens when the part of you that still wants—for sex, for freedom, for attention—won’t quiet down just because you put on a ring or had kids? In More, Molly Roden Winter argues that desire isn’t a problem to be solved but a compass to be learned—a source of knowledge that can expand love rather than threaten it (echoing Audre Lorde’s epigraph: “The erotic is the nurturer…of all our deepest knowledge”). She contends that opening a marriage does not magically fix anything; it intensifies everything—communication, jealousy, pleasure, and the unfinished business of your past. If you can tolerate that heat, you can forge a truer self and, paradoxically, a sturdier partnership.

You follow Molly from a single kiss in a South Slope kitchen to years of experiments—some liberating, some seedy, some exquisitely tender—as she and her husband, Stewart, grope toward a workable form of consensual non-monogamy. Along the way, she grapples with her migraines (somatic alarms for what she’s not saying), her people-pleasing alter ego (“Straight‑A Molly”), and the ways her mother’s own open marriage and spiritual seeking shaped what she thinks she’s allowed to want. You also meet her lovers—Matt, Leo, Laurent, Karl, and Scott—and her teachers: a wise therapist (Mitchell), a pragmatic couples counselor (Evelyn), a polyamory guide (The Ethical Slut), and even her teenage son, Daniel, whose accidental discovery of her husband’s OkCupid profile forces radical honesty at home.

What the book argues

Molly’s core argument cuts against both rom-com fantasy and doom-filled cautionary tales: non-monogamy is not a thrill ride or a marital death wish; it’s a mirror. It reflects back what you’re avoiding—shame, scarcity, control—and asks you to metabolize those feelings into agreements, boundaries, and, crucially, self-care. Underneath the sex story, More is a story about voice and agency. The work is not to find the “right” set of rules, but to find the truer self that can name needs, negotiate fairly, and stay present when jealousy and fear arrive. If you do that, love can multiply rather than divide.

What you’ll learn in this summary

First, you’ll see how Molly and Stewart move from fantasy (“tell me everything”) to framework (negotiated rules and, later, one governing principle: radical honesty and mutual processing). Second, you’ll learn a practical emotional toolkit—tracking triggers, decoding migraines, naming parts (“Straight‑A Molly” versus “True Molly”), and crafting a personal “Freedoms” list—to turn desire into data rather than danger. Third, you’ll get a clear-eyed tour of jealousy, compersion, and metamour dynamics through vivid scenes: the hotel keycard in Stew’s jeans, a ban from a Breather room, a tearful fight after a sushi delivery notification, and a surprisingly tender night singing Sheryl Crow in a private karaoke room. You’ll also see how community and language shift everything—from Ashley Madison hookups to OkCupid’s “non‑monogamous” checkbox, from secret trysts to Poly Cocktails and solo poly mentors (like Liam).

Why this matters

Even if you never intend to open your relationship, Molly’s story reads like an x‑ray of modern marriage under pressure—kids, work, hunger for aliveness. Esther Perel calls it “mating in captivity”; Molly shows how captivity often comes from inside—rigid identities, unspoken resentments, and the belief that love is a pie with too few slices. The book makes a bracing case for two ideas that apply in any partnership: honesty must evolve from confession to collaboration, and your body will protest when your mouth won’t speak. When Molly starts listening (to migraines, to shame, to delight), she stops outsourcing her self-worth to lovers and rules, and starts building a self that can love and be loved more.

By the end, the memoir resists tidy resolution. Partners change (Scott leaves), rules soften (one rule: honesty + processing), and the marriage endures—not because non‑monogamy “worked” like a hack, but because both partners did the deeper work. If you’re wondering whether you can ask for more without losing everything you have, this is a field guide—messy, moving, and unusually practical—to trying.

Molly and Stewart begin where many couples secretly start: with fantasy. Before they married, Stewart told her, half-prophetic and half-provocative, that one day she’d want to sleep with someone else—and that she should tell him about it. A decade later, after two kids and dwindling sex, she meets Matt at The Gate bar in Park Slope. Flirty texts become a charged drink, which becomes a rain‑soaked kiss—and a phone‑in permission slip to her husband: “Should I go back?” Stew replies, “Go for it.” That first affair cracks something open, but it’s not a playbook. It’s a pressure cooker. Fantasy, it turns out, is easy; frameworks are hard.

Phase 1: Voyeurism and asymmetry

At first, Stewart is turned on by the idea of Molly with other men—he wants “every detail” in bed—while she wants attention and tenderness, not just a hotter script. The asymmetry shows. While she sneaks to Ashley Madison (anonymous handles, cartoon sunglasses over faces), he leaves hotel keycards in his pockets and is openly on OkCupid. Their early “rules” are really habits: she reports; he withholds. Power tilts toward the person who’s not confessing. Unsurprisingly, secrecy breeds shame. After a raw night with Matt, Molly comes home saying only “It was fun,” even as her body aches to go back. When Daniel, their teen, stumbles upon Stew’s OkCupid profile, the house of cards wobbles.

Phase 2: Rules, then better rules

The next chapter is what most couples reach for: rules. No exes, no neighbors, no sleeping over, no falling in love (the classic non‑rule that The Ethical Slut later skewers). They also agree to sync dates so no one stews at home. It helps—until it doesn’t. Laurent “forgets” condoms and pushes for a sex club; Leo is brilliant in bed but rougher than consent allows; a Breather co‑working room bans her for life after a tryst (“Thank God we used your credit card,” Laurent texts). Each broken boundary forces a better one. The biggest upgrade comes from Evelyn, their couples therapist, who swaps scorekeeping for mirroring: each repeats what the other says until both feel heard. “I feel like I can’t win,” Stewart admits; “You want me to read your mind,” he adds. The temperature in the room drops.

Phase 3: Language and community

When Molly moves from Ashley Madison to OkCupid’s “non‑monogamous” checkbox, everything changes: she gets language and community. Liam, a serene sommelier raised in a Northern California poly commune, introduces “solo poly,” “metamours,” and “compersion.” He points her to Poly Cocktails and The Ethical Slut. Even if Molly never becomes a capital‑P Poly practitioner, words give shape to experience. Instead of “cheating but not,” it’s ENM (ethical non‑monogamy); instead of “the other woman,” it’s a metamour with a name—Martina, Diana, Kiwi. Language doesn’t fix feelings, but it makes them speakable.

How you can use this

• Move past erotic scripts to needs. If one partner wants details to get off and the other craves being cherished, name it. Scripts are fine; shared needs are the framework.
• Iterate your agreements. Start small; keep revising. The “no falling in love” clause sounds safe but usually masks a different fear (abandonment, status loss).
• Borrow a practice from therapy. Mirroring (Evelyn’s exercise) turns arguments into solvable problems.

(Context: Esther Perel notes that modern marriage asks one person to be our village—lover, co‑parent, best friend, muse. ENM can redistribute those roles, but only if you shift from thrill‑seeking to skill‑building.)

When Molly first sits on Mitchell’s office couch, she’s not looking for a new identity; she’s looking for permission—to sleep with Matt, to stop the migraines, to be a mother who still wants. Mitchell offers something more useful: a method. Your feelings are information, he suggests. Treat desire like data, not danger. Track it. Test it. Translate it into choices that serve a fuller self.

Track the body, find the story

Mitchell’s first assignment is gloriously unsexy: headache logs. Molly records what she’s doing and thinking when migraines bloom—school pickup, bedtime martyrdom, dutiful sex, fantasies about Matt. Patterns emerge. Pain spikes with obligation and suppression. It quiets with music, guitar, boxing, and honest talk. The body is blunt when the mouth is careful. “I think there’s a hole in your bucket,” Mitchell later says, naming her chronic emptiness. You can pour in love from kids, husbands, and lovers, but if your self-worth leaks out the bottom, you’ll always feel empty.

Name your parts

To see what’s leaking, Mitchell personifies the inner driver: Straight‑A Molly, the over-functioning girl who learned to please, perform, and preempt other people’s needs. She’s the one who says yes to sex she doesn’t want, yoga-moms her way through rage, and keeps the household running while fuming that no one helps. Opposite her is True Molly, the part that wants spontaneity, kink when it’s chosen, art, naps, and breakfast dates instead of perfectly packed lunches. When Molly literally cradles a pillow in therapy—“Straight‑A Molly”—and promises to take care of her differently, migraines loosen their grip. (If you’ve read Internal Family Systems, the move will feel familiar: name the part; lead with Self.)

Design for freedom

Mitchell gives homework that is part values audit, part jailbreak. Three columns: Freedom From (pleasing, punctuality, “class parent” duty), Freedom To Be (imperfect, spontaneous, her own priority), and Freedom To Do (stupid fun, guitar lessons, a job with flexible mornings). Molly quits full‑time teaching for curriculum work, starts a guitar duo, and learns to box with women named Sparky and Storm. The point isn’t to become a Good Open‑Marriage Person; it’s to become a person whose life is big enough that lovers are addition, not anesthesia.

From permission to discernment

The method changes how Molly dates. With Leo, she discovers intense pleasure (fisting, to her surprise); with Laurent, she locates a hard no (condom “accidents” and bathroom quickies that curdle into UTIs and shame). With Karl, she experiences tender, ritualized care—wine and candles, hotel‑quality sheets, his voice cooing “good girl”—that’s as much about being seen as being had. Desire, recorded and reflected upon, becomes a teacher. As Simon (in The Ethical Slut) would say, it’s not “Do anything, consequences be damned,” it’s, “Track your turn‑ons and build a life that can hold them.”

(Comparison: Where Mating in Captivity explores the paradox of safety and desire, More gives you a user manual for listening to the paradox in your own nervous system.)

Jealousy shows up early and often, wearing many masks. There’s Molly’s stab when Stewart sleeps with his ex, Lena (“I crumpled to the floor”); Stewart’s queasiness when Molly banters with Matt; the white‑hot fury when a sushi notification reveals Kiwi and Stew are in their kitchen. Shame is jealousy’s shadow—after rough sex with Leo right after his sailing trip, after Laurent’s unprotected thrusts and public cubicle sex, after an Ashley Madison hotel afternoon that ends in emptiness. The book’s boldest claim is not that jealousy disappears; it’s that you can metabolize it into something life‑giving.

Step 1: Make jealousy speak in full sentences

Evelyn teaches Molly to stop arguing with feelings and start naming them (“Feelings aren’t facts”). That turns “I’m upset you went bowling!” into “I’m scared domesticity only happens with her.” Molly asks for breakfast dates; Stewart asks to be trusted with housework without shame. Even their son Daniel’s distress (“Can you just lie if you have a date?”) becomes navigable once everyone names what they can and cannot bear to know. Jealousy, spoken, shrinks.

Step 2: Replace secrecy with structure

Many of the ugliest episodes are logistics with a moral sting: a hotel keycard in a jeans pocket, a Breather ban on her credit card, Laurent’s “forgotten” condom, a threesome Molly tries to perform through for Martina’s sake. The antidote is less titillating but more sustainable: friction‑reducing agreements, explicit safer‑sex protocols, and—crucially—a shared value that home is a co‑created space (hence the blowup when Stew brings Kiwi there on a weekend Molly is away, after she “nicely” said he could cancel the hotel). Where possible, they convert triggers into transparent rituals (text when you’re home, tell me one good thing and one hard thing, sleep at a hotel if our house is too tender to host).

Step 3: Court compersion (carefully)

Compersion—the strange joy at a partner’s joy—remains aspirational for much of the book. But Molly gets flashes: realizing she doesn’t have to fulfill Stewart’s kink menu if someone else does; feeling oddly safe that Kiwi is married with kids; accepting that Scott’s multi‑orgasmic stamina is about his body, not her husband’s lack. The most moving moment is also the simplest: after Stew returns from a rained‑out Poconos weekend with Kiwi, they lie in the dark and trade what they’ve learned about marriage by loving elsewhere. “Maybe we only need one rule,” Molly says: honesty plus processing. Desire spreads out; love deepens in.

(Context: The Ethical Slut argues jealousy is usually “an emotion about other emotions”—fear of loss, status, scarcity. More shows how those sub‑feelings only move when the couple changes patterns, not just attitudes.)

If you’ve read any ENM forum, you’ve seen rules that read like TSA checklists. More is refreshingly honest about how rules start, strain, break, and eventually distill. Early on, Molly and Stewart grasp at control: no exes (until Lena), no sleeping over (until a work trip wants otherwise), no falling in love (until it happens). The more useful lesson is how they iterate.

Stage 1: Control theater

The first rule set is really a salve for anxiety. It centers optics rather than ethics: don’t date nearby; don’t date anyone you might love; only on nights I go out too. It addresses jealousy by trying to schedule away vulnerability. It also bakes in inequity: Molly must “tell everything,” Stew tells little. The result is performative compliance (Molly chirping, “This was fun!” after a fraught first drink with Matt) and covert punishment (hotel keys left to be found in the laundry).

Stage 2: Ethical scaffolding

After painful stumbles—STI scares with Laurent, a workplace quickie that risks her job, hurt kids at home—rules shift from optics to ethics: condoms are mandatory; no sex in shared professional spaces; avoid secrecy that would make a child the messenger. They also add “metamour‑aware” agreements: don’t weaponize the house; aim for parallel time that doesn’t erase family rituals. Meeting metamours (Martina at trivia night; Diana before a Bell House show) moves them from faceless threat to flawed human.

Stage 3: One rule to hold them

By the end, the couple keeps one rule on purpose, not by default: tell the truth and help each other with the feelings. Everything else—sleepovers, dates, disclosures—gets negotiated case by case, with an explicit bias for home as a shared sanctuary and health as a shared responsibility. When Molly asks Stewart to turn off notifications and save “Get Out” to see with her, that’s not a petty rule; it’s a love ritual. When Stewart offers to cancel Kiwi to pick her up after the Scott breakup, that’s not capitulation; it’s care.

(Perspective: Many seasoned poly folks advise “agreements, not rules.” Molly’s arc supports that—agreements can flex to context, whereas rules get brittle.)

Behind Molly’s sexual story is a lineage story. Her mother, Mary, had her own open marriage—encouraged by Molly’s father. There was “Jesus Christ” (Jim, the witty friend who made Mary laugh and brought her to the Mahikari dojo) and “Buddha” (the aikido sensei who asked her to stop seeing Jim). As Mary later quips at a writing retreat, “My threesome wasn’t nearly as exciting.” The point isn’t lurid detail; it’s the model: a woman who sought spiritual and erotic aliveness within marriage—and paid a price for swallowing rage.

Learning from a mother’s body

As Mary’s mysterious ataxia evolves into a Parkinson’s diagnosis, Molly begins to see how repressed anger lodges in the body. She remembers childhood nights of “light” exchanges while she sat on the stairs, and phone calls filled with laughter that sounded like relief. In the hospital, when Mary can’t speak for lack of medication, Molly advocates, then notices her own migraine spike—the body’s alarm for unvoiced needs. Later, in a bathroom at their retreat, Mary offers the sentence that reframes everything: “Everything that happens in life is an opportunity to learn about yourself…nothing is good or bad in and of itself.”

How to parent through honesty

Daniel’s discovery (“Are you and Dad in an open marriage?”) is a crucible. Molly doesn’t give him a TED Talk on polyamory; she gives him what he can bear. Stewarding privacy becomes part of parenting. When he asks her to lie about dates if he slips and asks, she hears the wisdom: kids need a secure base; they don’t need compliance‑reporting. Meanwhile, Nate, the comic observer, flirts with the world (“Bring on the men!”) and polices would‑be suitors with a narrowed eye. Honesty at home becomes less about disclosures and more about tone: is Mom happy, present, safe?

Breaking (and keeping) inheritances

Molly keeps what her mother taught—the permission to seek aliveness, the humor, the refusal to let marriage be the end of curiosity. She discards what hurt: duty without voice, spirituality used to dodge emotions, sex as martyrdom. When Buddha emails decades later—“You were in my dream last night. And you were beautiful.”—it lands not as a temptation but as a benediction: you can be cherished without disappearing.

More doubles as a guided tour of non‑monogamy’s present tense—the apps, meetups, and vocab that turn lone experiments into social worlds. Moving from Ashley Madison (cheaters, bots, and doctored avatars) to OkCupid (“Non‑monogamous” as a status) is not just a UX upgrade; it’s a moral one. Secrecy gives way to structure; “other women” get names, jobs, kids. The culture doesn’t fix pain, but it gives you company and a map.

Poly Cocktails and solo poly mentors

Liam’s presence in the story is like a walking glossary—polyamory, metamours, compersion, “solo poly” (I’m my own primary). He invites Molly to Poly Cocktails (a bar night that leads to curated off‑site “parties”), and while she ultimately bows out—too many variables, too much intimacy to ingest at once—the encounter demystifies a world that tabloids caricature. The Ethical Slut becomes her bedside manual, cheeky but rigorous; it explains why “no falling in love” is a doomed agreement and why jealousy is an emotion about other emotions. Molly doesn’t become a poly evangelist; she becomes poly‑literate.

Swinging, kink, and ENM (know the differences)

The book draws helpful distinctions. Swinging spaces (Le Trapeze, Bowery Bliss) felt anonymous and misaligned; kink for her was relational, not exhibitionist. ENM felt right when it was contexted—a date, a bond, a conversation—rather than a venue. That’s not morality; it’s fit. When Laurent follows her into bathrooms and co‑working rooms, it’s not “just another style”; it tramples her consent and her work life. When Karl crafts ritualized care (wine, candles, kisses like punctuation), ENM becomes intimacy by other means.

The social risk is real

Molly’s ban from Breather, the constant fear of neighbor moms finding out, Daniel’s texts in a Houston airport—these are not plot twists; they’re context. Many readers will feel a jolt of recognition: it’s not your desire that’s dangerous; it’s the culture’s judgment. More shows one way through: discretion without self‑erasure. Use pseudonyms until there’s trust; don’t use your house as a stage; let your kids’ privacy trump your need to be “out.”

The memoir’s last movement reframes abundance. Scott, whose playlists and rum‑and‑cigarette scent carried Molly through a season of renaissance, breaks up on Valentine’s Day—he wants monogamy and a new start in his own apartment. Alone in a midtown hotel room with an unsigned card that reads “I will always love you,” Molly braces for collapse. Instead, she feels something unexpected: a widening. “There will be more,” she remembers—no longer about partners, but about love itself.

Abundance is not the same as excess

Earlier in the book, “more” easily collapsed into “more sex.” Now it means more self. Music and boxing are not side quests; they’re central stations. Breakfast with Stewart, not just performative debriefs, becomes a love practice. Even difficult metamours become teachers: Diana’s single‑minded pursuit of Malibu reveals how not to do it; Kiwi’s no‑nonsense feedback helps Stewart see his domestic blind spots; Martina’s camera‑ready bedroom and invasive texting force Molly to say a clean no.

The one rule that lasts

“Let’s just promise to be honest with each other, and then help the other person process whatever emotions come up,” Molly proposes, spooned into Stewart after he returns from the Poconos. He agrees. They joke about the word “cunt,” share what they’ve learned from other beds, and recommit to being each other’s people. Not because ENM “worked” and now they’re fixed, but because they learned to keep choosing each other in an expansive field, rather than clinging on a shrinking island.

(Context: bell hooks describes love as a verb—care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, trust. More shows how those verbs get practiced when sex—and truth—are plural.)