What to Know About ‘More,’ the Steamy Bestseller About Open Marriage

Here’s what to know:

It’s incredibly frank.

Winter doesn’t hold back, describing details like her furiously itchy skin after a waxing session, for instance, and plucking “the errant hairs around my nipples” before a date. She also discusses how she discovered as an adult that her parents also had an open relationship, where her mother had a romantic relationship with a close friend. “It was your father’s idea,” her mom tells her.

It’s full of kinky sex.

And not just with curly-haired Matt, with whom she has periodic, guilt-ridden sex for four years. (That ends when she writes a text to Stewart: “Matt’s still here. But don’t worry. He has nothing on you as a lover,” and sends it to Matt by mistake.) Winter also goes online to find men, ending up with a few duds and several very creative lovers, including one who ropes her into an awkward threesome with his fiancée and another who takes her to a bizarre Shakespeare-themed sex show. One guy, Leo the comedy writer, suggests she use a particular sex toy that I had to google (not on my work computer) to figure out what it was. Nope, not saying it here.

 And, yes, she writes, “We both get tested for STDs regularly.” 

It’s a killer pick for your book club.

See above.

Love happens.

Among the many rules she and Stewart settle on for their open marriage is “Don’t date an ex. … No sleeping over. … Don’t date anyone too young. ... And absolutely no falling in love.” My first thought was, Good luck with that last one, and it does turn out to be impossible. She falls for — among others — sweet-sounding Karl, a self-described “ethically nonmonogamous” German guy. When he eventually (spoiler alert!) ghosts her, she’s devastated.    

It makes you appreciate monogamy (mostly).

It’s easy to understand the appeal of being with someone new who makes you, as Winter puts it, feel “not like a wife or a mom but a desirable woman again.” ​But, seismic orgasms aside, her experiences with polyamory don’t sound so wonderful. More often it seems a bit torturous, like when she finds a hotel key card in Stewart’s pockets, and feels “my jealousy mingle with the resentment I’ve kept at bay for years … everything is colored by fury.”  There’s also the agony following a breakup with Laurent, a French/Argentinian guy who turns out to be a jerk: Sobs “tear through my body,” she writes. “I fall asleep with the lights on, my head still buried in pillows soaked in my tears and stiffening with dried snot, my eyes swollen, my face a map of broken blood vessels.”

Yes, their kids know.

Winter recounts how her older son, Nathan, discovered their open marriage at age 13 when he saw his dad’s online dating profile on his computer. In an interview with The New York Times, Winter says that her kids, now 19 and 21, are unfazed by their parents’ sex lives; her oldest told her he read the book and skipped some of the “nitty-gritty” sex scenes. Her youngest doesn’t want to read it, according to Winter.

Her marriage is still nonmonogamous.

I asked Winter, through her publisher, if she and Stewart continue to see other people, and she responded, “The book shows the first 10 years (2008-2018) of what did start out as an ‘experiment’ but is now a firm part of our foundation. So yes, still open!”