Relationship expert and bestselling author Tristan Taormino offers a bold new strategy for creating loving, lasting relationships. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over a hundred women and men, Opening Up explores the real-life benefits and challenges of all styles of open relationships — from partnered non-monogamy to solo polyamory. With her refreshingly down-to-earth style and sharp wit, Taormino offers solutions for making an open relationship work, including tips on dealing with jealousy, negotiating boundaries, finding community, parenting and time management. Opening Up will change the way you think about intimacy.
Review
I’m currently in a poly relationship and have been in several poly relationships in the past. Despite the numerous poly relationships I have been in, Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up is the first nonfiction book that I have read about polyamorous relationships. This book has been on my reading list for quite some time and it is really worth checking out, but I’ll get more into that a little later. First, I want to tell you a bit about the book.
Tristan Taormino is the author of several books and has edited several erotica anthologies as well as a sex-positive feminist who gives workshops and lectures on sex education all over the country and is the host of the Sex Out Loud Radio show. Needless to say, Taormino knows what she’s doing and it really shows all throughout her book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships.
Throughout this twenty-chapter book, so much wonderful information is covered. The topics that are covered range from myths about non-monogamy to designing your own open relationship to dealing with changes to legal aspects of protecting your partners as well as including a notes section and resource guide at the end of the book. While this is a rather large book(346 pages), don’t let the size intimidate you. This isn’t a book that you have to read from beginning to end, but can just read the chapters that interest you. There is no right or wrong way to read this book. Also throughout the book, you will find snippets of interviews from numerous couples who are in a wide variety of open relationships. There’s also a profile at the end of each chapter that focuses on a couple and how their open relationship works in pertaining to that particular chapter’s topic.
I honestly feel that if you are in an open relationship of any kind or are thinking about entering into an open relationship or thinking about opening up your current relationship, you need to read this book. There is so much amazing information in these pages. While I was reading, I found myself highlighting a lot of passages so I could easily find them at a later point in time. There is an entire chapter in this book that is dedicated to just dealing with jealousy and other intense feelings and I have to say it is by far my favorite chapter in the book and one that needs to be read. I love the time and energy that was put into this book. I feel the interviews and the couples profiles help the reader really understand the topics that the author covers and makes them more relatable to the reader. I found this book to be so amazing, once I finished I suggested to both Daddy and our poly partner that they both read it as well.
