Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

By Tristan Taormino

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cleis Press
• Release date: May 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9781573444972

Tristan Taormino

Tristan Taormino is the editor of On Our Backs and a columnist for the Village Voice, Taboo, Penthouse.com, Spectator, and The Loop. She is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, and directed, produced, and starred in two videos based on the book. She is the editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series, for which she has edited seven volumes. Taormino has appeared on the Howard Stern Show, Loveline, HBO's Real Sex, MTV, and the Discovery Channel. She teaches workshops and lectures on sex nationwide. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews for Opening Up

[cecily_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Taormino provides a much-needed update to the subject. Unlike other authors who have tackled the subject of open relationships, Taormino makes the argument that polyamory can be non-sexual, and such relationships are as valid and important as those with a sexual component.

Clearly written without being dogmatic, instructive without being preachy, Taormino's book could possibly topple "The Ethical Slut" from its place as the definitive book on open relationships. Read it if you're curious, currently practicing, or just intrigued by the many and varied ways that human beings relate to each other.

[billmcn_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Opening Up is a primer on polyamorous relationships that describes why lifelong monogamy is an untenable arrangement for some, elucidates the main alternatives that have arisen in the western world in the past sixty or so years, and provides practical advice for non-monogamous people on issues like dealing with jealousy, juggling schedules, and raising children. It is best suited for people considering incorporating polyamory into their lives, or as a means of soothing the nerves of worried friends, relatives, and partners. Taormino's presentation is self-helpy but serviceable. She is inordinately fond of bullet points. Her prose is workmanlike and (apart from the delightfully icky turn of phrase "fluid-bonded") as bland as oatmeal, which is precisely what you want in a book like this. The most helpful aspects are tips on maintaining open lines of communication. (Further evidence that polyamory is a plot invented by women to trick men into talking about their feelings all the time.) The least helpful are the anecdotes from people in open relationships that conclude every chapter. These tend to be uniformly upbeat and therefore not very informative.If you are already in an open relationship, this book will not tell you anything you don't already know, but it's still helpful to have things written down clearly in one place. In creating this guide, Taormino has done a service for many people who are trying to be honest and realistic about their sexual and emotional lives.

[branadain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is absolutely the best book on open relationships or polyamory I've read (and I've read quite a few; check the "polyamory" tag in my catalog). Taormino is clearly did a good deal of research--her sources section alone is outstanding--and her writing style is at once friendly and intelligent, keeping you reading while presenting a wealth of information. I love how the book is structured. Each chapter is relatively short, covering a specific type of relationship structure or a certain issue. She offers bulleted lists of reasons a particular type of relationship might be right for you; covers the special perils to watch out for in each type of relationship, with helpful advice; and ends each chapter with a profile of a person, couple, or group whose experience illustrates the theme of the chapter. Taormino's writing shows sensitivity and an open perspective toward all types of nonmonogamy and toward those who choose monogamy for themselves, as well. This is the book that you should read if you are considering any form of nonmonogamy, and it is also the book you should give to anyone who needs help understanding your relationship choices.

[damsorrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good stuff, goes from beginner to hxc. I wonder when we're going to get to the point where books about open relationships don't have to have four or five beginning chapters that justify their motivations to exist in the first place.

[gisellerenarde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent, approachable guide to non-monogamy, incorporating a variety of models. Includes interviews with diverse individuals in open relationships, so the reader gets to hear about the joys and challenges of non-monogamy straight from those who are living the life. Whenever I mention Opening Up to friends, they assume it's sleazy. It's not. This book is written in an entertaining and straightforward fashion, but it's not a "how to get a bunch of people into bed" book. It's about creating a sustainable style of open relationship through negotiation, transparency, and understanding. Opening Up speaks across a broad spectrum. Whether you're into BDSM or you're an asexual romantic (or both), your needs are addressed in this book.I recommend Opening Up highly to anyone. Even if you never have any intention of living non-monogamously, do read Opening Up. There's something in this book for everyone.

[moxiehart · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

My experience with this book differs so greatly from the other reviews that I wonder if I was sent the correct book. I wanted to like this book, I really did, even though I've never been able to finish one of Ms. Taormino's columns in the Village Voice.The writing style was so simplistic as to render it boring, and altogether, the book read like a series of pamphlets sewn together into a book. Taormino focuses on the excrutiating, boring details of how exactly to have every kind of open relationship, while skimping on the actual interesting stories of the people she interviewed.Most of the studies that she cites are old and the samples are almost all limited. There was also a shock when I found out that she cites Wikipedia. I know that this isn't a scholarly work, but I learned in seventh grade that an encyclopedia is not an acceptable source. And why pay $16.95 for something you can get for free? Just read the Wiki article on "Swinging."If you're seriously interested in having an open relationship, my advice is to skip this book and read some of the more interesting-sounding ones that Taormino cites, such as "The Myth of Monogamy," "Beyond Monogamy," and anything by Raven Kaldera.

[llamachameleon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Opening Up is by far the best book about open relationships written in the past 10 years. (and I've read a lot of them.) It covers different models of nonmonogamy- everything from polyfidelity to swinging- and is informative and nonjudgmental. I'd recommend this to people new to the lifestyle and people just looking for new perspectives.

[atreic · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Practical and sympathetic book on a range of ways of doing non-monogamy. Easy to read, lots of anecdotes from real people. Possibly slightly too much focus on America and BDSM for some people's tastes.

[senbei_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Despite being the first text I've read cover-to-cover on the subject of non-monogamy and polyamorous relationships, I nevertheless believe Opening Up to be one of the best. I have asked friends as well as professionals in the field for recommendations and of the texts I've attempted, Tristan's is the most compelling, fresh, relevant and broad without losing focus, while remaining true to her readership and staying wholly in the realm of light reading (well, light adult reading at any rate). I specifically enjoyed her examples of the Poly Mission Statement and the way she integrated her MANY pertinent diverse examples. Additionally, in the glossary to Opening Up, Tristan provides a decent overview of the participants and data gathered, without bogging the reader down with statistical analyses. All said, a highly enjoyable read, especially for a serious non-fictional subject.

[willszal-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found out about this book in a post by my friend Ian MacKenzie, "Love Will Be the Death of Us."I've read a few other books on polyamory, but this one definitely feels the most useful. Taormino paints the picture that non-monogamy can be anything other than monogamy. The point is that it's outside of the box, for us do define. Through a multitude of case studies, the reader learns of numerous creative solutions people have come up with for organizing relationships in their lives. I think it could be useful even to the conservative reader, as it's important to realize the structures we [often subconsciously] consent to in our relationships.I actually just came across a post that better summarizes the subject than I could, "The Coffee Break Primer on Polyamory" by Adam Powers.Taormino wraps up the book by going in depth about safe sex, legal agreements, and child rearing. Although some readers might be tempted to skip over these more technical sections, they get into the details of how to really make a relationship work, of any sort.I will say that I wasn't very into the writing style of this book. It felt dry and detached. I don't feel as though I got to connect with the author at all. But the information is of a quality and accessibility that I'm willing to overlook this.