Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: There comes a time when what you feared simply happens.
Speaker 2: I've dreaded this moment for seven years, or maybe longer.
Speaker 2: Maybe I've dreaded it ever since Daniel was born, and
Speaker 2: I realized that my child would one day grow up
Speaker 2: and see me with a critical eye, would know who
Speaker 2: I really am. But such a thing never happens in
Speaker 2: just a day. Falling from grace can take a while.
Speaker 2: It took many years for me to see my own
Speaker 2: mother as a flawed, flesh and blood woman, a sexual
Speaker 2: and spiritual being with needs of her own that sometimes
Speaker 2: ran counter to those of her child, and in the
Speaker 2: split second it takes to decide what to say next
Speaker 2: to Daniel, whether to tell the truth or a lie.
Speaker 2: I think of my mother. I wonder if she'd do
Speaker 2: it all differently now, I wonder if I'd do it
Speaker 2: differently too.
Speaker 3: That's Molly Rodent Winter, a former school teacher, writer, wife,
Speaker 3: and mom who lives with her family in Brooklyn. She's
Speaker 3: the author of the recently published More, a memoir of
Speaker 3: open marriage. Mollie's is a story about desire and the
Speaker 3: profound risks and potential rewards we face when we confront
Speaker 3: and give voice to our own secret longings. I'm Danny Shapiro,
Speaker 3: and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept
Speaker 3: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
Speaker 3: secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: Up in Evanston, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago,
Speaker 2: my father taught history at the local high school and
Speaker 2: my mother taught English, and so growing up my parents
Speaker 2: had teaching schedules, which meant they had summers free. I
Speaker 2: have an older sister and my parents the year that
Speaker 2: my sister was born, they bought a piece of property
Speaker 2: up in Wisconsin with my dad's first royalty check for
Speaker 2: a history textbook he co wrote. In the summers, we
Speaker 2: would often go up to this place in Wisconsin, which
Speaker 2: became an important kind of haven for me in some ways,
Speaker 2: although it was also very It was very rustic. There
Speaker 2: was no hot water, no heat, no indoor bathroom. We
Speaker 2: occasionally went in the dead of winter, when it was
Speaker 2: pretty crazy to be there, I thought. But my grandparents
Speaker 2: would frequently be up there with us, and once in
Speaker 2: a while, my parents, especially my dad, would go up
Speaker 2: by himself. You know, My childhood was in many ways,
Speaker 2: very similar I think to a lot of suburban childhoods
Speaker 2: in the seventies and eighties, where we didn't have tons
Speaker 2: of parental supervision. There were a bunch of kids and
Speaker 2: particularly girls, who lived on my block in Evanston and
Speaker 2: just kind of ran around and did our thing. And
Speaker 2: I read a lot too, and I didn't have someone
Speaker 2: to play with. I was obsessed with Laura Ingleswilder. I
Speaker 2: wanted to be a teacher. My mother was a teacher,
Speaker 2: my father was a teacher, and Laura Ingles Wilder was
Speaker 2: a teacher. My sister was three and a half years older,
Speaker 2: so she was often my babysitter, even when maybe I
Speaker 2: was seven or eight and she was ten or eleven,
Speaker 2: because there was always the neighbor across the street, or
Speaker 2: we didn't have you know, we had some teenage babysitters
Speaker 2: from the block as well. But my sister was my
Speaker 2: main source of tension, and it was a pretty man
Speaker 2: major source of tension in our family. My mother and
Speaker 2: my sister clashed a lot, and I often felt like
Speaker 2: it was my job to be extra extra good to
Speaker 2: kind of make up for my sister being bad. She
Speaker 2: was kind of pure shadow and I saw myself as
Speaker 2: needing to be pure light in order to balance out
Speaker 2: the scene.
Speaker 3: So that was very formative, right.
Speaker 2: Very formative. Yes, you know, my sister was the focal
Speaker 2: point of a lot of my parents worry and concern,
Speaker 2: so I aimed to be the opposite, and therefore studied
Speaker 2: and you know, played piano and did all the things
Speaker 2: I could think of to be good. I kind of
Speaker 2: leap frogged through the suburban elementary school curriculm. So I
Speaker 2: ended up skipping fourth grade, which put me closer in
Speaker 2: school to my sister. So we were in the same
Speaker 2: middle school when I was in sixth grade and she
Speaker 2: was in eighth grade. And I think that was hard
Speaker 2: for her in some ways because I kept shining, you know,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to make her like me too. But
Speaker 2: I'm sure it was just insufferable for her because she
Speaker 2: was having so much kind of self loathing at the time,
Speaker 2: and here I was this terribly competent, cheery little thing
Speaker 2: that was just her opposite in every way. And that
Speaker 2: was partly by design. I wanted to be her opposite.
Speaker 2: She scared me, She drank and she smoked, and she
Speaker 2: had boyfriends.
Speaker 3: So did that continue to dog you that sense of
Speaker 3: needing to be, you know, the perfect one or the
Speaker 3: good one. After you left home, did that kind of
Speaker 3: did you carry that with you?
Speaker 2: I did. When I was a senior in high school,
Speaker 2: my sister had gotten pregnant after her freshman year of
Speaker 2: college and dropped out and decided to keep the baby,
Speaker 2: and she came back to Evanstone with a child. So
Speaker 2: when I was sixteen, I left home and she kind
Speaker 2: of came back. She didn't live with my parents, but
Speaker 2: my parents helped her quite a bit with her son.
Speaker 2: And that formed me more than I realized at the
Speaker 2: time in terms of I think I had a pretty
Speaker 2: strong year of sex. I equated it with pregnancy and
Speaker 2: having to you know, not go to college and everything
Speaker 2: kind of stopping. So again, in an effort to be different,
Speaker 2: I held onto my virginity as long as I could.
Speaker 2: I didn't lose my virginity till I was almost nineteen,
Speaker 2: which you know, at the time, I felt like every
Speaker 2: single one of my friends had already had sex, and
Speaker 2: so I was very I was not a sexually promiscuous teen,
Speaker 2: quite the opposite. In college, I did start to kind
Speaker 2: of flex a little bit in terms of going to parties,
Speaker 2: you know, drinking, and I probably went a little crazy
Speaker 2: Compared to some of what people might experiment with in
Speaker 2: high school. I was just so much younger that it
Speaker 2: didn't occur to me. I didn't have the urges and
Speaker 2: the drive. But I also had been so carefully kind
Speaker 2: of curating myself in opposition to my sister that it
Speaker 2: wasn't until I felt kind of like I had my
Speaker 2: own space when I was away at school that I
Speaker 2: could even start to experiment with those things. The guy
Speaker 2: I lost my virginity to we had sex, which was
Speaker 2: very brief, in my dorm room, and then he broke
Speaker 2: up with me the next week. Though that was not
Speaker 2: a real relationship, even though it was the closest thing
Speaker 2: I had ever had. I had sex with one other
Speaker 2: guy after that to try to convince myself that didn't matter.
Speaker 2: And then I started dating someone who had been a
Speaker 2: friend of mine in college, and we dated for four
Speaker 2: and a half years, and I spent my time trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what I should do to make him impressed.
Speaker 2: You know, he was going away to Zimbabwe after college,
Speaker 2: and so I went to Costa Rica to teach English.
Speaker 2: My father had been in the Peace Corps, so I
Speaker 2: knew in Nigeria, and I knew this was a way
Speaker 2: that I could get their approval and admiration. My college
Speaker 2: boyfriend was quite a bit like my father, and it
Speaker 2: didn't work out very well. I kind of had a
Speaker 2: nervous breakdown month one. I was very, very lonely and
Speaker 2: culture shocked, and I ended up leaving the program that
Speaker 2: I had joined and feeling like a huge failure for
Speaker 2: years and years afterwards because I hadn't been able to
Speaker 2: cut it the way my father had or the way
Speaker 2: my college boyfriend had. So the people pleasing ran deep
Speaker 2: and included, and I think really manifested out of a
Speaker 2: lack of clarity over who I was when I wasn't
Speaker 2: in some kind of role as daughter, as girlfriend, as sister.
Speaker 2: I define myself almost always, as far back as I
Speaker 2: can remember, in terms of other people. When we broke up,
Speaker 2: you know, it was early twenty stuff and not exactly
Speaker 2: high drama, but it felt like highdrama at the time,
Speaker 2: I consess to him, and I didn't even realize it
Speaker 2: until I was bawling my eyes out and we were
Speaker 2: breaking up, and I told him that I didn't feel
Speaker 2: like I was myself with him most of the time,
Speaker 2: and this concession came out of me before I even
Speaker 2: had processed it, and I realized, it's this people pleasing
Speaker 2: tendency which I have, since you know, very recently seen
Speaker 2: reframed as self abandonment, which I think is a really
Speaker 2: good reframe, a very true reframe that I had spent
Speaker 2: so much of my life trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: to please pretty much my parents, to make their lives
Speaker 2: easier and also to get noticed in some way, that
Speaker 2: it just carried over right away to this boyfriend. So
Speaker 2: it was after I broke up with that college boyfriend
Speaker 2: that I met my husband. When I was twenty three
Speaker 2: years old. Stuart and I met at my best friend's
Speaker 2: twenty fifth birthday party and I was still with my
Speaker 2: college boyfriend. Stuart was with his girlfriend at the time,
Speaker 2: and I found Stuart completely obnoxious. You know, I found
Speaker 2: out leader that he liked me. He wasn't with somebody
Speaker 2: that he was very serious about. And Stuart had been
Speaker 2: a stand up comedian he started in high school and
Speaker 2: did it all through college and let it go after college.
Speaker 2: But was very funny, but he had this kind of
Speaker 2: shtick that he would put on and I found out later,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like nerves for him. He was much
Speaker 2: funnier to me once we were one on one. So
Speaker 2: my friend told me that he was interested in me,
Speaker 2: but she didn't tell me that until after I had
Speaker 2: broken up with my boyfriend about three or four months later,
Speaker 2: and Stewart started asking my friend about you know, hey,
Speaker 2: can I ask him Molly out? Can I ask Molly out?
Speaker 2: And she was like fending him off on my behap,
Speaker 2: saying like her heart is broken, No, she's not available,
Speaker 2: you know, you can't ask her out. But he was
Speaker 2: very persistent. He was so eager to take me out.
Speaker 2: And this was just this just felt so new. First
Speaker 2: of all, that I was being pursued like this. I
Speaker 2: had always felt like my college boyfriend was out of
Speaker 2: my lee cues, very tall and kind of classic, handsome
Speaker 2: and spoke French, and he was a great tennis player,
Speaker 2: just kind of did it all. And Stuart was different.
Speaker 2: He was balding and wore pleaded pants, and I hadn't
Speaker 2: really seen him as attractive. And one of the very
Speaker 2: interesting things that happened on our first date was that
Speaker 2: I felt super attracted to him. And this is kind
Speaker 2: of a big realization for me. Also that like I
Speaker 2: thought I had a type, but I realized I didn't,
Speaker 2: And he had a way about him that was so engaging,
Speaker 2: and he listened to me, he found me funny. That
Speaker 2: might have been the most exciting thing about being with him.
Speaker 2: I felt like I could be completely myself. He made
Speaker 2: me feel so comfortable and we just really connected. From
Speaker 2: word go and a second date that I had with him,
Speaker 2: I was already thinking, like, I think I might be
Speaker 2: in love with him. I think I could marry him,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It was it threw me
Speaker 2: for a loop because my plan was to kind of
Speaker 2: sew my oats for a little while, because I hadn't
Speaker 2: ever done that. I'd had this boyfriend for four years,
Speaker 2: and then Stuart just really swept me off my feet.
Speaker 2: My mother asked me a question when I was first
Speaker 2: telling her about Stuart. She said, how do you feel
Speaker 2: about yourself when you're with him? And I said, I
Speaker 2: feel amazing and she was like, that's good, you know.
Speaker 2: So I was like, and that's what I kind of realized,
Speaker 2: how terrible I'd been feeling about myself with my college boyfriend.
Speaker 2: How I kept trying to kind of twist myself into
Speaker 2: Notts to be who he wanted me to be, and
Speaker 2: I felt like I never quite figured it out. But
Speaker 2: with Stuart, I felt like, Oh, I can just be
Speaker 2: me and he's into me, you know, in a way
Speaker 2: that felt so amazing.
Speaker 3: Molly and Stuart have a powerful, positive connection. It feels safe,
Speaker 3: and that safety feels exciting. Just as Mollie feels like
Speaker 3: she can be fully herself with Stuart, he feels like
Speaker 3: he can be fully himself with her. So Stuart starts
Speaker 3: to tell Mollie about some of his sexual fantasies and
Speaker 3: this becomes the catalyst for their sexual exploration together.
Speaker 2: Stuart told me that he liked the idea of me
Speaker 2: with other men, and I, being the pleaser that I am,
Speaker 2: wanted to oblige, you know. So we tried a few things.
Speaker 2: We went to a sex club called Le Trapeze in
Speaker 2: New York City and we went twice. You know, my
Speaker 2: memory of it, I had to really excavate my memories
Speaker 2: of it in order to write about it, because I
Speaker 2: went to consult my journals, which I kept a journal
Speaker 2: all through my twenties, and so I had the first
Speaker 2: time we went to the sex club, and I wrote
Speaker 2: about it as if it had been the best experience
Speaker 2: I had ever had. My memory of it, though when
Speaker 2: I by the time I consulted my journal, was that
Speaker 2: it had been awful. So there was this strange disconnect,
Speaker 2: and I think the truth was actually somewhere in between.
Speaker 2: There were parts of it that I did like, but
Speaker 2: it was mostly like getting the attention and pleasing Stuart.
Speaker 2: I think that I liked and I didn't like the
Speaker 2: anonymity of it at all. I don't know how well
Speaker 2: I verbalized that. At the time I got married when
Speaker 2: I was twenty six, so this must have been when
Speaker 2: I was maybe twenty four. We went to the sex club,
Speaker 2: and then we also before before we got married, had
Speaker 2: a couple threesomes. One of them was with one of
Speaker 2: Stuart's sex's girlfriends who was bisexual. And all of these
Speaker 2: experiences didn't quite do it for me. Like I I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure what it was, and I think I did
Speaker 2: a lot of convincing myself that I did like things
Speaker 2: because Stuart liked them, and I, you know, I hadn't
Speaker 2: parsed out what parts of myself were for me and
Speaker 2: what parts of myself were doing things for other people.
Speaker 2: So it was somewhere in the midst of those experiences
Speaker 2: because I was saying that I didn't really like the
Speaker 2: Three Sums, but there was something about it that was titillating,
Speaker 2: and so Stuart was willing to be like, Okay, we
Speaker 2: don't have to do anymore right now, but he was like,
Speaker 2: I think ten years from now, you're gonna want to
Speaker 2: sleep with someone else that you know, you really He
Speaker 2: knew I had not had money sexual exploration, and he
Speaker 2: was I think part of why he was interested in
Speaker 2: sex clubs and threesomes. Part of it was his own
Speaker 2: you know, arousal titilation, but part of it was also recognizing,
Speaker 2: you know, that we did have great sex and he
Speaker 2: saw me as a sexual being. And he also had
Speaker 2: had a whole decade of experimentation before we met. He's
Speaker 2: five years older than I am, and he did not
Speaker 2: have lots of long term girlfriends. He had a few,
Speaker 2: but not, you know, never more than like a year
Speaker 2: or so. So I didn't never have that period of exploration,
Speaker 2: and I think Stuart intuited that that would be something
Speaker 2: I would want, and so he said to me, I
Speaker 2: have a feeling you're you're gonna want to sleep with
Speaker 2: somebody else at some point, and just so you know,
Speaker 2: it's okay with me, but I just want you to
Speaker 2: tell me about it, And then telling him about it
Speaker 2: was twofold. It was like he didn't want me to
Speaker 2: lie and he wanted to let me know it wasn't
Speaker 2: going to be a deal breaker, that the honesty part
Speaker 2: is what would keep us solid, not me going away
Speaker 2: from the marriage without his participation. I don't know, but
Speaker 2: I didn't think I was ever going to want to.
Speaker 2: I said to him, Oh, no, I'm never going to
Speaker 2: want to do that. I was probably, you know, twenty
Speaker 2: five at the time when he said that. And then
Speaker 2: it was right around when I was thirty five that
Speaker 2: things changed a little for me.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back in those intervening years, that decade
Speaker 3: between twenty five and thirty five, something else happens. Mollie
Speaker 3: and Stewart have two children, sons. The twentieth century feminist
Speaker 3: author Kate Chopin once wrote, I would give my life
Speaker 3: for my children, but I wouldn't give myself. This quote
Speaker 3: resonates with Molly in the blur of early motherhood. She's
Speaker 3: begun to feel like something's missing, and that's something is herself.
Speaker 2: Because of the fact that I hadn't ever done that
Speaker 2: kind of deeper exploratory work before I had kids of
Speaker 2: who the HECKU I was. And I think this is
Speaker 2: true for a lot of women. I'm sure it was
Speaker 2: true for my mother as well. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was even losing. It almost felt like a failure
Speaker 2: to launch, even more than a loss in some ways,
Speaker 2: because I had it ever figured myself out. I had
Speaker 2: just gone from pleasing one person to pleasing another person
Speaker 2: to trying to be a good mother and a good
Speaker 2: wife and a good daughter and a good friend. Like
Speaker 2: this is actually something I haven't thought about for a
Speaker 2: long time. But there were a number of years where
Speaker 2: I would say a prayer every night and I basically
Speaker 2: prayed to be guided to being a good and this
Speaker 2: was always the order a good mother, a good wife, daughter,
Speaker 2: a good friend. And I don't even know exactly when
Speaker 2: I stopped doing that, but it was it was years
Speaker 2: that I that that's how I kind of went to
Speaker 2: sleep every night with that wish on my lip, and
Speaker 2: of course, like, what does that mean? What does that
Speaker 2: look like? And there really isn't a lot of room
Speaker 2: for selthhood. If that's what you're all of your kind
Speaker 2: of emotional energy as being driven towards you know, how
Speaker 2: can I be good in these to these people I love?
Speaker 3: Do you think your mother had a similar litany in
Speaker 3: her mind about her own goodness?
Speaker 2: I absolutely think that she did, you know, without knowing,
Speaker 2: I know that she did. And I think I am
Speaker 2: very like my mother. Some of it maybe is genetic,
Speaker 2: and some of it may be because I tried so
Speaker 2: hard to kind of model myself after her when I
Speaker 2: was a kid. My mother struck me as kind of
Speaker 2: uncomplicated goodness. When I was young, I saw my mother
Speaker 2: working really hard always to be a good teacher, a
Speaker 2: good mother, a good wife, and a good person. She
Speaker 2: was also very much on a spiritual quest. She was
Speaker 2: very drawn to East Asian traditions, and she practiced tai
Speaker 2: chi in our living room. She started to do aiketo.
Speaker 2: I started going to the aikito dojo with her when
Speaker 2: I was probably seven or eight years old. Because my
Speaker 2: parents were very busy, it was a good way to
Speaker 2: spend time with them was to attach yourself to one
Speaker 2: of their interests. So I was doing aikito with my
Speaker 2: mom and then eventually followed her into mahakari, which was
Speaker 2: her spiritual practice that involved giving and receiving divine light.
Speaker 2: I joined when I was ten years old because she
Speaker 2: told me that it would make her the happiest mother
Speaker 2: in the world if I would join. My sister would
Speaker 2: never have join, and she did not want to do
Speaker 2: anything my mom was doing. So I, as a good girl,
Speaker 2: took it upon myself to be her partner in this
Speaker 2: in the family, and so it involved my going to
Speaker 2: a dojo, my taking four day ceremony kind of initiation.
Speaker 2: It was kind of a major activity for me and
Speaker 2: my mother. I quit when I was twelve, and it
Speaker 2: was kind of the first act of rebellion against my
Speaker 2: mother ever I had ever done, to say I didn't
Speaker 2: want to go to mahakari anymore.
Speaker 3: And do you know why you didn't want to go anymore?
Speaker 2: It was weird, you know. As a middle schooler, it
Speaker 2: was boring too. It was a lot of hours of
Speaker 2: listening to people talk about things that I could understand
Speaker 2: but it wasn't of interest to me, and a lot
Speaker 2: of sitting with your eyes closed, and it was kind
Speaker 2: of a sedentary boring activity that none of my friends had.
Speaker 2: You know it, people looked at me funny if I
Speaker 2: talked about it. So one of my secrets. I didn't
Speaker 2: want anybody to know that we did this weird thing at.
Speaker 3: Home one night when the boys are young, Daniel six
Speaker 3: and Nate is a toddler. Stuart gets home a bit
Speaker 3: later than expected, and in a moment of fraught chaotic domesticity,
Speaker 3: Mollie feels trapped and busts out. She leaves the house
Speaker 3: says she's going out to get some air Stuart can
Speaker 3: take over. Out on the street in Brooklyn, she runs
Speaker 3: into an old work colleague, Kayla, who's on her way
Speaker 3: to a bar to meet some friends. Kayla invites Molly
Speaker 3: to tag along. Mollie doesn't have her phone or her wallet,
Speaker 3: but Kayla convinces her to come anyway. She'll buy her
Speaker 3: a glass of wine.
Speaker 2: It was all kind of surrealed, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I have been, you know, kind of wrapped up in
Speaker 2: the life of a single person. You know, this friend
Speaker 2: of mine pulled me into this, into this other world.
Speaker 2: It felt like because I had moved to Brooklyn ten
Speaker 2: days before my first child was born, I had never
Speaker 2: been single in Brooklyn. I had lived on the Upper
Speaker 2: West Side for five years prior, and that's where Stuart
Speaker 2: and I lived before we had kids. So there's this
Speaker 2: bar that was kind of famous, the Gate, and I'd
Speaker 2: walked by it a bunch of times, but I'd go
Speaker 2: in with her and it just felt so good for
Speaker 2: one to just be in this bar atmosphere that I
Speaker 2: hadn't really allowed myself to do since having kids then
Speaker 2: six years at that point. And there was a guy there,
Speaker 2: one of her friends who I it was like I
Speaker 2: got hit by like a lightning bolt of desire and
Speaker 2: it shocked me. You know. It's that kind of like
Speaker 2: butterflies in the stomach, but it's also sort in your
Speaker 2: growing kind of feeling like oh my, you know. And
Speaker 2: I couldn't have felt less sexy. When I walked out
Speaker 2: of the house, right, I was literally in like jeans
Speaker 2: and a hoodie, which is kind of my mom uniform,
Speaker 2: not wearing makeup, nothing. But this guy and I like
Speaker 2: we hit it off, you know, we were we had
Speaker 2: banter and it was like fun, flirtatious and he ended
Speaker 2: up buying my beer and at the end of this night,
Speaker 2: you know, we exchanged numbers like old school style. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was two thousand and eight, so I had a phone,
Speaker 2: but I had it wasn't the kind of thing where
Speaker 2: you would always even remember to bring your phone, so
Speaker 2: I hadn't brought my phone with me, so it's like
Speaker 2: it was literally like phone number on a on a
Speaker 2: napkin kind of style. And then I went home. You know,
Speaker 2: I was still kind of buzzing from this experience. When
Speaker 2: I walked into the living room and saw the mess
Speaker 2: of the kids and went in and checked on them.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like it was kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: now you're back in your real life. You know, that
Speaker 2: was fun, but this is real life. And my husband
Speaker 2: Stuart had seen my phone had a text, and you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't There's nothing that I was ever hiding from him.
Speaker 2: We could look at each other's phones without feeling like
Speaker 2: we were snooping. So he told me, you know, this
Speaker 2: guy Matt does texted you. I was like, what right?
Speaker 2: And it became clear as we're talking about it that
Speaker 2: Stuart knew that Matt was into me and was encouraging
Speaker 2: me to act on this. And this was when I
Speaker 2: kind of remembered that conversation we had had before we
Speaker 2: got engaged where started said, if you ever went asleep
Speaker 2: with somebody, just let me know. And here I was
Speaker 2: in this moment, and it what was fascinating in retrospect
Speaker 2: the moment, like I felt terrified, and there's something so
Speaker 2: fascinating about that because I here I was, I had
Speaker 2: had this fun flirtation. My husband was saying, go for it,
Speaker 2: and my initial response was just terror. And I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I can I can try to analyze myself from the
Speaker 2: distance of sixteen years later why that was. But I
Speaker 2: think it was just it was so unknown. It was
Speaker 2: like this piece of me was coming to life that
Speaker 2: I didn't even know she was there.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was like having a like hosting another spirit or something.
Speaker 2: It just felt so strange, and so I also didn't
Speaker 2: know how on earth this new being within me could
Speaker 2: live side by side with the mother in me. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't know how that was possible, and it felt
Speaker 2: like it felt very dangerous. It felt like this is
Speaker 2: not an itch you should scratch. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: it was a really strong itch. And that's kind of
Speaker 2: where it all began.
Speaker 3: Molly and Matt engage in a brief, sporadic flirtation, but
Speaker 3: soon she shuts it down. That is, she shuts down
Speaker 3: her communication with Matt. The feeling she's had of desire, curiosity,
Speaker 3: and connection that isn't shutting down. It lingers, it haunts her.
Speaker 3: But she's not sure what to do with this, so
Speaker 3: she does nothing. It's an unnameable secret she's keeping from herself.
Speaker 3: But then one day she gets an invitation to a
Speaker 3: karaoke party and Matt's name is on the guest list.
Speaker 2: At the karaoke party, I saw mad again and we
Speaker 2: ended up at the end of the night alone in
Speaker 2: a karaoke room and we sang a song together and
Speaker 2: he had he was standing behind me with his hands
Speaker 2: on my hips. He was much taller, and it's like
Speaker 2: chin on my head and it was just electric. It
Speaker 2: wasn't you know, in terms of transgression. I mean he
Speaker 2: he had a girlfriend, so it was definitely we're not
Speaker 2: supposed to touch other people when we are in a relationship.
Speaker 2: Like that is the beginning or maybe even several steps
Speaker 2: along the line of what I think in our society
Speaker 2: we call cheating, right, Like even like going out for
Speaker 2: a drink could be considered cheating too, and we had
Speaker 2: done that one early on and that's when I shut
Speaker 2: it down. But there was a touch now that was
Speaker 2: so impossible for me to ignore, and a moment where
Speaker 2: I could have kissed him and I didn't. So when
Speaker 2: I went back home that night Stuart, I had not
Speaker 2: told Stuart. This is also, you know, like kind of
Speaker 2: like the mini secret. I had not told Stuart that
Speaker 2: Matt was going to be at this party, but Stuart
Speaker 2: had figured it out, so when I confessed to him,
Speaker 2: he was not at all surprised that it wasn't It
Speaker 2: wasn't even something I needed to confess. That was part
Speaker 2: of what was confusing to me is what did I
Speaker 2: need to tell him and what did I not need
Speaker 2: to tell him? In terms of the secret kept from myself,
Speaker 2: one of the things that it took me a long
Speaker 2: time to admit to myself is that I was doing
Speaker 2: this for me, That my attraction to Matt and my
Speaker 2: desire for him was not about my turning Stuart on.
Speaker 2: Even though I knew that Stuart got turned on by
Speaker 2: the idea of me with other guys. It was really
Speaker 2: becoming clear to me that I didn't want to tell
Speaker 2: him detailed I didn't want to tell Stuart details about
Speaker 2: what had happened with Matt because that felt like it
Speaker 2: was cheapening it. It felt like it wasn't mine anymore.
Speaker 2: And this was one of the things that created a
Speaker 2: lot of inner conflict for me, because here I was,
Speaker 2: I had my husband's permission as long as I told
Speaker 2: him everything, but I didn't want to tell him everything.
Speaker 2: So it did feel like a little part of me
Speaker 2: was still cheating even though I had his whole permission,
Speaker 2: and that was something we had to navigate as we
Speaker 2: moved forward.
Speaker 3: This is pretty confusing stuff. It's no wonder that Mollie
Speaker 3: needs help navigating all her fears, including or perhaps especially,
Speaker 3: the feelings she doesn't understand. So she starts therapy, and
Speaker 3: soon her therapist helps her to identify some of the
Speaker 3: secrets she's keeping from herself. Together with her therapist, Mollie
Speaker 3: begins to realize that her interior life, her sense of
Speaker 3: herself and her own worth, has been like a bucket
Speaker 3: with a hole in it. No matter how full that
Speaker 3: bucket becomes, it will continue to leak and leak. That
Speaker 3: metaphorical bucket becomes part of Molly's inner construct.
Speaker 2: I think the way we were kind of talking about
Speaker 2: it is how I could fill myself up. Actually I
Speaker 2: wasn't filling myself up. I could let others fill me up.
Speaker 2: Stewart or my children could make me feel good and
Speaker 2: fill me with their love, but somehow it would leak
Speaker 2: out the bottom and my bucket would end up again.
Speaker 3: So it's at this point that you start feeling compelled
Speaker 3: to understand more about your parents' marriage and what really
Speaker 3: went on in that idealized perfect you know, Ozzie and
Speaker 3: Harriet existence. Yeah, and you go to your mother and
Speaker 3: I guess you knew, or on some level you knew
Speaker 3: that your mother had had an affair.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I was twenty eight, so I had
Speaker 2: already been married for a couple of years, but not
Speaker 2: yet a mother, my aunt, my mother's older sister, told
Speaker 2: me that she had had an affair, and I was shocked.
Speaker 2: I was pretty sure I knew who it was because
Speaker 2: my mother's best friend when I was a kid, Jim,
Speaker 2: seemed like a very strong candidate, and and my mother
Speaker 2: had both joined Mahakari at around the same time. They
Speaker 2: kind of were on there a spiritual quest together, and
Speaker 2: both landed at Mahakari around the same time. It's my
Speaker 2: memory of how it had happened. But then it took
Speaker 2: me a year to actually even confront my mother about
Speaker 2: the affair, as my aunt had called it, and my
Speaker 2: mother also called it an affair. It was right after
Speaker 2: my older son, Daniel was born, and Stuart's father was
Speaker 2: in the hospital dying, and my mother came to help,
Speaker 2: and it was you know, I think it almost had
Speaker 2: to get to to a kind of critical stage where
Speaker 2: life and death were kind of immediate. I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to ask my mother this question. So here I
Speaker 2: am a brand new mother. I've been hanging on to
Speaker 2: this knowledge for a year that my mother had an affair.
Speaker 2: And I just told her, I said, you know, I
Speaker 2: know about your affair with Jim, like does dad know?
Speaker 2: And she said it was your father's idea. And this
Speaker 2: was after Stuart and I had done some of our explorations,
Speaker 2: you know, the sex party and the three and things
Speaker 2: like that. This was years before or six years before
Speaker 2: I met Matt. So that conversation that I had with
Speaker 2: my mother when she told me it was my dad's
Speaker 2: idea to have an affair, we didn't go much further.
Speaker 2: Than that, she just kind of mumbled something about, you know,
Speaker 2: while I was a virgin when we got married, your
Speaker 2: father thought it would give me confidence. And I was
Speaker 2: in that new mom brain hays at my father in
Speaker 2: law was dying, So it's all kind of cloudy what
Speaker 2: that conversation was like, but I know it ended and
Speaker 2: I did not bring it up again until I was
Speaker 2: kind of in the throes of what was going on
Speaker 2: with me and Matt, and that's when in therapy, my
Speaker 2: therapist was like, I think you need to talk to
Speaker 2: your mother about this, because there was such a clear,
Speaker 2: you know, through line between her story and my story,
Speaker 2: and it was something I was really nervous to talk
Speaker 2: to her about.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 3: With Stuart's consent, his words are go for it, Molly
Speaker 3: and Matt begin a relationship. Stuart would also like to
Speaker 3: embark on his own extracurricular exploration, so at this point
Speaker 3: they decide to open their marriage. Mollie agrees to the arrangement,
Speaker 3: but it sets off an intense emotional experience for her.
Speaker 3: During this time, she wishes even more than before that
Speaker 3: she could muster the courage to talk about all this
Speaker 3: with her mother.
Speaker 2: Stuart slept with an ex girlfriend, was the first person
Speaker 2: he slept with outside of the marriage with my permission.
Speaker 2: I wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about him doing it as
Speaker 2: he was about me doing it. But I was visiting
Speaker 2: my parents with the kids the weekend that it happened
Speaker 2: with Stuart, and I knew it was probably going to
Speaker 2: happen that weekend, and I was in agony the whole weekend,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to talk to my mother, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't bring myself to do it. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the really interesting things I think that here I am.
Speaker 2: I know that my mother has had this situation and
Speaker 2: it's similar to my situation, But why can't I talk
Speaker 2: to her about it? And I really do think there
Speaker 2: was shame for both of us. I didn't feel like
Speaker 2: she ever really gave herself full permission to do to
Speaker 2: be a sexual person. I feel like she kept it
Speaker 2: under wraps because she didn't want anybody to know. My
Speaker 2: father knew, and you know, she had told her older
Speaker 2: sister and clearly, you know, definitely regretted it once your
Speaker 2: sister had flapped it to me, And I think she
Speaker 2: felt like it would also be misunderstood and seen as
Speaker 2: maybe more salacious than it really was, or she didn't
Speaker 2: want to be seen as this, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: a sexual deviant. And I think I carried a lot
Speaker 2: of that same shame that there was even though it
Speaker 2: was something my mother had done, that there was something
Speaker 2: just unsavory about it, and I was afraid to talk
Speaker 2: about it. I didn't know how to talk about it.
Speaker 2: You know, my relationship with Matt, we could even call
Speaker 2: it a relationship as really really spased out over several years.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like this was a constant weekly event. It
Speaker 2: was kind of every six months or so we would
Speaker 2: kind of hook up. But it was very fraught with drama.
Speaker 3: And there was a secret was in that as well,
Speaker 3: which is that you were keeping the secret from Matt,
Speaker 3: which was that Stuart was in full more than knowledge.
Speaker 3: Stuart was almost a participant in that relationship, and that
Speaker 3: you would share a lot of what went on with
Speaker 3: Matt with Stuart and Stuart wanted you to, and it
Speaker 3: turned Stuart on, and so it was part of your marriage.
Speaker 3: And Matt also had a girlfriend who he was quote
Speaker 3: unquote cheating on, who knew nothing about this, and he
Speaker 3: assumed that the same was true for you with your husband.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I, you know, the fact that Stuart
Speaker 2: knew about what I was doing, I felt would I
Speaker 2: was afraid to tell Matt that too, because I thought
Speaker 2: there would be I thought he would find it really weird,
Speaker 2: you know. And it's so interesting now, Danny, that you know,
Speaker 2: polyamory and ethical non monogamy are kind of coming away
Speaker 2: from the fringes, because now it would be unthinkable to
Speaker 2: me that I wouldn't be straightforward with somebody about being
Speaker 2: in an open marriage. But at the time I didn't
Speaker 2: even want to. I didn't know even to use that language.
Speaker 2: It still felt deviant and strange and therefore something to
Speaker 2: be a little ashamed of.
Speaker 3: Time and time again we see how secrecy and shame
Speaker 3: can lead to some kind of crisis or conflagration. And
Speaker 3: this is true of Molly and Matt's relationship, which spectacularly
Speaker 3: flames out this by way of an impulsive and inflammatory
Speaker 3: text message. Of all things.
Speaker 2: Stuart had left so that I could invite Matt over to,
Speaker 2: you know, have a little tryst in our guest room,
Speaker 2: and I ended up running to the kitchen to get
Speaker 2: some water and to quickly text Stuart that Matt was there,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to reassure Stuart, so I wrote him.
Speaker 2: Still it still kind of gives me a little wave
Speaker 2: of nausea to think about it, I texted, but don't worry,
Speaker 2: he has nothing on you as a lover. And I
Speaker 2: accidentally sent that text to Matt, not to Stuart. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how Matt found out that Stuart knew and he
Speaker 2: knew everything, and it did kind of that was the
Speaker 2: And for me and Matt, there's so many secrets embedded
Speaker 2: in that that I was keeping the secret of my
Speaker 2: open marriage from the man I was being intimate with,
Speaker 2: And that tells you right there how limited my intimacy
Speaker 2: was outside of my marriage at that point. And the
Speaker 2: story of More is kind of the story of me
Speaker 2: opening myself up more and more and more in part
Speaker 2: of it the exposure of the secrets or the kind
Speaker 2: of crushing of the secretive part of what this was.
Speaker 2: And it kind of culminates, of course, in the fact
Speaker 2: that I've written a book about it. Now now there's
Speaker 2: no more secrets for anybody, whether they wanted to keep
Speaker 2: them or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it strikes me so much that your
Speaker 3: story is more about the sort of eradicating of the
Speaker 3: interior secrets. It's the interior secrets of the things that
Speaker 3: you know we keep secret from ourselves become faceable by us.
Speaker 3: Then it almost is inevitable that the outward facing secrets
Speaker 3: are going to take care of themselves, because the only
Speaker 3: reason why they're even there is because we don't really
Speaker 3: know what's driving us. I mean, one of my favorite
Speaker 3: quotes is from Carl Jung, and he wrote, until you
Speaker 3: make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and
Speaker 3: you will call it fate. At the end of Molly's
Speaker 3: relationship with Matt, she decides on a new path. She
Speaker 3: joins a dating app for married people called Ashley Madison.
Speaker 3: Even the logo for the app itself advertises its commitment
Speaker 3: to secrecy the lower half of a woman's face one
Speaker 3: finger pressed to her lips. This leads Molly into several relationships,
Speaker 3: increasingly pressing against an edge, it all becomes seedier, rougher,
Speaker 3: pushing further and further away from her otherwise bourgeois life
Speaker 3: as a wife and mom.
Speaker 2: This was me trying to do a couple of things.
Speaker 2: I think, for one, I was really in escape mode,
Speaker 2: I think escaping from my role as a mother and
Speaker 2: trying to have an adventure that was just for me.
Speaker 2: I think it was also me not realizing and this
Speaker 2: is you know again about the unconscious or the conscious
Speaker 2: staying unconscious. I think I was trying to get my
Speaker 2: bucket filled. I think it was partly about me aging.
Speaker 2: I was in my early forties at this time, and
Speaker 2: as women were often told that once we're forty, were
Speaker 2: kind of done, you know, like nobody's going to value
Speaker 2: us or find us attractive anymore, and we're going to
Speaker 2: dry up and it, you know, just the beginning of
Speaker 2: the end. And so part of me felt like, oh,
Speaker 2: if I'm ever going to have like a crazy sexual escapade,
Speaker 2: i'd better do it now. I feel like I was
Speaker 2: trying to live fully. You know. There's a line at
Speaker 2: one point where I've had a kind of a very
Speaker 2: what I consider now a very sad sexual experience at
Speaker 2: the Sleep No More show, and I'm like, ah, I'm
Speaker 2: really living. You know. It's like like I was thinking
Speaker 2: that it had to be a seen from some sort
Speaker 2: of showtime soft porn movie in order for it to
Speaker 2: be exciting and liberating, right, I had. I just had
Speaker 2: this really messed up idea of what sexual liberation looked like.
Speaker 2: I thought I was being sexually liberated, but I was
Speaker 2: just working myself deeper into the layer somehow of trying
Speaker 2: to please and trying to seek myself through pleasing others.
Speaker 2: It's just not how it works. And thank god I
Speaker 2: was in therapy, or I never would have figured it out.
Speaker 3: And through the gaze of others, right like through new
Speaker 3: eyes looking at you and saying you're beautiful, you know,
Speaker 3: you're sexy, You're perfect. That is a kind of briefly
Speaker 3: bucket filling feeling, but there is that hole underneath.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. It was a bit of a dopamine hit.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even the sex. It was the validation. I
Speaker 2: was getting male validation. That it felt like a little
Speaker 2: dopamine hit every time. But then the low would get
Speaker 2: a little lower, you know, the highs weren't quite as
Speaker 2: high and the lows were much lower. And ultimately it
Speaker 2: took quite a few bad relationships, although I don't actually
Speaker 2: have regrets about any of them, because I feel like
Speaker 2: they all helped me to figure myself out in some way,
Speaker 2: shape or form. But yeah, I eventually came to some
Speaker 2: understandings through therapy, largely of what it was that I
Speaker 2: was doing and what it was I needed to change.
Speaker 2: And I'm realizing I wanted Stewart to fill me up,
Speaker 2: or I wanted my kids to fill me up, and
Speaker 2: when they didn't, I went out looking for someone else
Speaker 2: to fill me up. But what I was discovering is
Speaker 2: that I has to fill myself up.
Speaker 3: It's during this Ashley Madison period that Mollie's on a
Speaker 3: business trip and when her plane lands, a cascade of
Speaker 3: text messages appear. It's her son, Daniel, who's thirteen at
Speaker 3: the time. Daniel is in a panic. His laptop had died,
Speaker 3: so he went to grab his dad's and on Stewart's laptop,
Speaker 3: he saw a shocking window open his dad's Okay Cupid profile.
Speaker 3: His immediate thought is that his dad must be cheating
Speaker 3: on his mom.
Speaker 2: What's interesting is that I wasn't actually sure in that
Speaker 2: moment what would be worse. What would be worse. Would
Speaker 2: it be worse for Daniel to think his father was
Speaker 2: cheating on me, or for Daniel to know that we
Speaker 2: had an open marriage and I was also having sex
Speaker 2: with other men. You know, there was no precedent in
Speaker 2: my own family for this. My mother had never told me,
Speaker 2: and I still at that stage, had never spoken to
Speaker 2: my father about it. But yeah, it was kind of
Speaker 2: a moment of my mom's self and my you know
Speaker 2: what I had partitioned off as my sexual self meeting
Speaker 2: in that moment in the airport, and it felt calamitous.
Speaker 2: It felt like the worst possible thing. But what's interesting
Speaker 2: is that when what you think is the worst possible
Speaker 2: thing happens, it actually frees you up quite a bit.
Speaker 2: So in that moment I was able to you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think I did it very gracefully. I did
Speaker 2: feel like, oh, I can tell him what this is,
Speaker 2: and I can tell him honestly why he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to worry. And there was something very freeing and comforting
Speaker 2: to myself about that, even though I continued to worry
Speaker 2: for years about how much I had kind of screwed
Speaker 2: Daniel up as a result. But I did feel like
Speaker 2: I can tell him honestly, like, don't worry, honey. Dad
Speaker 2: and I really love each other and we do tell
Speaker 2: each other everything. And this doesn't mean that anything in
Speaker 2: your world is going to change. And I could say
Speaker 2: that and mean it and know it. That our marriage
Speaker 2: has actually, you know, just gotten stronger and stronger as
Speaker 2: we've kind of brought more of our inner truths to
Speaker 2: the light instead of keeping them in the shadows. So
Speaker 2: we are in a strong place. And I was able
Speaker 2: to tell Daniel at that time, which is now, I
Speaker 2: can't believe it, but nine years ago, that everything is
Speaker 2: really okay and you don't need to worry. There's nothing
Speaker 2: you have to worry about here, and to mean it.
Speaker 2: So it was hard, and it was hard for me
Speaker 2: to feel like I had become something other in his eyes.
Speaker 2: But I realized too how important it is. It's occurred
Speaker 2: to me more as I was right the book, and
Speaker 2: as the book has kind of entered the world, how
Speaker 2: important it is to be your authentic self, not and
Speaker 2: I don't mean a self without boundaries or privacy, because
Speaker 2: boundaries and privacy are still important, very important, I think
Speaker 2: between parents and children. But I also think the fact
Speaker 2: that my mother never let me see any part of
Speaker 2: herself that wasn't kind of part of this Ozzie and
Speaker 2: Harriet image, this perfect mom image, because I never saw that.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was possible for myself and although
Speaker 2: I have sons, I still think it's so important for
Speaker 2: boys to see their mothers being their full, authentic self,
Speaker 2: so they know when they're looking for partners and try
Speaker 2: to be a good partner, that they are meeting the
Speaker 2: women that come into their lives as whole people who
Speaker 2: are not gonna, you know, who you're not going to
Speaker 2: ask to shelve a part of them selves just because
Speaker 2: they're also gonna, you know, maybe start a family. I
Speaker 2: feel like that happens so often that we think that
Speaker 2: we're done being ourselves as mothers, and we're not, and
Speaker 2: we shouldn't be. You know, there's too much of life
Speaker 2: left and too much that mature women have to give
Speaker 2: to the world for us to just shut ourselves down.
Speaker 3: Well, it's so interesting. I mean, one of the thoughts
Speaker 3: that I've had many times in recent years is that
Speaker 3: once you're a parent, you're a parent forever. But the
Speaker 3: years of active parenting of kids under your roof are actually,
Speaker 3: if things go according to plan, one of the shorter
Speaker 3: chapters in a long adult life. You know, yes, there
Speaker 3: are the years before children, and there are the many
Speaker 3: years once children have moved into their young adult lives,
Speaker 3: and we lose sight of that, or the years of
Speaker 3: being parents are ones that we're supposed to feel nostalgic for.
Speaker 3: We're supposed to yearn for before we have them, and
Speaker 3: then we're supposed to feel nostalgic for, like the best
Speaker 3: years are behind us. And it's just something that's really
Speaker 3: true in our culture that I think, you know, your
Speaker 3: story speaks to in a really really interesting way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree that this is true.
Speaker 3: Molly's done pushing against the edges of the bucket. She
Speaker 3: deletes her Ashley Madison account, now only interested in the
Speaker 3: honest version of open marriage, the kind where true communication
Speaker 3: being seen, being heard, being understood in a deep way
Speaker 3: is the foundation for the erotic. It's during this time
Speaker 3: that she meets Scott. She goes out on a date
Speaker 3: with Scott and is struck by the realization that the
Speaker 3: safety she feels with him to be herself, to be valued,
Speaker 3: for her true self, not to be performing putting on
Speaker 3: an act. It reminds her of something. It reminds her
Speaker 3: of how she felt when she first met Stuart. One
Speaker 3: night after she's been with Scott, Molly comes home, but
Speaker 3: before she heads inside, she sees Stuart through a lit
Speaker 3: window of their house. He's in his first floor recording
Speaker 3: studio doing his work, and it's almost like she's seeing
Speaker 3: her husband and her marriage with fresh eyes. She's reminded
Speaker 3: of why she is in love with Stuart, why this
Speaker 3: man is her husband. As time goes on, Scott wants more,
Speaker 3: his own marriage implodes, and what he really wants, ironically,
Speaker 3: is monogamy. He asks Molly if she's ever going to
Speaker 3: leave Stuart, and the answer is an emphatic no. Molly
Speaker 3: is certain that the answer will forever be an emphatic no,
Speaker 3: no matter what either of them does, they are in
Speaker 3: this together.
Speaker 2: That was a really significant moment for me because it
Speaker 2: felt for the first time, if I'm forced to choose
Speaker 2: between Stewart and anybody, the answer is going to be Stuart.
Speaker 2: I want Stuart. Stuart is my husband forever, not because
Speaker 2: we're stuck, but because we're choosing each other. And that's
Speaker 2: part of what has made our relationship so strong, is
Speaker 2: that we both choose each other over and over and
Speaker 2: over again, and we have reason to choose each other.
Speaker 2: And it's like, I just don't see that ever ever changing.
Speaker 2: But the other thing I was choosing in that moment
Speaker 2: was I was realizing I was really choosing polyamory. That
Speaker 2: experience of loving Scott and having it make me love
Speaker 2: Stuart more not less. I didn't know that was possible.
Speaker 2: One of our rules early on was no falling in love,
Speaker 2: like you can go have sex with other people, but
Speaker 2: make sure you don't fall in love with anyone else,
Speaker 2: because that seemed really dangerous to me. And my relationship
Speaker 2: with Scott taught me not only is it possible, but
Speaker 2: it's magical to love more than one person. This is
Speaker 2: about ten years into my open marriage journey that I
Speaker 2: really had that experience. But now I don't settle for
Speaker 2: anything less than that. I don't want to have casual sex.
Speaker 2: I can only have now connected sex and relationships that
Speaker 2: are loving. So that was a real moment for me,
Speaker 2: and I think that's the real arc for me in
Speaker 2: all of this. It was me coming home to myself
Speaker 2: and coming home to all the parts of myself that
Speaker 2: I had kept secret. And I think it's the one
Speaker 2: aspect of womanhood that we are taught to be ashamed
Speaker 2: of our sexuality. I just found out that the word
Speaker 2: pudendum comes from the Latin to be ashamed of, which
Speaker 2: was shocking to me. You know, I quote Audre Lord,
Speaker 2: the erotic is the nurturer of all our deepest knowledge.
Speaker 2: And when we don't allow or encourage women to explore
Speaker 2: their own erotic selves, I feel like we cut off
Speaker 2: a piece of ourselves. And especially when we're taught that
Speaker 2: it's something that belongs to our husband or that we
Speaker 2: have to just reject because it conflicts with motherhood. You
Speaker 2: can't be a sexual person and a mother. I feel
Speaker 2: like it's really to our detriment. And I feel like
Speaker 2: one of my biggest secrets was, oh, I am a
Speaker 2: sexual being that is evolving throughout life. That my sexuality,
Speaker 2: if it stayed the same as it was when I
Speaker 2: was twenty three when I first met my husband, that
Speaker 2: would be a tragedy. It's through I think, for me anyway,
Speaker 2: and the erotic self that I have come to know,
Speaker 2: my fullest, multifaceted self. I think jealousy is a fear
Speaker 2: that there won't be enough for me, or that I'm
Speaker 2: not enough, that if he loves someone else, there will
Speaker 2: be less love for me. And I have found first
Speaker 2: and foremost that that just isn't true. I have found
Speaker 2: that our love has deepened as we've allowed ourselves to
Speaker 2: love other people that we have less fear and less
Speaker 2: need to guard what the other one might be getting
Speaker 2: somewhere else. And I think there's a secretive aspect to
Speaker 2: this too that we've had to let go of. There
Speaker 2: was the don't fall in love rule at another point
Speaker 2: I also briefly tried, and I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people who open their marriages try this for a time
Speaker 2: at least, a don't ask, don't tell kind of policy
Speaker 2: where we say, you know, I would rather you keep
Speaker 2: a secret from me. Is basically what we're saying, I
Speaker 2: would rather not know the truth because the truth is
Speaker 2: too painful. That's kind of what the message is behind
Speaker 2: don't tell me what you're doing. And I found myself
Speaker 2: actually getting angry with Stuart when he wasn't lying to
Speaker 2: me well enough, when he didn't keep his secrets well enough.
Speaker 2: And so where we've evolved at this stage is that
Speaker 2: you can tell me anything, but we don't have to
Speaker 2: tell each other everything. We both allow for the other
Speaker 2: to have things that are our own, because I think
Speaker 2: we just have such a strong trust that we do
Speaker 2: love each other and we are committed to each other.
Speaker 2: And if you have something that you want to keep
Speaker 2: to yourself. It's okay, but we also feel I also
Speaker 2: really strongly feel that if Stuart tells me something and
Speaker 2: it sparks a feeling in me, that doesn't mean he
Speaker 2: shouldn't have told me. It means I'm having a feeling
Speaker 2: and I might need help holding it. So that if
Speaker 2: he tells me that he went out with someone new
Speaker 2: and they were just hilarious and we're cracking him up,
Speaker 2: that often, you know, sparks some jealousy in me, that like,
Speaker 2: oh no, that means that he thinks she's funnier than
Speaker 2: I am, or I'm not you know, his favorite, or
Speaker 2: you know, all these kinds of insecurities and fears and all.
Speaker 2: What I'm really asking for is, can you reassure me?
Speaker 2: Can you tell me that you love me again? Can
Speaker 2: you spend time with me, give me some attention. You know,
Speaker 2: it used to be like maybe a four hour conversation
Speaker 2: that involves a lot of my crying and things like that.
Speaker 2: I feel like we're getting to a point now where
Speaker 2: it's much more like I can ask for what I
Speaker 2: need more quickly and he can readily give it, and
Speaker 2: so then I just feel taken care of then I
Speaker 2: feel okay, and it's so much It's so much healthier
Speaker 2: and healing to be able to do that as opposed
Speaker 2: to saying no, don't tell me you know anything that
Speaker 2: might make me feel something I don't want to feel.
Speaker 2: If instead we let ourselves share freely and then help
Speaker 2: each other hold the feelings that arise, that's how you
Speaker 2: work through tough feelings and kind of get to the
Speaker 2: magical place on the other side.
Speaker 3: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
Speaker 3: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 3: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.