--- title: Molly Roden Winter: Why I Love My Open Marriage description: The phrase “I need space” is synonymous with break-ups, But why can’t we see the need for spaciousness in love as well? canonical: https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-01-18T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:37.464Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why I Love My Open Marriage og:description: The phrase “I need space” is synonymous with break-ups, But why can’t we see the need for spaciousness in love as well? og:url: https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8f9af0fa5d60c4df/698a43f9b21a9cf4a4507f92/openmarriage2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Open Marriage og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why I Love My Open Marriage twitter:description: The phrase “I need space” is synonymous with break-ups, But why can’t we see the need for spaciousness in love as well? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8f9af0fa5d60c4df/698a43f9b21a9cf4a4507f92/openmarriage2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Why I Love My Open Marriage > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=dffcb4b4-ba88-4b82-8ab3-286a0eda7160&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Sorry, But You Might Be Apologizing the Wrong Way [Watch (HLS stream): Sorry, But You Might Be Apologizing the Wrong Way](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uOTOC0DK.m3u8) (4:22)  _Published 2023-03-22. Marjorie Ingall, co-author of "Sorry, Sorry, Sorry," describes how and how not to apologize the right way._ Jan 18, 2024 12:00 PM UTC  Illustration by Katie Kalupson for TIME by [Molly Roden Winter](https://time.com/author/molly-roden-winter/) ## Molly Roden Winter Jan 18, 2024 12:00 PM UTC Back in 2016, on one of the bleached-out days that fuse winter with early spring, my husband Stewart and I sat on an oversized couch in front of Evelyn, our couple’s therapist. Therapy had been my idea—or more accurately, my ultimatum. We were several years into our open marriage journey, and what had initially felt like a short-term experiment was evolving into something else, a graft that was becoming part of our marital flesh. What’s more, rules we had initially established to protect ourselves from the inherent uncertainty of non-monogamy were proving increasingly difficult to follow. (Our cardinal rule—"no falling in love"—became particularly sticky.) If we planned to commit to non-monogamy long term, I insisted, we would need help. Stewart had balked at “paying someone to pretend to care about our problems,” as he put it. So I threw down the gauntlet: agree to therapy, or we would close the marriage. At our third session, Stewart surprised me by speaking before I’d had a chance to present my own agenda for the hour. The issue in short was this: When I’d laid my phone on the counter before it faded to black, Stewart had seen my text to the man I was dating at the time. The message read something like this: “I wish I could escape and come over right now.” Seeing the hurt in Stewart’s eyes, I was steeped in shame. My voice faltered, coming out in a whisper: “I didn’t mean I wanted to escape from _you_. It’s more like wanting to escape from my role. As a wife. As a mother.” The language of marriage and the language of captivity have a long history of overlap, but that language has often been reserved for men. Referring to a wife as “the old ball and chain” is part of the lexicon. Bachelor parties are held in the spirit of giving a groom “one last night of freedom.” When I was growing up, however, little girls were supposed to dream of their weddings as the climax of their lives. Marriage was the assumed goal, and motherhood was viewed as the fruition of a woman’s success. How could I want to free myself from a life I was lucky to have? It was the first time I’d ever voiced this yearning, which felt so taboo. I loved my husband and my children. I didn’t want to leave them behind. But clearly some part of me did. In those days, I was doing quite a bit of therapy. I moved from individual to couple’s therapy and back again, desperately trying to figure myself out. It was my “solo” therapist, Mitchell, who helped me understand the connection between opening my marriage and my yearning to escape. What I was really looking for was a way to find a self that existed outside the constructs of “wife” and “mother”—escaping the restriction of my roles, yes, but also seeking something more. Seeking sexual exploration and the excitement that goes with it. Seeking the experience of desiring and feeling desirable again. ### More From TIME Seeking my own version of “freedom.” Over time, I came to realize the central fallacy of my original approach to finding freedom through sex. What I needed to do was to set _myself_ free. For years, I marched from one “relationship” to the next, thinking that a variety of partners was the point, my ticket to the freedom I desired. But it turns out, they were simply distracting me from the core that was being fortified within myself. Every time I became intimate with someone new, I saw myself with fresh eyes. Every time a relationship ended, I spent time nurturing the innermost me that had been hurt. And so, over the years, my sense of self blossomed because of the space that open marriage had created. **_Read More:_**[_The Surprising Political Evolution of American Polyamory_](https://time.com/6331379/polyamory-history/) The idea that people need space—space to breathe, space to move, space to grow—makes sense to most of us in the abstract. We are like all living things in this way. We know that for a houseplant to flourish, it requires a pot large enough to give its roots room to develop. We might feel outrage at the practice of wild animals held captive in zoos. And yet, the phrase “I need space” is synonymous with break-ups, with endings rather than beginnings. How would we react if our beloved partner were to utter those three words? Why can’t we see the need for spaciousness in love as well? In his _Letters to a Young Poet_, a work that is oft quoted at wedding ceremonies and then too-quickly forgotten, Rainer Maria Rilke describes this connection between freedom and love so aptly. “The point of marriage is not to…\[tear\] down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude,” Rilke explains. “A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development.” Was opening our marriage the only way Stewart and I could guard one another’s solitude, the only way I could find the space I needed for self-discovery? Of course not. Let me be clear on this: Non-monogamy is certainly not everyone’s path. But it was my path. It’s a path I’ve stayed on for 15 years and counting. And my experience confirms the words of Audre Lorde: “The erotic is the nurturer… of all our deepest knowledge.” At the end of that couple’s therapy session, Evelyn told us the following: “In some ways, open marriage is a joint adventure. But at the same time, your outside relationships are individual explorations. And there are risks. You don’t want to head off into the wilderness without knowing how to find your way home.” Evelyn turned out to be right, but not in the way I believed at the time. What I didn’t know then is that the terrain I explored was not sex, per se, but myself. The risk was not that either my husband or I would find passion—or love—with someone else, but that by giving up the freedom to explore, I’d condemn myself to a life of stagnation and resentment. I would be suffocated by my own sense of safety. I would wake up one morning and find myself tucked inside the Tupperware with the leftover chicken and carrot sticks I packed for everyone else’s lunch, and there would be no way out, no entry point for air. And the wilderness I had wandered into was different than what I expected, too. Far from being a frightening place, an inhospitable wasteland filled with danger—threats to my marriage, to my family, my security—I now see the landscape of my adventures in non-monogamy as a place of great beauty, splendid in its lack of societal constructs, a place that is purely my own. I carry this wilderness and a solid sense of home—my own True North—within me. There is plenty of space for both. And if I remember this, I will never be lost. ## Transcript The reason why it's so hard to apologize is because we are designed to see ourselves as the hero of Our Own Story. And when we do a bad thing, we resolved that cognitive dissonance by deciding, we didn't do the bad thing. So being brave and being self-aware and you know, taking charge and saying you don't have to do the bad thing and I'm going to apologize for it, makes you feel like an absolute superhero. I'm sorry, apologizing is a habit like any other habit and just like you learn to tie your shoes. Just like you learn to brush your teeth. You can learn to become a good apologizer. We have a very easy six and a half. Step plan. Number one, use the words, I'm sorry, or I apologize. Not, I regret not. I'd like to apologize. No, say those exact words number to say what you did, don't apologize for the situation or what happened last week, you have to name your sin. Number three is so that you understand why it was bad, why? It was hurtful number for is don't make excuses, explain as much as you need to, but do not let that sort of slip into making excuses. Number five is, say what steps are taken to ensure that this doesn't happen? Again, number six is if you can make reparations in some way, whether that's paying for the dry cleaning, or making the entire staff undergo diversity, and equity, and inclusion training to that. And six and a half is listen, you have to let the other person have their say, you don't need all six and a half steps forever. Situation. If you just step on someone's foot, that's a quick I'm sorry and you move on different situations call for different apology approach. Protocols, if something is quick, a text is a great way to do it or just to get person. If something is a more serious offense, email is a good way to do it. And if you really screwed up, there is something very powerful about a stamp and paper and nice stationery. The one thing you have to be sure, when you are apologizing, someone you have to give them an out. You do not want somebody to feel trapped by you. If they don't, especially if you did something really bad, do not trap them in their car. You know, they need an Escape Route, and you also have to consider does that person want to hear from you, especially if your sin is so profound, you have to put their feelings in front of yours, and that means, you may have to just live with the bad thing that you did, if they never want to hear from you again. An an apology is they regret? They don't say they're sorry or they apologize if I regret something that's about how I feel. A good apology is how the other person feels and what's the other person's emotions front center, about apology or non-apology is also gaslighting. It can be I'm sorry I forgot that you are so delicate and such a snowflake and that you have no sense of humor and that you know, you don't really understand how the Work World works and you do all of those kinds of things that make you question. Whether you're crazy for wanting, the apology in the first place, an an apology does not take responsibility research on apology and forgiveness shows that the thing that people want the most is for the person who wronged them to understand that they did to say that they did and say how this isn't going to happen again. If you're not sorry and you apologize, you're almost always going to apologize badly and a bad apology is worse than no apology. A good apology does so much. It builds Bridges and heals wounds. It's also really hard. So we say apologizing is a courageous act because we are overcoming all of our own animal instincts, and all of our own self protectiveness when we do it. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/"},"headline":"Why I Love My Open Marriage","datePublished":"2024-01-18T12:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:37.464Z","description":"The phrase “I need space” is synonymous with break-ups, But why can’t we see the need for spaciousness in love as well?","url":"https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/","keywords":["society","freelance"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Molly Roden Winter","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/molly-roden-winter/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/society/","name":"society"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/","name":"Why I Love My Open Marriage"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Sorry, But You Might Be Apologizing the Wrong Way","description":"Marjorie Ingall, co-author of \"Sorry, Sorry, Sorry,\" describes how and how not to apologize the right way.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uOTOC0DK/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-03-22T18:56:32.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uOTOC0DK.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/","duration":"PT4M22S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6556452/why-i-love-my-open-marriage-essay/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```