I think that because women have higher rates of education than men and more financial stability, it makes sense that we would be reexamining: Is this really what I want, this script that I was sold, that I have to find “the one” and I’m just going to be with them until I die and they’re gonna be everything to me-my best friend, my roommate, the best sex of my life? People are just realizing it’s an impossibility. It’s the standard evolutionary narrative of “men want to spread their seed while women lock it down.” A lot of the research is not actually lining up with that. Some researchers I spoke to about CNM have talked about the impact of #MeToo, and whether that movement also extends to truly consenting to monogamy, as opposed to just going along with it. The author is neither an evangelist nor a hater of non-monogamy, and Open reflects her complex truth: While her relationship with Adam “deepened” and “darkened,” she writes, she also shed inhibitions around sex and, monumentally, affirmed that she was bisexual. A journalist, Krantz recorded conversations, clashes (with Adam’s permission), and therapy sessions, supplementing her personal story with social and cultural context and data. Open has all the makings of a juicy beach read-romance, sex, deception, and twists-except that it’s an “obsessively documented” account, per Krantz, of her real-life open relationship. So begins Open, Krantz’s reported memoir about the consensually non-monogamous relationship that followed. As long as you were honest and safe, you would be free. But there was a caveat: “If you were to become that partner for me, I would never restrict you,” he said, adding that, hypothetically, she “could still date and sleep with other people, even fall in love again. It’s a topic that would loom large from their second date, in Adam’s book-lined Brooklyn apartment, when he told Rachel that he was seeking a partner to share his life with. Eleven years her senior, Adam had Jake Gyllenhaalian bone structure and intellect to match, as an academic studying the psychology of romantic and sexual desire.
In 2015, writer Rachel Krantz was a 27-year-old serial monogamist just emerging from a relationship when she met a man she calls Adam (not his real name) on OKCupid.