• Opening Up

  • A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships
  • By: Tristan Taormino
  • Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
  • Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (557 ratings)

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Opening Up  By  cover art

Opening Up

By: Tristan Taormino
Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
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Publisher's summary

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.

Tristan Taormino is an authority in the field of erotica and sexuality. Along with working as a feminist author, columnist, activist, and educator, she has been featured as Out magazines 100 Gay Success Stories of the Year and The Advocate's Best and Brightest Gay & Lesbian People Under 30. In addition to all of this, Taormino recently appeared in the E! Special "The Real 50 Shades of Grey."

©2008 Tristan Taormino (P)2011 Tantor
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: Erotica

Critic reviews

"This is the book you want to read if you're looking for a voice that is balanced, sensitive and sensible when tackling the thorny question of sexual boundaries in love relationships. Opening Up is sure to open up your mind." (Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity)

What listeners say about Opening Up

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Outdated

While the material is well researched, the self selecting group that comprises the interviewed couples is heavily weighted towards BDSM, swingers, and PolyFidelity groups. As such, the book is heavily favored towards hierarchy, primary relationships, and unethical codependent behaviors such as hiring secondary partners through periodic returns to monogamy. PolyFidelity is an extremely tiny fraction of new Polyamorous people, and is evident by the ages of the people interviewed who are baby-boomers and generation x'rs. Many of the relationship styles in this book are considered unhealthy and unethical by current standards. The author replies heavily on outdated books and ideas from spiritualism books and texts from decades past. Polyamory has quickly evolved to mainly consist of SoloPoly and non-fidelity partnered Poly, with the later even losing favor. This book is now a very poor guide for modern nonmonogamists, with ideas of rules, 6 page written agreements, and lack of empathy for non-primary relationships. Coupled readers are better off reading "More Than Two" for a modern look at ethical partnered polyamory, and "The Ethical Slut" remains the top book for those interested in SoloPoly.

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17 people found this helpful

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Wonderful information for all relationships

Any additional comments?

I have never considered myself one for open relationships, but know so many people who do I gave it a try. The book was fantastic. The author talked about various emotions that come up, how to identify them, how to address them with yourself or partner(s) and this is wonderful information whether your in mono or poly relationship. I found myself taking notes that I refer back to with regularity. Great read for people wanting to communicate better in any relationship. Also available in audio book which is my preferred method of reading.

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Best guide yet....

This book is assisting me in navigating Open Relationships. I wish I was aware, when I was younger, I could live this way. I will carry and pass the lessons I've learned in this book long into the future.

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At least it was informative.

The narration was distracting, in that the narrator did "voices" to differentiate the various people's quotations. The voices were less bothersome than the characterizations - speaking slower or squeekier. The material is decidedly dry. I do not recommend it, nor will I listen to it again unless under duress.

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Excellent

For a woman like me considering opening up after 15 years of marriage. Many new taking points with my husband. It has definitely helped to make this transition easier.

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Great Content, Not-So-Great Narrator

The content is incredible! The author has organized information in such a well-thought-out, clear, concise and compassionate way. This is a great book for anyone who is considering opening up (pun intended) their sexuality and romantic selves to the possibility of non-monogamy or polyamory.

This book does not shy away from the pros and cons and does not seem to have an agenda one way or the other; the information is clearly presented in an unbiased manner for the reader (listener) to make their own decisions. I cannot recommend the book enough.

As for the narrator, however, her "man voice" was so distracting and unnecessary it became a cringe-worthy annoyance. Since she says the name of the speaker after the quote (Dave, Judy, Andy, etc.), there is no reason to try to pretend to be a man when speaking for them. It slowed down my listening experience because by the third hour I was lamenting that I had eight hours to go of bad voice acting... and that seriously detracted from the content of the book.

I will not listen to any other audiobooks narrated by Ms. Perrin.

That being said, there is a wealth of useful and helpful information presented here, and it's well worth the listen (bad voices and all).

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very helpful and insightful. a book to learn more

about polyamourous relationships. I would definitely recommend it. in fact I already have to my therapist

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Robotic narration

"Opening Up" presents some very useful perspectives on different types of polyamory, especially partnered polyamory. I can see why it is one of a handful of books most recommended for people considering opening up their relationships or who have already done so and are navigating the early days. By the end, I was convinced that polyamorous people are all around me. Just as everybody knows a gay person but might not know that they are gay, it is probably true that just about everybody knows a polyamorous person or couple without realizing it.

Tristan Taormino tries hard to be inclusive of all types of polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, but most of the advice in the book is geared towards partnered non-monogamy -- that is, committed two-person "primary" relationships with one or more "secondary" relationships. Even the title of the book evokes the idea of a monogamous couple "opening up" their relationship. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but people more interested in other forms of polyamory might give this book a pass.

About the Narration: This book feels a bit like a large research paper, with facts, citations, and bullet lists. Admittedly, narrating a work of this nature is challenging, but even so I found the narration to be excessively flat and robotic. Ms. Perrin puts... pauses in... sentences, even where there is... no punctuation. At times, the unnatural cadence actually made me wonder if I was listening to a text-to-speech computer program rather than a live narrator. On the positive side, she is moderately successful at changing voices in order to set a quote off from the rest of the text. Overall, though, I found the reading style to be annoying.

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Good read for poly curious

Definetly good read for those curious about polyamory and different relationship types within this lifestyle.

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Perfectly Informative

Such a perfectly informative book for people in all degrees of non-monogamous relating, or those just simply curious. Even as a fairly experienced poly person, I picked up a lot of nna information from this book and knowI will be referring to it for most of the rest of my life. Definitely on par with More Than Two.

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