Park Slope mom Molly Roden Winter reveals ups and downs of polyamory

From the secret swirls of lust and a mother’s guilt to navigating the world of open marriages, one Park Slope mother is bearing it all in a new memoir.

Molly Roden Winter, 51, first delved into polyamory in 2008 after meeting a man named Matt in a bar after a hard day, when all she felt her life was whittled down to being the “Wiper of Noses, the Doer of Dishes, [and] the Nag in Residence,” she revealed in her book “More: A Memoir of Open Marriage.”

The English teacher and her husband Stewart, to whom she dedicated her tome, opened up their marriage nine years in, after Winter came home that fateful night after meeting Matt and telling the composer about her flirtatious evening.

Quite to her surprise, Stewart encouraged her to go for the young man, and in return, had asked to sleep with his ex — thus beginning their long tale of polyamory, including all the bad sex, jealousy, couples therapy, and finally, when their children found out.

She opens her memoir with the moment her elder son Daniel, then 13, found his father’s online dating profile and called Roden Winter while she was in Houston to tell her his father was cheating.

“Dad and I are very happy together, and we’re always honest with each other,” she told her son in the memoir. “He tells me everything and I tell him everything.”

It was the moment she had been dreading for years, but one that probably left her son in more shock, as he had never once thought his mother was having relations with other men.

“Wait. You do it, too?” her son incredulously replied.

Part of the reason she wrote the memoir was because she was tired of the age-old idea that “mothers should not be sexual beings.”

“We expect mothers to be selfless. And ‘selfless’ is often thought of as the opposite of selfish, but I want to make a new word: ‘self-full,’” she told the Times of London. “You should have a full self, you shouldn’t have to give up yourself to be a mother. I don’t think that’s helpful to children either.”

In fact, she told the outlet that her goal was to raise her now 19- and 21-year-old sons to recognize that moms are individuals — with desires.

“A different mother might clutch their pearls, but I’m not a pearl-clutcher. I think they feel safe talking to me about real things without judgment or fear,” she said.

She also recognizes her privilege -— as polyamory has often been written off as something for the rich — and said she stands with nothing to lose.

“I’m in a position where I can come out, for lack of a better term, because I don’t really have much to lose. My family is supportive, I’m not going to get fired from a job, I’m not going to lose custody of my children … If I can’t talk about polyamory, who the heck can?” she told the UK outlet.

But since its release in January, many have branded the memoir “sad,” saying the mother of two spends most of her time crying and struggling to cope with her husband romping around with other women, especially his ex-girlfriend.

“The thought of them together makes me feel like I’ve fallen to the bottom of a well,” Roden Winter wrote about the time her husband asked to sleep with his ex after encouraging her to pursue Matt.

She told him she wasn’t sure and couldn’t look at him in fear that she would burst into tears. Eventually, she told him he could, but questioned: “Doesn’t he know I’m lying? Doesn’t he?”

Stewart took to dating quickly and told The New York Times that he saw it like a “salad bar.”

And despite Roden Winter’s love of polyamory now, she wasn’t always satisfied with it, recounting in her memoir about bad sex, jealousy and men asking to meet at a pay-by-the-hour motel.

At one point, she was so dissatisfied that it landed her and Stewart in couple’s therapy, where she begged him to end the open relationship.

“From my vantage point, it seems like Stewart is having nothing but fun as he jaunts along the open-marriage path,” she recalls telling a therapist, according to Daily Mail. “We’re here because I don’t want to be in an open marriage anymore. But Stewart does.”

She had screamed at him that if he wanted to “protect” her, he’d stop “making me do this.”

“Stop dating Kiwi and whoever else and just be with me! Don’t you understand! I can’t do this anymore!” she recalled saying.

Since then, Winter has found a long-term boyfriend, her husband found a girlfriend, they’re still happily married, and their children have accepted their parent’s lifestyle.

Although the memoir ends in 2018, Roden Winter took to her Instagram earlier this month to reveal the things she’s learned through polyamory, which include honesty, consciousness and freedom.

“It’s so important to be honest with the people you’re sharing your life with, but more so, it’s important to be honest with yourself,” she said in the video.