A year off marriage to sleep with strangers - what could go wrong?

Daily Mail

17 Mar, 2015 12:15 AM4 mins to read

Robin Rinaldi is the author of The Wild Oats Project. Photo / Twitter

* Warning: Adult content

A woman who negotiated a year-long "open marriage" with the husband she'd been with for 17 years and took the chance to sleep with 12 strangers has opened up about her wild year.

Robin Rinaldi, 50, had always considered herself a "good girl", but ended up being so transformed by what she referred to as her 'wild oats project' that she left her husband after the 12 months ended.

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Rinaldi, who lives in San Francisco, had previous slept with only four men including husband Scott Mansfield.

But during her year of abandon, she bedded ten men and two women, whom she picked up online, in bars and at sex classes.

She made the life-changing decision to pursue sex with other people in 2008 - and has written a book about her exploits called The Wild Oats Project.

Rinaldi described her relationship with Mansfield, a brewer and wine-maker, as "stuck in a rut", adding that "our once-a-week sex life was loving, but lacked spontaneity and passion".

But she decided to make the change after begging him for years to have a child with her, and finally realising that he wouldn't after he got a vasectomy.

Reliving the fraught decision in her book, she wrote: "I refuse to go to my grave with no children and only four lovers... If I can't have one, I must have the other".

Under the terms of her new deal, Rinaldi took out an apartment, where she lived from Monday to Friday and would bed her conquests.

But over the weekend she would go back to Mansfield, and the two would live as a married couple, without asking what the other had been doing while they were apart.

Initially, the two agreed not to sleep with mutual friends, get into any "serious" relationships or have unprotected sex - but ultimately failed to stick to them.

Rinaldi wrote how she started out by posting an online ad, entitled Good Girl Seeks Experience. In the post, she wrote: "I'm a 44-year-old professional, educated, attractive woman in an open marriage, seeking single men age 35-50 to help me explore my sexuality."

The next day, she had 23 offers, she recounted to the New York Post.

The cover of the book, The Wild Oats Project.

Her first encounter was a 40-year-old lawyer, whom she bedded in her apartment on the second date.

Describing the night, she wrote: "We stumbled to the bed, where he turned me onto my hands and knees and took me from behind.

"'We had intercourse twice and, after he left, I felt satiated."

She later moved on to much younger men, and described texting her husband goodnight from a Las Vegas hotel room moments after a 23-year-old paramour left the room.

Two of her 12 encounters were with women, one of which was a threesome.

Describing another encounter, she writes explicitly about taking a new-found pleasure in fellatio.

In the extract, quoted by the Daily Beast, she wrote: "[penises are] beautiful... I took pleasure in mastering them from up close, watching them expand and harden, tracing the ridges of their warm architecture against the roof of my mouth."

However, after the raucous year, Rinaldi admitted, she could not turn back.

Attempts to rekindle their marriage after the year failed - and Rinaldi began sleeping with one of the men from the past year, whom she refers to by a pseudonym.

She wrote: "The turning point was hearing from Alden. He sent me an e-mail, out of the blue, several months after the project had come to an end.

"Before long, we were having sex again. Being with him was exquisite. After reconnecting with Alden and falling deeply in love with him, there was no going back."

Rinaldi has now lived with "Alden" for five years in a monogamous relationship, while Mansfield has also moved on.

The former couple now consider themselves at peace - and Mansfield was even happy with her writing the book, detailing every aspect of their sex lives and her previously secret exploits with other men.

Speaking to the Daily Beast about how he responded to the book, she said: "His response was, 'You have to write it. If you write it well, it won't really be about us, it will be about lots of marriages'."

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