Jenny Block is trying to get people to open up about a subject many believe should be left behind closed doors: open marriage.

The Harford County native, who lives in Dallas, has been getting high-profile attention after last year’s publication of her book, “Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage,” based on an article she wrote for the relationship magazine, Tango.

Since the book’s publication, Block has been featured on “The Tyra Banks Show” and “The Glenn Beck Program” radio show, as well as in magazines like “Glamour,” “Marie Claire” and “Observer.”

Most recently, she took part in a debate on adultery and the Ten Commandments at the major Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, to be shown Thursday night on the ABC show “Nightline.”

Block said she is nervous about how she will be portrayed on the show, but said the experience was “wild.”

The other speakers were the church’s pastor, the founder of a ministry for sex addiction and the president of a dating service for those who want to cheat on their partners.

“I think they wanted me to be the bad guy, but they really didn’t know what to do with me,” she said.

Block has gotten a barrage of “mean, nasty, poorly-written” e-mails, including people saying she was destroying her family.

But she has also had people say, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to thank you. I thought I was a weirdo.”

Growing up in Aberdeen and Bel Air, Block, who graduated from John Carroll, always dreamed of a traditional, “Cinderella” marriage and never expected to be disillusioned by monogamy.

She was, however, always encouraged to do what she wanted by her parents, including her father, Rabbi Kenneth Block, who served Temple Adas Shalom in Havre de Grace for 24 years.

“People automatically assume he’s disowned me and in reality, he totally supports me,” Block said about her father.

“My family always wanted me to live in a way that was authentic to me. I think it gave me a unique perspective because I grew up in a family that constantly said, ‘Think about it, think about what that means,’” she said.

Her father said Jenny is her own person.

“I am proud of what Jenny’s doing because Jenny’s doing what Jenny wants to do,” he said. “I think one of the reasons she can is because she does not have to look over her shoulder to please her father.”

After leaving for Richmond, Va., in 1988, Block taught at the University of Richmond and Strayer University.

Four years ago she moved to Dallas, where she writes a sex column for Quick, an entertainment newspaper run by The Dallas Morning News, as well as “relationship stuff” for Fox News and The Huffington Post blog.

The book chronicles her discovery that monogamy just wasn’t for her when, three years into her marriage, she ended up having an affair.

That event set her on “the path of inquiry,” and Block, 39, is in a relationship with both her husband of 12 years and a woman whom she has been with for the past three years.

“People try to claim that I advocate adultery, that I advocate open marriage, but the only thing that I advocate is honest relationships,” Block said, explaining she only labels her arrangement as an “open marriage” out of necessity.

“Everybody’s looking to define it. I think the only thing I really am is an open-relationship advocate. I mean it to be simple, not more complicated,” she said.

She said she does not think her open relationship is very different from that of people who have secret partners on the side, except that she, her husband and girlfriend lack the sense of conspiracy and secrecy that characterize affairs.

“I really had a fantasy that, in sharing my story, other people would feel comfortable coming forward and sharing their stories,” she said about the book. “I have accomplished what I think I was supposed to, which was just to let people breathe easier.”

She hopes she made it more acceptable for ordinary people, not just famous stars, to admit to having multiple partners.

“It’s not Hugh Hefner, it’s just a regular person,” she said about the subject of her book.

Block is working on a book about cheating, which will be less autobiographical and focus more on the dynamics and psychology of infidelity.

“How many times do I have to hear about a politician who is a genius one day and a scoundrel the next, or friends who have gotten divorced because of it?” she said about the subject.

For more information, go to www.jennyonthepage.com.

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