Author: Melissa

The Couch – Sister Wives S17E1 reaction

Everything I write is based on the show. I have no inside information as to how it went down otherwise.
I’m going to establish my reality on plural marriage first.

Our family has 2 wives. Joshua sets his own schedule. This is usually every other night barring other events. (Those events include, but are not limited to childbirth, illness, vacation, work trips, and other trips.) He works very hard to be fair with his time. Yes, that’s usually a 50/50 split. My husband makes time for me wherever he is.

On a regular week on my off nights, he either calls me on his way home from work (he has a very long commute), or spends at least 15 minutes in a face-to-face to check in.

We also have a nightly family gathering time that we call “Shofar and Tell”. This is a time that each family member tells a bit about their day. It can be something they learned that they want to share or an interesting experience, or a performance of some kind. I love this time of connection each evening. I don’t like scheduling things in the evenings because even the idea of missing Shofar and Tell makes me sad.

That is my framework. A very connected husband managing 2 households in the same house, with equal time given to his wives, and trying to bring the entire family together nightly.

Ok. Now to episode 1.

In the 5th minute, Kody says he doesn’t want to spend the nights on Christine’s couch.

I’m assuming that if Kody didn’t go to Christine’s, he stayed with Robyn and she welcomed him into her bed.  

He complained about it being a game. I don’t think that not wanting to sleep in the same bed or “throwing him out” is a game. This is a husband-wife relationship and for that relationship to break down to that degree is a very serious thing.  It’s not a game and should not be treated as such. It’s frightening to me that his belief of it being a game makes him not “play” instead of evaluating why the relationship is in the state that it’s in and taking immediate corrective action.

What Robyn told him had no teeth.

Robyn claimed having no power, but she could have had power and supported her sisterwife in refusing to have him in her bed if he was not going to spend equal time with her sisterwife.

My response for Kody not wanting to spend the nights on Christine’s couch would have been “You can spend your nights at Christine’s house on her couch. If you stay here, either you will be on the couch or I will. I will not sleep in the same bed with you on nights you should be at her home. Period.”

My husband was genuinely surprised when I told him of my stance. He didn’t believe that I would actually tell him he could not favor me with his time or that I would push to the degree thr I would plan to.

I’m pretty convicted about this issue and here is why: The only way to protect my own interests is to protect my sisterwife’s interests.

I have to be unequivocally fair in my dealings to expect fairness in return.

I never want to be blamed that I had part in the dissolution of a marriage because I enabled my husband to not have to deal with his other wife when things were hard.

Monogamy has its own difficulties. I don’t want plural marriage to have those difficulties plus the option to strengthen one marriage and sacrifice another if I can at all help it.

My vested interest is in having our family be successful. That means that each marriage is successful on its own and our family is unbreakable. This means I love my sisterwife as myself. There is no room for being a favorite over another (I have to be the best version of myself so I can be a favorite Melissa) or any desire for my husband to be monogamous. That idea is repulsive to me because it does mean failure and there would be a lot of pain and suffering, most of it avoidable.  

Kaleh Loves Fiercely

This is a very hard post for me to write. I could not watch the fight, but buried my eyes in my hands while I wept, listened, and re-lived.

Kaleh came to the Clarks extremely damaged.  It doesn’t matter how.  Trauma is trauma. Any perceived slight to her is taken exponentially.  Her baseline is that she is unneeded and unwanted. There is a lifetime of being trashed caught up in the phrase, “bringing the trash home”. Add in the cultural stereotype of being a brainwashed whore/side chick, and the lack of external support for plural marriage. Add in the time, effort, and financial resources needed to support a new wife. She’s well aware that the Clarks don’t need her. They did just fine before she came along; otherwise, there would have been no room for her at all. 

She believes she is not worthy of any sacrifices for her. She doesn’t understand how they could love her, because no one ever has. She has been systematically used and abused with her only value being her fuckability, her labor, and/or her bragability. She’s terrified that the Clarks are going to get rid of her. She is not at this moment able to financially provide for herself; thus the jobs. They are critical to her mental survival. She knows that she needs this family more than they need her. She hates herself for that too.  

She makes herself hard to love. She is trying to get rid of herself before they get rid of her.  That’s all she knows, and that’s the only power she has.  The push/pull of wanting to be with them, and undermining the entire relationship by being hard enough to love that they may give up trying. She has to prove that she’s the trash because that’s what she thinks of herself. It’s not her label, it’s her experience. A throwaway. Number 5 plastic. 

In all of it, it is the family that pays the price for the damage that bad men created.  The men who didn’t and couldn’t love, even though they had someone who loved them fiercely, and was never going to give up on them until they threw her out into the street – like so much garbage.    

She truly believes she is expendable. More than expendable – Dead Weight. A drain. A black hole. A sucking wound. Broken. So broken.

It’s going to take years. Maybe a lifetime.  It’s a rare man who can walk through fire to gather the pieces and to remold the shattered glass.


I hope they can make it.