I suppose all the viewers have realized by now that the Briney family is not returning for the second season of Seeking Sister Wife, and I just wanted to say a few words about that. Of course, as a polygamist myself, I will have a somewhat different view on things than most others.
Different people will want different things from a show about polygamy. Some will want simple entertainment; the novelty of seeing a glimpse into the lives of real-life polygamous families is in itself a compelling reason to watch. Others might find it educational. They might be interested in how a polygamous family works, how do they manage their time, raise their children, what are their living arrangements like, sleeping schedules, etc. Others will look forward to seeing drama and bickering. The misery of others can be cruel sport. There will even be some who watch with hopes of seeing plural families fail in a public way. This will add further justification to their negative views and stereotypes relating to polygamy, and fuel their support of (and efforts to reinforce) political, social, and legal barriers to those families. As for myself and the rest of the polygamy community, I think we all hope that shows like this will be good publicity, good PR, and will generally show the positive, functional, and healthy side of this kind of family. We hope that they will help to change the largely negative public perception of plural families. Yes, every family, indeed every individual, has problems and struggles, but last season of Seeking Sister Wife was, frankly speaking, a disappointing train wreck.
This is not all the fault of the Brineys, of course, but I know they have a similar feeling about their own showing last season. Here are some quotes about it from their family blog, The Briney Family.
I see bitter bickering and failure to abide by basic Christian principles that leaves me feeling inexpressibly sad and extremely regretful that we, as a family, set such a bad example of our lifestyle on national tv. Worst. Disappointment. Of. My. Life. – Drew (We See What We Want to See)
I’m truly heartbroken we’ve set such a bad example of our lifestyle that we fed that culture to whatever degree we did. – Drew (We See What We Want to See)
As a family (including April), we were all devastated at how poorly our family represented our Mormon fundamentalist friends and peers. We’d hoped to show how most polygamist families were normal, good people. – Drew (April’s Apology regarding Season 1)
April herself has told my wives and me in person that she has regret about the way things turned out on the show. Before anyone thinks I am picking on the Briney family, I want to say also that the family represented on TV was not a representation of their usual family life! The Brineys are also in agreement with this point.
These types of viewers notice that we’re “real” because we allowed ourselves to show our bad side on camera so people can see what the lifestyle is “really like.” I swallow hard when I hear that one. Our first season doesn’t show what our lifestyle is “really like.” It shows us experiencing our worst train wreck as a family! – Drew (We See What We Want to See)
We’d hoped to show how most polygamist families were normal, good people. Instead, unforeseen challenges led us to be a poor example of our lifestyle, our culture, and our peers. – Drew (April’s Apology Regarding Season 1)
I personally believe that their sudden television exposure, with its accompanying change of living arrangements (all moving in together in the same house), was a HUGE stressor to their family that they would not have been exposed to otherwise. It is not uncommon for families to end up broken after large, traumatic life changes (one spouse gets a serious disease – even if they are later cured, a child dies, a child is born, career changes, becoming empty nesters, etc). It happens, and it is tragic.
What happened with the Briney family was a tragedy as well. I love them all and still and count them as friends. April has been to my house several times since then and Drew and the rest of his family are welcome to visit as well.
Having said all that, I want to thank TLC! I know that many people have expressed dismay that the Brineys did not come back, but not me. Personally, I am glad of it, and I think TLC made the right decision. I know that even the Brineys (Drew, Auralee, and Angela) wanted the story of their family breaking up to air, but things are probably better this way. I think it would have been bad for everyone (all the members of the Briney family and the larger plural community as well), to have to live their personal family drama thrice. Once as it happened; once again when it was edited, distilled to its most potent form, and aired on national TV; and again when dissected and criticized ad nauseam by all the insensitive onlookers on social media. How can that be good for anyone? What person or relationship could thrive under those circumstances? It would wither anyone.
I hope, now that the pressure and stress of being in the public eye is largely gone, that the Briney family can rest, recuperate, reflect, and put all the pain and drama behind them. Who knows, maybe they’ll even be back for a future season after taking a break for a while.
Forgetting is actually an important part of our mental function and mental health. Forgetting helps us to live our lives in relative peace and be able to focus on the present. Having old offenses repeatedly dug up and examined (which is what would have happened had the juicy story aired) will not help us to live abundantly in the now. Forgetting offenses is an important part of forgiveness. The scriptures testify repeatedly that God will not only forgive our sins, but also forget them. They will be blotted out. He will mention them to us no more!
God bless the Briney family.
See here for some ideas if you are interested in helping the Briney Family.
I’m excited that the next season of Seeking Sister Wife has premiered! I was pretty surprised to learn that the Brineys weren’t going to be on this season. I knew April was living in Utah again but I assumed that her leaving Oregon would end up being nice juicy gossip for the TV show to capitalize on. Well, despite the Brineys not being on it looks like the show will have no shortage of interesting material.
I don’t have cable TV so on Sunday night I was trying to figure out how to watch. Luckily Amazon video has it, altho Season 2 costs a lot more than Season 1 did. I guess that’s how it goes when a show is more established. Either that or it’s the 13 episodes we’re expecting versus the 7 episodes we got in Season 1.
This season has our familiar Snowdens and Alldredges and we also get to meet the McGees and the Winders. I don’t personally know the Snowdens or the McGees at all. I know the Winders from Facebook but we’ve never met in person. I personally know the Alldredges as well as the Brineys. Last season I thought knowing both those families would be an advantage when it came to writing my blog, but as it turned out, I always felt the need to censor myself for the sake of our friendships. In fact, one time when Joshua wrote his opinion about a Briney situation, he ended up writing a follow-up apology post for the sake of his friendship with Drew.
This episode had plenty of interesting things to talk about. I made 4 pages of notes while watching, and I only had time to turn a fraction of them into a blog post before the next episode aired. Here are some of the thoughts I had about it while watching.
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The McGees call themselves “Hebrew” or “Messianic.”
“We basically believe the Bible cover to cover.” – Bernie McGee
I find this interesting because we are somewhat in that category as well. We are a unique blend of Messianic and Mormonism so I’ve taken to calling us “Messianic Mormons.” We believe the Bible cover to cover, as Bernie McGee says they do, but we also believe the Mormon scriptures cover to cover.
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How sad that the McGees’ house burned!
We once had a house fire, altho not nearly as devastating. Ours was 100% my fault. I left a batch of beef bones boiling on the stove while we went camping for several days! Obviously the water boiled away long before our return, and the bones smoldered, causing what’s called a “protein fire.” The professional from the disaster clean up company had been doing his job for decades and told me it was the worst protein fire he’d ever cleaned up after.
We came back from our camping trip and walked in the house and it smelled like a thousand burnt dinners. I realized immediately what had happened and I ran over to the stove, carried the pot outside, and set it down on the cement pad in the backyard. I removed the lid and what was left of the bones burst into flames! The lid had fit so tightly on the pot that no oxygen was able to access the bones. If we had been less fortunate, very likely our house could have burned to the ground while we were out of phone service. I have always said my guardian angel was sitting on the lid, keeping it tight-fitting enough to keep any air from accessing the smoldering bones.
Some of the cleanup included cleaning everything (and I mean every single book and toy and other items), replacing the countertops, repainting the entire house, “ozoning” all of our clothes and every room, and replacing items that were too close to the stove or stubbornly refused to give up their stench.
I can scarcely begin to describe the smell that permeated our home and everything in it. I used to hate the smell of smoke. I would avoid campfire smoke, and the minute we arrived home from a camping trip, I kept everyone from relaxing on couches or beds (because they would contaminate them) and instead they had to strip down in the laundry room (without their clothes even being dropped on the carpet) and get right in the bath or shower. But the smell of our protein fire was so much worse (not just stronger but much more terrible) that, I kid you not, campfire smoke now smells pleasant to me.
Not only did the protein fire smell awful, but it permeated everything like you wouldn’t believe. When we got home, we were in the house for half an hour with the doors and windows open and fans turned on, imagining that the house would air out and the smell would eventually dissipate, but instead the smell only grew stronger in our nostrils. We realized we couldn’t sleep there that night and we arranged to go to my parents’ house for the night.
When we arrived at my parents’ house, we learned that simply from being in the smelly house for a short while, we had picked up the offensive smell. I had brought some unworn clothes from our closets, planning to launder them in my parents’ washing machine before wearing them, but the smell traveled from the laundry room up to the kitchen and I was asked to move the clothes outside until washing.
The smell that got transferred from our contaminated bodies to our car during the hour-long drive took weeks to disappear. A rubber ball that had marinated in the fumes ended up getting taken to my parents’ house by one of our children. It was kicked around my parents’ backyard for a year, never losing its disgusting odor, before someone gave up on it and finally threw it away.
The experience was educational and in many ways it could have been worse. When we first bought the house, we had opted for a $10,000 deductible on our homeowners’ insurance, mostly out of habit, since we had liability-only car insurance and high-deductible health insurance. Some time later, my parents’ bedroom ceiling caved in due to unseen water damage, and I realized that even tho we might use doctors and car insurance less than the average person, our chance of needing to make a homeowner’s insurance claim was not lower than average, and when the time came that we needed to use it, we would be sorry about having such a high deductible. So, we called the insurance company and lowered our deductible to $1,000. Not long afterwards, the protein fire happened, and the cleanup required 2 weeks’ professional help, hotel stays, and replacing personal items. I don’t remember what the total bill was, but it was probably close to $10,000. Luckily we were only responsible for the first $1000.
However, I am quite impressed that she is willing to live in a camper while looking for a sisterwife, for the benefit of being flexible enough to move if that’s what the potential wife wants. In the cases of polygamy I have seen, the new wife joins the family and in doing so chooses to join the family culture and whatever setup the family has. When Enoch Foster married Lydia (a little of their courtship was shown on Three Wives, One Husband), she got to become a part of an amazing family with organization and resources that had been in the process of being set up for 2 decades. In her case I could see the real benefits of being the 3rd wife! I’ve never heard of an established family being willing to join the new wife, rather than the other way around. That part of this episode was pretty interesting to me.
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I loved hearing the story of Paige’s conversion to polygamy. I want conversions to come from something inside or from God, not from another person using logic or scriptures to convince us.
“One day I was just reading some verses in scriptures that talked about a man having multiple wives, and something just touched me, and I knew that was something we were being called to do: to live a polygamist lifestyle.” – Paige McGee
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The McGee boys are extremely charming. I love the conversation they have where younger brother Kyle says he’s looking forward to having another mom, and older brother John tries to figure out what that role is called.
“I don’t know what I would… What would that class — that role be called? Like a… a mom… I don’t know what that would be called.” – John McGee
Very often we hear about wives’ jealousy over their husbands. Much less talked about is the jealousy over their children. Paige McGee says it could possibly be hard for her to see her sons develop that relationship with her sisterwife.
“Watching my children get close to another woman in a motherly way could possibly be very hard for me to do.” – Paige McGee
In a country where so many children are raised by only one parent, I think it’s beautiful and extraordinary for a child to actually have more than two parental figures that love them and are invested in them and help raise them. I believe this has the potential to be a powerful advantage in the children’s lives. I would hope any jealousy over that issue wouldn’t keep a wife from pursuing polygamy. Moms ideally do what’s best for their children, consistently, whether they enjoy it or not.
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Vanessa’s molar pregnancy is mentioned. I wrote about it in this post, which includes ultrasound images and details about Vanessa’s experience. If you’re interested in what happened, go ahead and read it over there.
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The Alldredges discuss their “dream” home and the lodge they’re finishing.
They ideally want each wife to have their own bedroom wing (to “provide for some privacy”) but to share the main living spaces.
This is one example of many possible housing situations. The Winders have another housing situation of living in completely different towns. Our current house has separate living spaces but they’re connected on the inside, so family members can freely move about and be where they want to be, but the wives still get to be queens of their own castles. Personally, I prefer this and so do Melissa and Joshua. (We lived in different counties for 5 years before moving in together last year.) Joshua discusses housing arrangements in this post about the Brineys’ living situation in Season 1.
We don’t entirely fit into that category (for several reasons, but partly because of the whole “Messianic” thing mentioned above), but we have enough in common with Independent Mormon Fundamentalists (IMFs) to have some close friendships with people who consider themselves IMFs. “Mormon Fundamentalists” describes the belief system and “Independent” simply means they’re not a member of any organized group.
I find Colton’s story interesting — I’m paraphrasing but he basically said that since the early LDS Church believed in polygamy, it didn’t make sense to change that belief, so he had to either give up on the Church or really embrace the fundamentals. Colton goes into more detail about the different flavors of Mormonism and his family’s beliefs on the Winder family blog in this post and this post, the second of which includes some nice Winder family photos (including Colton with a beard).
“Living plural marriage was something that I wanted to do, but … if I’m being honest, it was something I didn’t think would happen until we died and went to heaven.” – Tami Winder
Tami’s story is interesting as well, how she believed in plural marriage but thought it was something she wouldn’t get to practice until heaven. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a story of a couple who found out after marriage that they both believed in polygamy, were pleasantly surprised, and then started living it.
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In the episode, as Colton’s second wife Sophie approaches, Colton says to his daughter Sadie, “Is that Aunt Sophie?”
Colton Winder asks his daughter Sadie, “Is that Aunt Sophie?”
The title “Aunt” is also what the Alldredge children use when addressing their “other mother”. I don’t think the title aunt or mom fits when referring to your mom’s sisterwife. There is definitely a word missing from the vocabulary of the polygamy world. My best idea is the word “maunt” — a cross between “mom” and “aunt.”
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The Snowdens have a conversation about what happened “last time.” Joshua wrote a post about it.
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There were many other things I wanted to comment on, such as Vanessa propping her phone up to take a family photo, even tho they were surrounded by professional cameramen. And the charming comment Tami Winder gave about how she was initially attracted to Colton for “his looks, obviously.” And the sad fact that our friends the Alldredges ditched us and moved to South Dakota. :’-( And Bernie’s overly optimistic statement that he doesn’t want to see hurt in his wife’s eyes again. And how I love that Ashley Snowden was nursing uncovered and then was wearing her baby on her back. I was also planning to give some observations about the obvious video editing that ended up making things awkward and unrealistic.
Well, I only had time to write up about a tenth of what I planned to. Such is life, but I want to move on to the next episode, so I’m going to go ahead and publish this post, incomplete as it is. See you in the next one.
Out of interest, here is the total amount of screentime each family had in this first episode (not counting the teasers like “Coming Up”).
plus 4 minutes, 45 seconds of “Last season on,” “Coming Up,” and “And Later,” and the closing credits after the last scene faded out to total 42 minutes, 33 seconds in the episode.
What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave your comments below.
Speaking of Polygamy... 