How the teens took it…

Note from the blog owner: Melissa is my sisterwife and she is a new contributor to the blog. This is her first post.

I have been asked many times how my teens reacted to me becoming a plural wife.

I’ll tell you: Horribly. And I don’t blame them.

Let’s review the collapse (there will be other blog posts fleshing out these experiences):

All my life I was raised to be very judgmental of others: hair, weight, clothing, how people carried themselves, etc. It was never just, people are different. No. There was some immeasurable standard to which all were compared, and to which all failed to measure up to. They were mocked, made fun of, and there was an undercurrent of haughtiness embedded in my very soul. I laugh now because my family was hardly the type who could lord anything over anyone. Sincerely, my own grandmother was annoyed by us – she is likely the one this critical worldview was passed down from in the first place.

Naturally, I passed all of that judgmental world-view on to my children. In the line of attack were people who lived in any manner differently from North American, mainstream, LDS, intact nuclear family. The sad part is that my own family didn’t meet the criteria for which I judged people – I was a divorced single mother.

Believe it or not, I was the worst toward polygamists. I didn’t know any polygamists, and I didn’t need to. I believed they were apostate, weird, and likely inhuman. I was mainstream LDS, born and raised in Colorado (with a 6-year stint in Seattle), and educated in Utah. I’d been living in Utah since 2000. My only reference points toward those living in plural families were news stories about how horrible the fundamentalists were; from not educating their children, to wearing old-fashioned garb, to their reprehensible lifestyle of sharing husbands. I was particularly horrible during the Texas events of 2008. I declared that all of the FLDS children should be removed by the authorities and raised by others. I confess that I vocally cheered at their trauma. God, I am such an ass (that was a prayer).

Five weeks before our lives were rocked by a series of events which left us homeless, (which in turn led to a series of events that created the structure, and mind/soul shift, for me to become a plural wife), upon hearing about a local plural family, I started off on a mean-spirited diatribe about how disgusting I thought their entire lifestyle was. We were in the car. All of my children were with me. And I was a monster. What a stage I set.

the teens primary colors

As all of this was going on, I did not prepare my children for my change of heart, and I don’t know that they would have understood it. When I first approached my children with the idea, they were horrified. They thought I had lost my mind. Suddenly, their rock-solid mom was adrift and they thought she was mad, unstable, brainwashed – everything I had said about polygamist women.

As time progressed, I did other less than mindful things which were ignorant to the venom others held and created a huge backlash for myself. I put my children in the care of my parents who were terribly misinformed and highly malignant against this lifestyle. My father told my children that my husband was going to take my 16-year-old daughter as a wife. My parents called my ex-husband – a man known to them as an alcohol/crack/porn addict, and spouse abuser – to offer him custody (apparently, they thought he would be a better parent than I, in spite of all of his limitations, and regardless of me being the legal custodial parent since September of 2000).

My father called both the police and DCFS (Child Protective Services) to report me. At the time polygamy was not illegal. Thankfully, the authorities told my father to bring my children home, or be faced with possible kidnapping charges. However, I still had to deal with a police officer coming to my home for a keep the peace call.

At one point I attempted to go to a counselor. I had no idea who to reach out to. The one place which specialized in polygamy turned out to be an agency which helped women and children flee from abusive plural situations. The counselor told me that she had never counseled anyone entering a plural marriage and could not help us. She did have a private session with my daughter where she told my child to flee the home entirely. I have since found out that counselors who are LGBT(etc.) friendly are the most open to those joining a family in a plural situation. I made one appointment for my daughter with an LGBT(etc.) friendly counselor, but the counselor moved immediately after and gave us a referral. My daughter refused to speak with the referral.

Through all of this, my kids were confused, horrified, and had no resources to sort things out. I truly believe that I could have made it much easier had I not been all along so horrendous about those unlike myself

TL;DR bottom line: Don’t judge. Don’t teach others to judge. You may be eating a feast of crow, and end up being judged by those for whom you set a terrible example of judgment.

Where Are the Men?

First the Snowdens:

Extremely unfair. Those are the words I used to describe what I saw in the interaction between the Snowdens and their prospective wife, Joselyn, in this most recent episode (Seeking Sister Wife, season 1, episode 5). I thought the way they treated her was in very poor form. The Snowdens talk a lot about doing things together – which is good, but if they are truly keen on family unity, then they ought to be including, as far as possible, the potential new family member. Otherwise, the new relationship is built with an imbalance from the beginning.

Ashley complains that Joselyn did not talk to her about being intimate with Dimitri, but I never saw Ashley initiate any conversations about it either!

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And whose responsibility is it? If you invite someone to come play a game with you, and they accept the invitation, but only you know the rules, who should initiate a conversation about the rules of the game? Perhaps there is responsibility on both sides, but Ashley certainly has nothing to accuse Joselyn about in that area. Joselyn did not know the rules of the game. She was not privy to the conversations the Snowdens had without her. As far as she knew, she was playing by the rules – since Dimitri was the representative of the Snowden Family. The whole mess is tragic.

When they were at the restaurant, Dimitri completely threw Joselyn under the bus. What was she supposed to say? Again, she was not privy to the conversations had by the Snowdens about it. She did not know what Dimitri and Ashley had already talked about (or even if they had talked about it). Furthermore, Dimitri had apparently not talked to Joselyn about what happened on their date. The poor girl was thrown into the situation completely blind. How is she to know what to talk about? Again, she doesn’t even know if Dimitri has already talked to Ashley about their intimacy. Should that announcement come from Joselyn? Of course, she does not want to ruin what they have started by saying the wrong thing. She does not want to throw Dimitri under the bus. Unfortunately, the concern was not mutual. All during their very uncomfortable date, Joselyn keeps looking to Dimitri for cues.

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She was looking for him to step up, to be a man, to lead the conversation, to help her know what to say, and what to talk about. And indeed, he should have stepped up, and opened a conversation about what happened. Instead, he just threw her away.

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While there are obvious differences, I am reminded of the incident between Amnon and Tamar recorded in 2 Samuel 13 (NIV). Amnon burned with desire for Tamar. He allowed his desire to grow until he exercised it upon her by deception and force. When the deed was done,

Amnon said to her, “Get up and get out!”

“No!” she said to him. “Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me.”

But he refused to listen to her.

Now for the Brineys:

I love all the Brineys, my wives love them, and my children love their children. My family and I have interacted with them in person on several occasions, and it has always been a pleasant and rewarding experience. But honestly, I cringe when I see the Brineys’ interactions with one another on TV. No doubt, there have been glimmers of family unity and domestic felicity, but mostly it’s just been painful to watch.

I hesitate to comment about them at all; first, because they are my friends, and second because I know how difficult plural marriage can be. My own family has certainly had its share of internal discord. Nevertheless, I have been shocked and dismayed to witness how willing they’ve been to publicly criticize and belittle one another. I hope things are getting better for them, I hope their experience will ultimately be positive for their family. Every episode I watch just makes me so grateful that it is not my family’s life that is exposed to the public’s scrutiny! They are either very brave or very foolhardy – perhaps both.

Having said all that, I do not think it is a good policy to expect one wife to mediate the arguments between other bickering wives. That is the husband’s job. This is not a good family policy any more than sending a child to settle a dispute between other quarreling children. It will not, in general, improve the situation – very likely it will make it worse.

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Settling disputes between children is a parent’s job. Sometimes children can settle their disputes on their own, and that’s always nice for a parent to see, and that is certainly ideal, but when the children can’t come to a resolution on their own, and the argument is dragging on and even escalating, the parent needs to intercede (see Mosiah 4:14-15).

It does seem like Drew is becoming more involved, at least in talking one-on-one with the wives about their problems, and that has been good to see. For the long-term good of their family relationships, I hope Drew can find a way to get even more involved and mediate the disputes a little more directly.

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