Tag: houses for plural families

Introducing the Mormon Renegade’s Wife

Hello, everyone. I am new at this so please bear with me. 

I would like to introduce myself a little for those of you that do not know me. My name is Amber Sanders. My husband, myself, and my sisterwife live in Utah. David and I have been married now for 27½ years. We have 6 children: 2 are married and have their own families, 2 young adult children live at home, and our 2 youngest just turned 17 years old. David was just sealed to Tonya, my sisterwife, in February. 

I was raised in the LDS Church, but was never very active. David was a convert to the LDS Church in June of 1995. We raised our kids in the Church but to this day none of them attend the LDS Church. This is mostly due to the way they were treated by the kids in our ward when they were young. But we did raise our kids to be their own thinkers and not to lean on others for opinions and such. So I am grateful that they are all on the paths that they want to be on for themselves. 

We have lived in many places including Idaho, Maryland, North Dakota, and now Utah. Our journey in Fundamentalism started about 13 or 14 years ago. We have been mostly independent until a couple years ago we joined The Branch.

I work full-time from home for an advocate company helping disabled people with their disability claims. In my spare time I like to make quilts and watch TV crime shows like NCIS, Criminal Minds, and FBI. I also like to spend as much time with my grandkids and kids as possible. Some of my favorite things besides my grandkids would be sitting on the beach and watching the waves and smelling the ocean air; being on a quiet mountainside enjoying the view and the sounds of nature; fall is my favorite season, and yes I do love pumpkins; snowmen (my kids say I have a slight obsession with these); butterflies; and sunflowers. 

My sisterwife Tonya just recently joined our family, and is having neck surgery so she does not work. She and I have been friends for several years. It has been a blessing having her as part of our family finally. And I will go more into this later on. 

My husband, David, is a land surveyor by day and by night most people would know him as the Mormon Renegade.  He has been a Surveyor for 25+ years now. He started his podcast around a year ago I guess, and it just keeps getting bigger all the time. He is working on some new stuff so if you follow him stay tuned for a new look coming soon. He talks about anything from religion, politics, to even one on weightlifting I believe. But mostly religious topics and secondly politics. 

I would like to talk about plural marriage in today’s society and a little on how we live it and our experience with it.

With my husband’s podcast we hear things from listeners and get questions such as:

  • How can you live this life?
  • How does your household work?
  • How do your wives deal with jealousy issues?
  • What are some benefits (outside of your religious beliefs) to living plural marriage?

I will answer a few of the more family-oriented questions and ones that can be a bit more personal.

To start out, I am not a huge scripture person: I am not one that can spout off a scripture or tell you who said a certain comment.  But I do know the things that are taught are the true gospel and I do have a strong testimony of Celestial or Plural Marriage.

David and I were in a plural marriage years ago for a few years that did not work out. We were not part of any group; we were independents at the time. I do not and will not talk about that relationship.  But that is when we were first introduced to the thought of plural marriage. 

Just a brief explanation on how it first came about. It was actually myself that had brought this up to David. I was reading Doctrine & Covenants 132 and then the Manifesto, and as I went over these I had a question for David. This ended up turning into David doing more of a deep dive into the Principle of plural marriage and more studying. We talked about it and prayed about it and both came to the conclusion that we were to be living plural marriage. Out of our control, that marriage did not last. 

For the next several years David and I talked to many different fundamentalists and groups, and in the meantime we continued attending the LDS Church. We always felt like something was missing within our family and with the gospel. 

After joining The Branch about a year and a half ago, the missing gospel piece has seemed to be filled. In October we were reunited with Tonya, whom we have known for around ten years.

When I first met Tonya several years ago, she and I connected in a very spiritual way. This is the best way I can describe it, but unfortunately the timing of things was not right. I knew back then that someday she would join my family. I didn’t know when or how but I knew someday she would. 

Over the years we have kept in touch. She would keep us updated on events in her life, or would just reach out to say thanks for being there when she needed a friend. She had let David know she went through the LDS temple not too long ago and again thanked us for all we had done and taught her about the gospel. 

Then she heard David’s podcast and she reached out in October to let him know she had heard it and really liked it and just wanted to catch up. Well, the rest is history: she is now part of our family and I couldn’t be happier.

Now, living plural marriage isn’t for everyone, and not all will be called to live it. But I know and have testimony that we have been called to live this principle.

For every family, how their family lives is all different. In some families, the wives will each have their own homes within the same areas, and in some, they will live in the same house. This all depends on the couples and also the resources they have.

For myself, I have always felt a strong sense of wanting my family to all be together under one roof. We are lucky enough to have a home at this time that accommodates that. We each have our own bedrooms and share the rest of the house.

I feel it is important to be able to be friends with your sisterwife. And I am again lucky to have that with Tonya. We were able to bond all those years ago and have been able to strengthen that bond over the last several months.

I feel it is important that we can learn from each other. Where Tonya has not been in a family situation like ours before, there are things that I have been able to teach her and work on together with her for our home. These moments are not only important teaching moments but precious moments to cherish.

People ask about jealousy issues.  This is a hard one because if you say there is never any jealousy you are not only lying to yourself but to your loved ones. But I will say that when you know that you are living in a plural marriage because you have been called to do so by God, the sting is less hurtful. I think one of the best things that has helped us thus far is to always let each other know how we are feeling. Or if we have an issue with something, to not hold it in and fester on it, but to talk to one another about it so the issue can be worked out. And most of the time it ends up being a simple fix or misunderstanding of some sort. So I would have to say just like that line of communication is important with your Heavenly Father, It is also important with your spouse and sisterwife.

What are some benefits (outside of your religious beliefs) to plural marriage? On this, I would have to say, the friendship that you build with your sisterwife is one of the biggest for me. Not all that live it are able to have this. I am so grateful that I have a strong friendship with my sisterwife.

Others are things like strengthening the family. I do believe that plural marriage should only be lived for religious beliefs. Anything outside of that is not of God and if it is not being lived for the correct purposes then it is not right.

The last question and the most important one: How can you live this lifestyle? I have touched on this some already. But to sum it up, we have been commanded to live in plural marriage. In Doctrine & Covenants 132 God gives us this commandment and explains the law to us. Although some people believe that we are no longer to live it, I stand to believe that we have a never-changing God. He will not command us one day to do one thing then turn around the next and tell us something different. He is a steady and never-changing Being. 

I bear testimony that if we follow these commandments and are called to live this law, that we can be happy in our choices and that we can all learn to love our sisterwives and each other. I bear testimony that I know the Law of Celestial Marriage is correct and I am glad I have the opportunity to live it.

Hot Showers

I was in a hurry because I had somewhere to be. I handed my baby off to one of my older children and jumped in the shower. My hair was full of shampoo when the water turned cold. Oh, no, I thought. Something’s wrong with the water boiler.

Lucky for me, my sisterwife Melissa has a separate water heater. I knew that even tho I had no hot water in my own shower, I had easy access to hot water just by going across the house to her apartment.

I threw on a robe, gathered up my showering supplies, and headed to my sisterwife’s section of our big, built-for-polygamists house. All I had to do was walk thru the door that connects my great room to her kitchen and say, “Hey, Melissa, may I finish my shower in your bathroom?”

She didn’t ask any questions. She just said, “Yes, of course.”

I went downstairs to her guest bathroom and finished my shower with only that few minutes’ delay.

When we were talking with Kody Brown about the possibility of buying this house from him and his wives, Kody bragged about the water boiler that would be providing my hot water. He told me he loves taking long showers — sometimes lasting 2 or 2 1/2 hours! — and that this water boiler never failed to keep up with his marathon uses of the hot water.

No wonder he never showered in Janelle’s boondocked RV in season 17 of Sister Wives!

Oh, that reminds me to tell you: it’s no longer the case that I’ve never watched Sister Wives, like I mentioned in a previous post. Melissa and I are watching the current season.

Anyway, back to the idea of marathon hot showers. This possibility used to be completely foreign to me. I grew up in a house with its plumbing geography so intricately connected that if I was in the shower and someone flushed a toilet somewhere, the shower would temporarily turn ice cold. The water heater also had a tank so small and turned to such a moderate temperature that it’s temperature turned down so much we had to keep our showers under 10 minutes, and multiple people couldn’t take hot showers back-to-back. It was best to space our family members’ showers out by at least half a day if no one wanted a cold shower.

Even the house we lived in before this one had enough people sharing its 2 bathrooms and 1 water heater that we had to coordinate our schedule in order to avoid problems. Having limited hot water has always been normal to me.

But Kody was right about this water boiler: in the 6+ years since buying this house from the Browns, I haven’t once had to give a second thought to whether anyone else in the house was washing dishes, flushing a toilet, or even showering in another bathroom; it’s been paradise.

Okay, a quick explanation of the layout of this house is in order.

As you saw if you watched the glory days of Sister Wives (i.e., when they were all in one big house in Lehi, Utah), the house I live in is broken into 3 separate apartments connected on the inside: the top right was Meri’s (and is now mine); the bottom right was Christine’s (and is now occupied by some of our monogamous extended family); and both the upstairs and downstairs of the lefthand side was Janelle’s (and is now my sisterwife Melissa’s).

The righthand side of the house is original; this house was built for a plural family with just 2 wives. The lefhand side was added on later. Once you know that, it makes sense that both apartments of the righthand side share the electric wiring (1 breaker box) and the plumbing (including 1 shared water boiler), but the lefthand side of the house got added on later and has separate electric and plumbing. In fact, the lefthand side has forced air heating (rather than the radiant heat of the righthand side) and central air conditioning (instead of an evaporative cooler). My sisterwife Melissa has her own breaker box and utility room separate from my utilities. Each of the 3 apartments has its own thermostat.

Even before the interrupted shower I told about at the beginning of this post, Melissa and I having separate plumbing has been convenient at other times as well.

Right after she had her last baby and she was freshly postpartum and needing extra trips to the bathroom, her side of the house had plumbing problems and she had to come over to my part of the house for a few days whenever she needed to use the toilet or shower. It obviously wasn’t as convenient as having a master bathroom, but it was better than any alternative.

Similarly, I have had to use her plumbing before. A few weeks ago our husband Joshua had shut off the water to my side of the house and was in the middle of a repair when he arrived at the hardware store 5 minutes after it closed. Since he had to go to work in the morning before the hardware store opened, I was without water for another 24 hours. It sure was nice to just carry my dirty dishes thru the connecting door in order to do my dishes in my sisterwife’s kitchen. I also had the option to use her laundry room, but it ended up not being necessary.

One thing that strikes me as interesting and, in my opinion, pretty smart about this house is: Each of the 3 apartments is very different from the others. It lets us each have a house with our own personality and without as many comparisons. I’m sure Melissa and I could sit and list out the pros and cons of the various apartments. None of them is obviously superior or inferior to the others.

As an example, in a previous season of Sister Wives, Christine said that in the Lehi house, Kody wouldn’t shower in her house because Meri had a better shower.

I would have to agree. Meri had a way better shower. The apartment that was Christine’s has only 1 full bathroom, and that’s the communal/hall bathroom. There is a second bathroom off the master bedroom, but it is only a half-bath; the master bathroom doesn’t have a shower! It’s so weird! So unless Kody wanted to take his shower in the bathroom shared with all the children, you betcha Meri’s shower was better.

Here’s where Kody Brown and my husband Joshua are so different (and Melissa and I both respect Joshua so much that we could talk all day about this). If Joshua was in Kody’s shoes, with a wife in Christine’s old apartment, I guarantee he would shower down there. Just because another wife’s shower is better or cooking is better or company is preferred, doesn’t mean the husband has the privilege of just taking the best all the time. It is important to normal women to get treated reasonably equally. I don’t blame Christine at all for being upset, and it is insensitive and, frankly, foolish, to hear a wife express her insecurities for years and for the plural husband not to heed her requests.

In the clip above, Christine also complains that her entrance was in the back, so Kody wouldn’t enter the house thru it. Joshua makes a point of going thru the front door of the wife he’ll be with that night.

At times it’s awkward and even unnatural for him, like the other night, when he got home from work while my parents were over and Melissa and her children were already in my house visiting with us. He literally walked right past my front door and into Melissa’s front door, and came into my front room thru the interior connecting door. He does that on purpose, very deliberately and thoughtfully. He wants to send all the signals that he loves each of us and treats us each as a wife.

Kody seems to have things backwards from how Joshua thinks about them. Kody worries a lot about his wives taking care of his needs; Joshua worries a lot about taking care of the needs of his wives. Kody seems to hang out with the wife who is currently easiest to get along with; Joshua has always had a schedule he stuck to, even if he has a moody wife. If Christine doesn’t want Kody in his bed, he goes to Robyn’s house, even tho Robyn discourages it.

If Joshua and I couldn’t get along and we didn’t want to share a bedroom, there’s no way he would just go sleep with Melissa instead. He would sleep in another room in my house, perhaps, — or maybe if I’m angry with him, I should be the one sleeping on the couch. After all, it’s his bedroom too — but he would even go to a hotel first before he’d go to another wife. Maybe I should’t speak for him. But I’m telling you that there are different ways to handle things than how Kody handles them on the TV show. It seems like Christine put up with a lot and that Melissa and I have nothing to complain about in comparison.

Here’s a fun bonus video clip for you. I actually remember the day this was filmed. We were hanging out in the vacant house with some of the Browns and a few mutual friends, and the Browns made all of us leave because TLC was coming so that they could film.

I watched this while preparing this blog post, and my teenage son was kind of looking over my shoulder. It was weird seeing our empty house just as it was when we moved in, kind of eery writing this post while in the very room shown on the screen, and funny listening to the 3 of them discuss what to do with the property,

My son said, “Spoiler alert: You’re going to sell it to us.”