Monogamy – Page 2 – Speaking of Polygamy…

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.

WARNING: THIS POST MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR YOUNGER OR IMMATURE READERS.

One common question (or complaint) about polygamy has to do with the “fairness” of sexual encounters between spouses. There are a lot of assumptions that must be rolled up together to fully form this complaint; nevertheless, it seems to be a simple, mathematical fact that the practice of polygamy itself will make for one sexually fulfilled man at the expense of all his wives being unfulfilled and unsatisfied.

This complaint is generally raised by women (tho not always, as you will see if you keep reading), and it should be no big surprise why. Everybody knows the reason; it is because, even monogamously married women are often sexually unsatisfied. This is a sad but genuine reality for many women. I even had a woman leave a comment about this very issue on my previous post about sex and polygamy. The reality of the situation is all the more saddening when you realize that this particular disparity between the sexes is completely needless.

Of course human sexual satisfaction and fulfillment is complicated, but a large portion our satisfaction has to do with how frequently we experience orgasms (along with all of the physiological and psychological fireworks that accompany them). There are various studies and surveys that have been conducted dealing with this subject, so you will get different numbers depending on where you look, but the general consensus seems to be that about 90% of men report experiencing an orgasm with every single sexual encounter (no surprise there – unless you are surprised that the reported percentage is that low). However, for women this number is considerably lower; only about 40-50% (probably no surprise here either), with a broad range depending on context (some studies say it is as low as 30%, others as high as 60%). No wonder this is a concern! In my family we have a playful euphemism that we sometimes use for orgasms; they are called, “waffles”. If we were to use “waffles” as a measure of the sexual inequality of the “average” marriage it might look something like this:

If sexual satisfaction (again approximating this with waffles) in women is only experienced sporadically in monogamy, then it stands to reason that it must be worse in polygamy; since the frequency of sexual encounters between a woman and her husband will be more spaced. This is obviously a valid point, and it is not only made by women.

We once had an elderly man named Lee visit our house for worship services. He was very nice, and we enjoyed one another’s company and fellowship just fine, but he made it very clear that he disagreed with polygamy as a system of marriage. In conversation after the meeting he proceeded to tell us why. He was a fairly recent widower, but in his 50+ years of marriage, he had never been able to bring his wife to orgasm even a single time! All those years he had been having waffles in front of her and never sharing. It was a great disappointment to them both. However, as he was complaining to us about his wife’s frigidity, and blaming all this frustration on her lack of responsiveness, I was silently thinking how sad it was that years of problems were probably due to the lack of a simple anatomy lesson. I did not take the opportunity to give him a lesson (it wouldn’t have made a difference anyhow), but just listened. This was a serious objection to the practice of polygamy in his mind. He could not begin to fathom trying to satisfy more than one female, when he was never able to satisfy even one. Fair enough, I said, and agreed with him whole heartedly that he had made the right decision:

Lee, and other men like him, should never become polygamists.

Sex is a lot of things. It is an obligation between spouses, and a command from God, but it is also a blessing from God, and a part of the joy of the marriage relationship. Spouses should seek to please one another in this respect.

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs.
1Corinthians 3:7 (NLT)

There are many other places in scripture that could be used to show God’s approval of sex between husband and wife for physical pleasure, for the sake of desire, and not solely for the purpose of reproduction. The fulfillment of your spouses’ sexual needs is not only a matter of frequency of interactions, but also the quality of those interactions. This sexual connection is important not only for spiritual reasons, but for our emotional and psychological wellbeing also.

This brings us to a very important reality that ought to be understood in order to figure out how to accomplish satisfying your marriage partner. The reality is: men and women experience sexual arousal and satisfaction in different ways.

The human sexual response can be separated into four phases as shown in the graphs above. These same four phases (Arousal, Plateau, Orgasm/Climax, and Resolution) occur in both men and women, but with some obvious differences. Acknowledging that individual experiences may vary, the first difference to note is that it takes women more time to reach orgasm. This should come as no surprise; their plateau phase is generally longer in duration. If the graphs were superimposed (and all else being equal), we could easily see that men will reach climax, then descend quickly into resolution, before their wife ever gets a waffle. In addition, males generally experience a refractory period after resolution. During this time (which is variable, but see my post here for more about this), the man will not be sexually aroused by his wife. Husbands, listen up! Taken together these facts mean – You ought to take care of her first! If you don’t serve her first, there is a very good chance she will miss out entirely (this conclusion is borne out by the statistics mentioned at the beginning of this article).

Of course the most dramatic and remarkable difference between these graphs is that women are multi-orgasmic creatures! They can have waffle after waffle as long as they are hungry for them, and they are still being served. The line on the graph is dotted because the number of climaxes is variable; however, this is something that most, if not all, women are capable of. Things seem to be evening out a bit if you ask me.

I don’t speak for any other plural families, but I have a rule that the husband should be able to serve his wives at least as many waffles as he has wives. In other words, if he has only one wife, then she should get at least one waffle every time he does (this practice would solve the disparity in the statistics quoted at the top of this article). If he has two wives, they should each get at least two waffles every time he gets one waffle. If he has three wives, then they should each get at least three waffles every time he gets one waffle, etc. It is a beautiful system and a good rule to live by – no matter how many wives you have. In this way, even tho individuals may get served at different times, they all get fair portions, and everyone comes away satisfied.

In my family I try to meet or exceed this rule. My wives are always served at least two waffles (because I have two wives), but they will usually have three or four (sometimes more). If we were to use waffles as a visual representation of the sexual inequality of the marriages in my family, it might look something like this at the end of a week: