Posts by Charlotte – Page 8 – Speaking of Polygamy…

The internet has no shortage of places to discuss reality TV shows such as “Sister Wives”.

My friend hangs out on one such Facebook group. The other day this was posted (by someone I don’t personally know):

My friend texted me before commenting to make sure I was fine with her response, because she wanted to talk about me and my family. This is what she wrote:

On one hand I can see the point-of-view of the original poster, but on the other hand, I believe plural marriage has the potential to be a beautiful way of living. Nothing valuable comes easily. Having lived both monogamy (for 11 years) and polygamy (for 9 years), I say from my experience that I prefer polygamy and wouldn’t choose monogamy. I have no regrets. I am not in an abusive relationship, my children spend lots of time with their father, and I am grateful for my sisterwife and my life wouldn’t be the same without her.

I am grateful to have a family that is a good example of healthy polygamy, as evidenced by my friend’s response. By the way, I’ve known that friend since we were a little monogamous family of 4, so she has seen my family go thru a lot of history and changes.

My friend is right that my family does as much as possible together. We spend family time together every evening (I’ll write more about that soon), we pray together before bed every night, we host fellowship meetings in our home together, we vacation together, we celebrate holidays together, we spend the Sabbath together. Even on a normal weekday full of homeschool, housework, errands, and childcare, we each interact quite a bit. I can see how a polygamous family living in separate houses could fall apart like Kody Brown’s seems to be. But we lived apart for the first 5 years after Melissa joined the family, and we still did what it took to be united.

I was chatting with one of my readers who is being courted as a potential second wife. My conversation with her brought up some things I felt I needed to share. Consider it advice if you want to, but I have such a big beam in my own eye that I wouldn’t dare correct anyone. I’m just sharing some thoughts.

First off, I don’t see why it’s ever a good idea to criticize your (potential) husband’s current/first wife. She has made it just fine this far successfully without you, and she doesn’t need you to waltz in to her life and start telling her how she should and shouldn’t behave. The possibility of living plural marriage will bring plenty of things to her awareness that she needs to fix about herself without you pointing them out directly, trust me. If you do see something that you can’t bear to just leave alone, tell your (potential) husband and leave it to him to handle.

The above advice applies to first wives as well. Your (potential) sisterwife is an adult who has long ago moved out of her parents’ home and isn’t looking for another mother. Just focus on improving yourself and your own children. When things come up that need to be addressed, either trust your sisterwife to figure it out on her own or bring things up with your husband.

Come to think of it, this advice applies even more broadly than merely sisterwives.

Think about how difficult it is to change yourself. Consider how often you fail to follow your own sage advice.

If your experience is anything like mine, upon reflection, you’ll realize how overwhelmingly improbable it is that you will ever succeed in changing another person.