Becoming Sister Wives:
The Story of an Unconventional Marriage
By Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn Brown
Last week was Valentine's Day and a week with a lot of sitting and waiting. I was watching and waiting for lab results and I really couldn't focus on anything last week. When I was heading to the hospital to get some medical assistance, I asked my sweet husband what book I should bring. Doctor’s offices always make you wait and I don't want to waste an opportunity to read without the kids. To be honest, I needed something to take my mind off of the whole reason I was going to the hospital in the first place. I was deep into a Jane Austen novel and a murder mystery, but neither of them seemed appropriate for my current mindset. The hubs said mind fluff, so a book about Sister Wives it was.
I have always been interested in the whole concept of sister wives. Not that I would ever, ever, ever want to enter that lifestyle, but just like “hmm, that's interesting”. I read a book a few years ago called The 18th Wife that jumped back in forth in time about the history of the Mormon church and a modern day story about the whole culture of plural marriage. I have watched Big Love on HBO and a lot of the episodes of Sister Wives on TLC. I even watched a few episodes of the show My Five Wives. It all seems so mind blowing.
The book from this week was written by the wives and husband of the TLC show Sister Wives. There are four wives and one husband. They combined have about twenty children. I don't know what the current count is because the book is a few years old. All of the wives entered their respective marriages by their own free will. All of the marriages are modern marriages with modern technology and having “normal” lives. They don't live in a polygamy community and, due to the nature of the show, they live out in the open with the whole world knowing how they are living their lives. Before the show, the family was living in secret and they were not public with their lifestyle.
The show doesn't shy away from much and is pretty honest with how everyone feels about each other. There are disagreements left and right. The wives are jealous of the time and attention that the other wives get from their husband. So in this respect I was not surprised by this element in the book. Two of the wives really can't stand each other and the newest wife seems kind of like she doesn't fit in the family. The husband had been married to three of his wives for almost twenty years before he started courting his newest wife and, even though they all knew what they signed up for, they all end up super mad at the new wife and their husband. So all of this you can pick up on the first season of the show if care to watch it, it's on Hulu and my sister is obsessed with it. What I found surprising was that the husband and wives all agreed they might not all have been in love when they married, nor do they get along with any of their sister wives; they have all been unhappy and felt like crap about themselves. How does any of this sound like a calling? Kody, the husband, seems to have loved his first and fourth wife right off the bat but his other two wives were to serve as other purposes. His second wife is more of a partner in making money for the family and his third wife was someone to break the tension between his first two wives.
If you have watched the first few seasons of the show you know the whole book. If you haven't already seen the show you can pick up the book and never have to watch the show. I am bummed I bought the book, so take from that what you will.
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