Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage (22 page)

Of course, there will be struggles down the road. There are days when I’m so mad at one of my sister wives that I want to scream. When this happens, I have to find a quiet moment and talk to God until I arrive at a place where I can calmly talk to my sister wife about what is bothering me. I know that it will be part of my earthly triumph to work out these relationships with these women.

When I think about our relationships and how we develop them, I often think about a muscle. A muscle does not grow and get stronger until it is pushed and tested and sometimes eventorn. When you work out, you are stretching and testing this muscle until it hurts. But when you are done, your muscle is stronger. That’s what our relationships are like.

I’m very idealistic about love and marriage. I want it all—the amazing love I share with Kody and the wonderful friendships I know I can have with my sister wives. While I plan never to leave the honeymoon phase of my marriage, I also imagine that I have three women who will ultimately be my best friends forever.

People always ask us if we have a system for running our family, especially for raising our kids. Every time we seem to get some sort of system in place, things change—we move, we change jobs, our kids grow up—and the whole thing reinvents itself.

One of the biggest challenges we faced in figuring out how polygamy would work for us was learning how each wife would maintain her own autonomy while being an important part of the family. When Janelle and Kody first married, the three of us shared a bank account. It wasn’t long before we learned that this wasn’t an ideal situation. For anyone, money is a tricky subject. Our situation was particularly delicate since we were all new to polygamy.

Our joint bank account was definitely a big part of the struggles we had as a new plural family. When it was just Kody and me, we shared a bank account. All purchases came out of this account, and we paid all the bills from this account. Since it was just the two of us, it was easy to know what we needed and what finances we had available to us. It was comfortable for the two of us to both use the same account. We would talk about what bills needed to be paid and what purchases we wanted to make,
either individually or as a household. Although we both had access to the account, and Kody took some part in it, I usually paid the bills each month.

When Janelle came into the family, we added her to the bank account. I don’t think any of us really thought about how this would affect us as a whole. Even back then, we would all discuss what the income was each month and what needed to be paid. We worked out a budget for the family, including a grocery budget, a budget for the bills, and our own personal spending budget. We were young, and new in our jobs and careers, so there wasn’t usually an abundance of spending money—we’d have to save up if we wanted something special. Kody was in sales, so there were times when he would have a particularly good month and we could put that extra money into either paying down a bill or toward something we had been saving for. While the three of us always discussed where the money would go each month, I was still usually the one who actually paid the bills and divided up the budget. At the time, I saw no problem in this, only to realize later that Janelle felt that I was controlling the finances. In my mind, since we had all discussed it as a family, I was only executing the decision that the three of us had already made. I realize now how detrimental that has been to my relationship with Janelle.

Looking back, I don’t remember when we actually decided to get our own bank accounts. I can only assume that one or all of us discovered that having only the one account didn’t give each of us, including Kody, our own autonomy, which is very important in a family structure like ours. When we got our own bank accounts, Janelle and I were able to start creating our own autonomy. We didn’t have to check in with each other about our spending. We didn’t have to be concerned about whether the other would disapprove of a particular purchase. We could handle
our financial affairs as we liked and feel that we were individuals who contributed to the same family. Ever since we made this decision, Janelle and I (and subsequently, the other sister wives) have kept our finances separate.

As our family has grown, the way we handle our finances continues to evolve. The most effective way we have found to manage our money thus far is for each of us to take ownership of certain family bills, whether it’s the mortgage, the cell phone bill, or a car payment. Even though the bills we pay may not be technically in our own name, we divide them based on each person’s income level.

Having a large family as we do, there are often major expenses. There have been times for each of us when we needed help from the family as a group to take care of a certain issue. Usually, if a wife needs help with something, she will talk to Kody about it. Many times, Kody’s help is all that’s needed. There have been times, however, when he will go to another wife, or wives, to see who is financially able to pool resources and get a particularly tight financial situation taken care of. I remember one time, years ago, when the transmission went out in my car. We all knew it was important to have a working vehicle, so we pulled together to get it taken care of.

Most of his married life, Kody has been a salesman. As most people know, in this line of work, you can have very good months or very bad months. When he has months that are not so good, we all contribute to get the mortgage paid. On the other hand, when he has a good month and ends up with some unexpected cash in his wallet, we can either play catch-up from the bad months, or he has been known to use some of it for something fun, maybe a special trip with a wife and their kids.

Our first commitment is always to the family. However, as the kids have grown older and we’ve moved into separate households,
we’ve begun to live a little more independently from one another. We look after our own kids, our own homes, and take care of our business in our own way. But this wasn’t always the case.

When our oldest kids were young, Janelle worked full-time and Christine worked part-time. So for the majority of the day, I was a stay-at-home mom.

In a lot of areas, I’m a lot more particular about certain things than my sister wives are. I tend to like a little more order and quiet, and I have clear ideas about when and how to discipline the kids. I really struggle when I see the kids being disrespectful to their parents.

It has always been very important to me that our children grow up with a strong sense of respect, for both people and things. When the kids were young, I tried very hard to instill this in them. I wanted them to respect one another by playing nicely together and getting along. I wanted them to respect their parents by being obedient and not talking back when asked to do something. (When I see one of our children do this, it sure gets my Irish up!)

I also think it’s necessary for children to respect things. This could be each other’s toys, their private space, and yes, this could also be furniture. I’m the type of mom who doesn’t allow jumping on furniture. I know I’ve not always been looked too highly upon by some of my sister wives because this makes me seem too strict, but my furniture has definitely outlived some of theirs! I remember a time, years ago, when Kody was sort of getting after me because he didn’t want the kids to feel like they were walking into a museum when they came to my house. I think, however, that he has mellowed somewhat about that opinion, as he has seen my household furniture last longer than that of my sister wives’. Over the years, I have also learned to relax when it comes to the way the kids act in my home. While I still expect
them to treat me and my space with respect, and not act like wild animals running through the house, I have become more patient when they do.

Back when I took charge of most of the day care in our family, I was comfortable disciplining all the children, whether Christine’s, Janelle’s, or mine. Of course, this was easier when the kids were small and their transgressions were fairly innocent. After all, I was the only mother home with anywhere between four and nine kids, depending on the year. If I hadn’t felt comfortable disciplining them, the house would have been utter chaos.

Years ago, when we lived in northern Wyoming, when Janelle worked full-time and Christine and I were each working parttime, we adjusted our schedules so that one of us would be home with the kids at all times. This was a particularly good time for our family. We had discovered that it was best for the three of us wives to have our own homes, so we all gained a bit more autonomy and freedom, and could raise our children as we wished. While we all have the same basic goals and expectations for our children, we have a different way of handling our home life and structure. Having our own homes allowed us to interact with our own children comfortably and freely, without having to worry about if another mom was questioning the way something was being handled.

Christine and I had our homes on two and a half acres out in the country, and Janelle had purchased a home in town, about fifteen minutes away. She brought her kids over to our house every day while she worked, so the kids were together all the time. They were one another’s best friends. They were constantly building, playing, and creating in our yard. There was so much space to run and play. They created “Kids’ Town,” which consisted of old blankets, boards, and lumber; anything they could find to make stores, post offices, and houses. They spent many hours in Kids’ Town. Since Christine and I lived so close together, we could pop back
and forth between our houses with little effort. All the kids knew they were welcome in either home at any time.

It was an unwritten rule that whichever mom was at home with the kids could use her best judgment on the discipline needed for individual situations. We were all pretty comfortable with this, but occasionally, we disagreed. In one instance, I was at work, and Mariah needed to be disciplined, so Christine handled it. When I heard about it later, I was fine with the fact that Christine addressed the problem, but disagreed with the way she punished her. I felt it was inappropriate and a little extreme. We discussed the issue, and while she might disagree with my opinions on discipline, she was very respectful of my feelings.

Mariah is sixteen now, so discipline is somewhat a thing of the past in my house. When the kids were younger, and I had a more active role in their day-to-day parenting, I would choose a punishment to fit the situation. If a child hit another child with a toy, he didn’t get to play with that toy anymore. If a child didn’t clean up his or her room, he or she didn’t get to play outside with the other kids until it was done. I never disciplined the kids if I didn’t think they could understand how to correct their behavior.

As the kids have grown older, however, I’ve taken a backseat in affairs that don’t concern my own child directly. I realize that my sister wives and I have different ideas about what is a punishable offense and what isn’t. I also realize that the other moms need the space and freedom to do their own thing in their own way.

Of course, I can’t always ignore it when the kids do something wrong. As recently as this summer, I felt I had to step in and correct a situation that had gone on too long and needed to change.

Ever since Robyn joined the family, we’ve been dealing with the typical blended family scenario. Several of Christine and Janelle’s kids hadn’t been acting like they wanted to accept Robyn
as a parent or accept her kids as their siblings. I understand that this is a problem many other families face, yet I know it is still difficult on the kids. Several of the adults began to notice that some of the younger teenage boys were picking on Robyn’s little girls. Now this could have just been seen as big brothers’ typical treatment of little sisters, but I think if it’s bothering the girls, it shouldn’t be allowed to continue. It had gone on too long and, in my opinion, nothing was being done to change it.

On a camping trip, things became too aggressive for me to brush aside any longer. A few of the boys were picking on one of the little girls and making her cry. I had enough of it. I got after the kids, telling them they’d better shape up and start treating one another with more respect. I told them that Robyn’s kids are their siblings whether they like it or not, and they better start treating them like it. As I was speaking, I noticed that Janelle and Christine just stood there and didn’t say anything to back me up. I felt betrayed by their lack of support. I feel strongly that the adults in the family must show a united front to the children, so they know we are all in this together and will support one another’s decisions. I think it is very detrimental to let children think they can play one parent against another. But not all the wives feel this way. In fact, later on, Christine told me she thought I was completely out of line for speaking my mind at the moment.