Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage (6 page)

That evening, when Kody walked into the house to join the party, the strangest feeling washed over me. I felt as if I had forgotten something and suddenly remembered it. It was a feeling of relief and recognition. But I was in the middle of a horrible divorce and I had no idea how to handle the sensation Kody’s entrance conjured in me. So I packed it away and made a mental note to deal with it later.

My divorce was not yet finalized, so I still attended certain functions with my estranged husband. One of these was Meri and Kody’s wedding. If you look at their wedding pictures, you will see me and my ex-husband in several of the photos.

Kody and Meri made a wonderful couple. They were so young and so much in love. They were like teenagers—silly and goofy.
At their wedding, I never imagined that one day I’d join their family. In fact, I hadn’t yet considered converting to their faith.

A little more than a year after my own wedding, my divorce was finalized. My husband lost touch with me and spent very little time with his family. But I grew closer to my former in-laws. I entered their family by marriage and stayed when the marriage was over.

Even when Meri and I were newlyweds, entering the principle of plural marriage was always at the back of our minds. I had a sense in my heart that this was something I needed to do when I was young. I had seen older men marrying women who had children by their first husbands. I didn’t think that I should or could bring other people’s children into my life and merge my family with someone else’s. At the time, I felt that this would be disruptive to the children and uncomfortable for the ex-husband.

After Meri and I were married, Janelle was often on the periphery of our lives. We both knew that Janelle had endured a rough period during her short-lived marriage, and we wanted to make sure that she remained close with Meri’s family despite the divorce. We, as well as Meri’s parents, were looking out for Janelle purely because we cared about her. There was never any thought in my mind, or in Meri’s, of Janelle becoming a wife.

Meri and I often invited Janelle out for pizza or a movie. The women had developed a friendship of their own, independent of Meri’s brother. And through Meri, I got to know Janelle. Our friendship was entirely platonic, but I recognized Janelle’s intelligence, and conversation always flowed easily between us.

Janelle has always been career-minded. When I first met her,
she worked in marketing communications, but then she switched to human resources at an employment agency. I always seemed to be working transitory jobs—Meri and I were still living our carefree existence and hadn’t settled on a logical career path.

After Meri and I had been married for three months, I went looking for a new job. I went to the employment agency where Janelle worked. She helped me out, first with a few part-time positions, and eventually with a full-time job in sales. One afternoon I had to stop by Janelle’s office to pick up a check. I passed by her desk to say hello. A quick hello turned into a long conversation. Janelle was very forthcoming about her life. She complained about the guys she was dating, about how immature and unsatisfactory they were. Immediately a thought popped into my head:
Janelle should marry a guy like me
. I thought I was the perfect solution to Janelle’s problem. Back then I was young and arrogant. I was also naive. I thought that I was everything Janelle was looking for.

A few months later, Meri and I were getting ready to move from Utah to Wyoming to be close to my family. Meri, Janelle, and I had spent some time together and gotten to know one another even better. In fact, Meri and I were even renting Janelle’s old house for a while. I wanted to see Janelle once more before we moved away, so I invited her to lunch with me. Technically, it’s inappropriate for a married man to have lunch alone with another woman. But Janelle and I were friends. There was no thought of courting, so lunch was purely platonic.

But during that lunch, that same thought that I’d had a few months earlier in Janelle’s office crossed my mind—there was something between Janelle and me. I was a married man, so I had to be careful with my words. I tried to be as offhand as possible when I said to Janelle, “Maybe you and I should consider you and me.”

I completely rebuffed Kody’s suggestion. I was shocked, and laughed it off. After that, I didn’t even give it a second thought. But when I returned to the office that afternoon, my coworkers were suspicious. They wanted to know who the cute man was who’d taken me to lunch. I’ve heard that people in the office said I was glowing—but this seems a little exaggerated.

A few months after Kody and Meri had moved to Montana, Kody told me they were going to be returning to his dad’s ranch in Wyoming for the weekend, so I decided to visit as well. When I called my mother and told her I was going to spend a few days with a polygamous family, she became alarmed. Unfortunately, many members of the LDS church harbor a deep mistrust of polygamy. Mormons are taught from a young age that fundamentalism is backward and sinful. I guess my mother was worried that I was going to be converted, swept away into some sort of cult and never heard from again.

Although it was clear that my mom didn’t want me to go to Wyoming, she knew me well enough not to tell me
not
to do something. Had she tried to prevent me from visiting Kody and Meri, I would have left the moment I’d hung up the phone.

Ever since my mother divorced my stepfather, she had developed an independent and free spirit. She follows her own path at her own speed. So when I told her I was going to visit Meri and Kody, she told me that she was coming along for the weekend. Part of her wanted to meet a polygamous family and see what they were like—and part of her wanted to protect me from them.

Well, let’s just say that trip had an unexpected development. When Kody’s father, Winn, arrived and met my mother, they had an instant chemistry. Winn already had two wives, but he and
my mom began courting, and not long after our trip to Wyoming they were married.

When I returned to Utah, I began to explore the polygamous faith. There was something in the doctrines that intrigued me. All the men whom I’d met in the faith had character. In addition to this, I discovered that the women were amazingly strong. It became immediately apparent to me that when you choose to follow a countercultural path, you have to learn to be independent. In other words, when you choose an alternative lifestyle—one that is denigrated by the public—it develops your character. You either wash out or you stand up. Once I came to this conclusion, I started to believe that there was something for me in fundamentalism.

As I was investigating the faith, I started studying the doctrines and principles of Meri and Kody’s group, as well as talking to a lot of members of their church. I decided to pay another visit to Meri and Kody, who were now living in Montana. When I went up to Montana, I brought the man I was seeing at the time. Despite dating a member of the LDS faith—a conventional Mormon—I couldn’t suppress my interest in fundamentalism. During that visit to Montana, it progressed from a curiosity to a calling.

When Janelle showed up in Montana, she had a guy in tow. I knew she was hoping that a real relationship would develop between them, but I guess I was starting to wish for the opposite to happen. It may be ungenerous to say, but I hoped their relationship would fizzle.

When I saw Janelle and her boyfriend, I couldn’t stop wondering why she was sabotaging herself. Don’t get me wrong—the
boyfriend was an awesome guy. But I had a sense that Janelle and I shared a destiny.

The minute I met Janelle’s date, I said to Meri, “She’s getting in her own way. She doesn’t want to let herself have what she truly wants, so she’s dating another guy.” I’m not sure Meri quite understood what I was hinting at.

I couldn’t shake my spiritual awareness that Janelle and I would one day marry. I’m not sure exactly when this insight came to me—it wasn’t born out of the same conventionally romantic attraction I had to Meri. It was a different feeling entirely, one that had more to do with spirituality and intellectual compatibility romantic love. However, I couldn’t help notice that in addition to her first-rate mind, I found her extremely attractive.

Since I couldn’t shake the awareness that we would share a future, I was confounded by the fact that Janelle brought a date when she came to visit. I was certain that she was doing this to keep herself at a distance from me. In essence, I think she was testing both of our resolves.

When I left Montana, I was inspired but confused. I was attracted to the fundamentalist Mormon religion and I was starting to think Kody might be the right person for me. For the first time, I allowed myself the luxury of admitting that I was interested in Kody. Not in a saccharine, gushy romantic way, but because he was emblematic of all the things that attracted me to his faith. But still, I was nervous. Converting to fundamentalism meant leaving my own faith. I needed time to think things through.

I wanted to do some self-exploration. I was only twenty-two, but already I’d been through a divorce. I wanted to get in touch
with my own spirituality and my own ideals before making any major decisions. I wanted to travel, to get away from familiar surroundings. Part of me wanted to buy a Jeep, get a dog, and drive off to Colorado and live in the mountains. Another part wanted to explore my interest in the Native American way of life, something that has fascinated me since I was a little girl.

I have always been involved with Native American culture on some level—whether through reading and studying, or through collecting art and artifacts. Many of my friends were involved in the mountain men movement. They participated in reenactments of historical mountain men rendezvous, including spending time living in primitive housing, including teepees. They also practiced many of the crafts, such as furniture making and handiwork, typical of the early 1800s. I decided it would be a good idea to spend some time living closer to nature, as Native Americans once had. I bought a teepee and quit my job, intending to camp in my teepee for as long as I could bear it.

Kody’s father had lots of open space on his ranch, and offered to let me camp on his land. By this time, he had married my mother. I knew that if I got too cold in the teepee, I could retreat to a warm house where my mother would be waiting.

I got to Wyoming in November. Cold weather had settled in a while back. And the temperatures in Wyoming are biting and unbearable. Despite this, I was determined. It was below freezing when I got my camp set up. I didn’t last a single night. It was so cold that after only a few hours I was back in the house.

I had quit my job in Utah, so I was free to travel up to Wyoming as much as I wanted. Kody’s father is a patriarchal man, in the sense that he feels it is his duty and responsibility to look after the people in his family orbit. I was one of these people. He took me under his wing and made it clear that it was his intention to find me a guy. Winn’s plan was to convince me to settle on Kody’s brother. But I had other ideas.

When I was growing up there was an incredibly cool father in my neighborhood. Perhaps because my stepfather was so distant, I took notice of how closely this man connected to his kids. He was a lawyer, but he would ditch work to take his children skiing. It seemed to me that every moment he was home, he was involved in some activity with one of his kids. It was clear that his children were the center of his world. I remembering thinking how badly I wanted a dad like that.

I’d seen the way Kody interacted with children—there were always kids around the ranch, and Meri’s parents’ house was often filled with them. I’d seen how loving Kody was and how much fun he could be. He even made time for kids not in his own family. He was energetic and caring, always willing to get down on all fours for any game the kids dreamed up. Kody seemed like exactly the father I had in mind for my kids.

More than anything, I had fallen in love with the polygamous lifestyle. I loved the idea of a sisterhood, the notion of companionship, and the possibility of a family that could grow in so many different ways. I saw so much potential in polygamy.

Kody was an obvious choice for me, but not because of any conventional notion of romance. I have never, ever been someone who’s interested in sappy goo-goo eyes, chocolates, flowers, and sunset walks on the beach. The idea of cooing and cuddling doesn’t agree with me.

I’m sure there is a combination of things in my nature that makes me think this way. On the one hand, I’ve always been independent and happy to spend time on my own and do my own thing, so I had never felt the need to bind myself to someone on an intimate level. In addition to this, I think my early failed marriage disillusioned me somewhat, solidifying my notion of matrimony as something both pragmatic and practical. I wanted a strong husband who would be a wonderful father to my children—I always envisioned that I’d have a large number
of children. I wanted a man with whom I’d have an intellectual connection, who would be happy and willing to have long discussions with me. I wanted a companion, a friend—and if I found these things in a man, I was certain intimacy would develop from that.

Even though Kody was quite young, he was the most emotionally intelligent man I knew. He was leap years ahead of all the other guys his age. He was the best guy I knew in the polygamous lifestyle I’d become infatuated with. So why wouldn’t I want to marry the best guy out there?

After Janelle’s experiment with the teepee, she visited regularly. Meri and I were living in Montana and Janelle sometimes stayed over at our place. One evening, after the three of us had spent the day together, just as we were getting ready for bed, Janelle made an unusual request. “Meri,” she said, “can I have a moment alone with Kody so that I can talk to him about something important?”

I suspected what was coming, but Janelle was going about it strangely. She was still in her cowboys and Indians phase—that night she was dressed like a cowgirl in jeans and a khaki corduroy shirt, her hair pulled into a high ponytail.