When you think of polygamy, you think of a cult in Utah where there’s one man with many wives. There are many negative views of polygamy that have followed that lifestyle through the years. Then, in 2010, a television show called ‘Sister Wives’ came out to show polygamy in a different light. The show brought us the Mormon Brown family which consisted of Cody, the head of the family, and his four wives and eighteen children. The relationship the wives have is called sister wives. They share not only the man, but also share in the everyday running of their house. It showed that polygamy could work with a lot of compromising and hard work. The show is in its fourteenth season and during that time, some of the children now have children, and Cody is still legally married to one wife and spiritually married to the other three. I do want to say that the Browns are a religious family in their practice of polygamy. Sister Wives showed us an alternative to traditional marriage, and for it to be still on says something about views of that style of living.
In 2018, television gave us our next look at polygamy with ‘Seeking Sister Wives’. ‘Seeking Sister wives’ is a show of married couples looking for another female to bring into their family. The couples are all different in what number wife the new female would be. This season, there are two black couples: the Snowdens (returning for their third season) and the Clarks. I point them out because when you think of polygamy, you don’t think of black couples. The other couples this season are the Winders (returning from previous season), Merrifields and the Jones family. The show lets us in on how the couples go about finding a female to add to their family. The couples each have their own way of finding a sister wife.
While some of the couples like the Winders are Mormon, some are not practicing any type of religion that practices polygamy. Their polygamy seems more like an agreement between husband and wife that bringing in an additional female is for the benefit of the family. I’ve watched ‘Seeking Sister Wives’, and for the couples that have no religious affiliation to polygamy, it sometimes seems that it borders on just cheating. There is an agreement between the husband and wife to bring in someone else to their marriage; however, when you watch the show, it’s a subtle manipulation the man is using to cheat. The way it’s presented by the husbands to their wives makes it seem as though it would benefit them more than him. How many wives wouldn’t want to have full-time help with running their homes, especially if she works? How many women would mind another woman sleeping with their husband in the next bedroom? I don’t think too many women would go along with that without some sort or coercion. While television makes ‘Seeking Sister Wives’ look like a good way to grow a family and a way to spread love, is it really realistic? When you cheat, there is another person coming into the relationship secretively, and what ‘Seeking Sister Wives’ shows is that instead of having a secret third person, you can put it out in the open. When you get into this type of relationship, it doesn’t have to stop with one extra wife for the man, but it can go on and on in the number of additions to the family. The openness of the relationship in the name of polygamy will only work if the woman agrees to it, but what happens if she doesn’t agree? Would the man leave her? Is agreeing the only way they feel they can keep their marriage intact? These shows present another way to have a relationship, and that’s fine; however, women need to think about the emotional toll it will take on them. Women have to really think about what they want, not just making their husband happy. My question is, how long before there’s a ‘Seeking Brother Husband’? Will men go along with bringing another man into their relationship? A cheating story is always presented in a way to make it seem like there’s a reasonable explanation. Remember everything that sounds good isn’t good.
Retirement and Dogs 