“SISTER WIVES” for every guy…. yeah! …. NOT! Last
night I was again forced (it’s a long story) to watch another episode of “Sister
Wives” and the ongoing dysfunctional relationships these women and 19(?)
children endure. There is so much wrong
with the entire concept on so many levels that there is almost nowhere to
begin. What “we” are watching (if you
are a regular) is four women and one guy who thought, at the beginning, that this
was the best way to live, honor their faith, and make families, big families,
to secure their position in heaven. Then
as each new season rolls along we see this guy with a harem looking so unhappy
that only the unhappiness of each wife makes it impossible to feel sorry for
him.
Relationships are hard when there is only two of you. Imagine sharing your husband with three or
four, or more women that you cannot get along with. Imagine being the man that has to keep
multiple women happy, not only with himself but with each other.
At the beginning of every episode the intro has Kody happily
announcing that he believes “love should be multiplied and not divided”. This is where he goes wrong right out of the
gate. One divided by four is ¼. His wives each get his love, in increments of
less than 1. They each get ¼. He on the
other hand gets the “love” of 4 women.
So for Kody this “may” work as he has 4 times as many women to work
with. “Love” for HIM is multiplied. “Love” for each of his wives is DIVIDED to a
fraction less than 1. Go Kody!
I have caught several episodes where the Browns have met
with other non-fundamentalist Mormon couples as well as families totally unfamiliar
with the pluralist marriage model. In those episodes the guests usually ask
Kody to explain his reasoning, and to help them understand how he can make this
arrangement work, and why he thinks he should make it work this way. However, there is one question I have never heard put to
Kody or any of his wives. I want to know
how he thinks society would survive IF EVERYONE lived plural marriage?
The really BIG issue I have with this concept of plural
marriage is that no one has thought this through to the final result. For IF you actually think about it, no
society can survive plural marriage in this form. For the sake of “Sister Wives” the TV show
they are a very small closed group. One
guy has found 4 women who were seeking to be a sister wife and live in this
lifestyle (if we can call it that).
However, if everyone subscribed to this belief the end would come soon
enough.
As far as I can tell, all over the world, in the natural order
of things, male and female birth ratios are more or less equal. Soooo….. roughly one woman for every man. Women can only get pregnant so many times,
whether by the same man or multiple men.
However, in a closed community as the practice of plural marriage grows the
women will be married off to a select few men and the remaining men will be
forced to remain single or go outside the community, and therefore outside “the
faith” to find wives. As the plural
marriage community grows even the option to go outside of the community becomes
more difficult. What does Kody think
will happen to HIS sons when the “unmarried”, disenfranchised men grow in
number? If we think young men in their
prime will set aside their sexual urges and just concentrate on building the
community and supporting “the elite” with multiple wives they are just being
silly. This “lifestyle” will end
badly. The only possible way this could
have social value is in cases where a war, or other mega disaster were to drastically
reduce the number of men to women ratio.
But…. even then the problems that come with this lifestyle will always
be present.
I think the real story of Kody and his sister wives will be
told once his TV show and the pay cheques come to the inevitable end that they
must. There will be no cameras there to
document the reality of the outcome that is built into the end of this story.
