Sister Wives

by Brown, Kody;Brown, Meri

  The biggest mistake we made when we married Janelle was us all moving into a house together and not giving Janelle and me the space we needed to develop and nurture our own relationships with Kody. Having us all in the same house brought Janelle face-to-face on a daily basis with the romantic relationship Kody and I had. We were too naive to hide our affection for each other from Janelle, and I’m afraid to say that she was confronted by it regularly, which I’m sure was both painful and awkward. At times, Kody and I would hold hands or hug each other in front of Janelle, leaving her in what was probably a very uncomfortable situation.

  Although Janelle is by no means as physically affectionate a person as I am, it was not healthy or fair for her to see the affection I shared with Kody. I’m sure this led to hard feelings toward me. Living together from the start ultimately shortchanged the three relationships we were trying to develop and maintain.

  Another reason that Kody and Janelle had difficulties laying the foundation for their marriage during that first year was that they were essentially living under a veil of secrecy. Kody was simply unable to acknowledge Janelle as his wife outside of our church community.

  We were very quiet and private when it came to our family life, which I’m sure didn’t help Janelle feel secure in her position in the family. When we went out together somewhere other than church associations, we always introduced Janelle as Kody’s sister. I remember on more than one occasion that Kody, Janelle, and I had a conversation about how to explain who Janelle was. Kody and I already lived and worked in the small community in Wyoming when Janelle joined the family, so it was Janelle whom we felt we needed to explain. Looking back, I realize it wasn’t fair to Kody and Janelle’s relationship to refer to her as his sister. Since Janelle’s mom was married to Kody’s dad, it seemed to be a reasonable explanation, and it always seemed as if Janelle was okay with this reference. I always felt a bit uncomfortable referring to her this way, but she and Kody seemed to be okay with it, so I played along. I believe it did a major disservice to Kody and Janelle’s marriage.

  After Kody married Janelle, I went through a sort of separation anxiety. I missed the privacy of our old situation—the luxury of making a romantic dinner for just Kody and myself whenever I wanted, or renting a good movie and curling up on the couch together. These are things you simply can’t do when another wife enters the picture and is living in the same house. It can be perceived as preferential treatment and that is just not okay in a plural marriage. This anxiety put a strain on Kody’s and my relationship and made me at times act unfairly to both him and Janelle.

  I have to admit that I didn’t always handle the stress of the new situation as I should have. I didn’t know how to hold back or temper my opinions. I am a very direct person, and when I have a strong opinion about something, I can be a little bit harsh. Since I see things in black and white, I have a bad habit of phrasing things in a way that can come across as aggressive. Janelle, on the other hand, is quite nonconfrontational and seems to have a hard time being honest with herself, or with others, about her feelings. I’d tell Janelle that “this is how it needs to be,” and didn’t realize I was offering her no space to voice her own concerns. I didn’t intend to be mean, I wasn’t even aware that I was coming across that way. I was being honest with my thoughts and feelings and just assumed she would do the same.

  I remember having conversations with her many times concerning everything—from how the house should be decorated to how the finances should be handled. I would tell her how I thought the situation should be taken care of, and because I had that type of personality, I just assumed she would voice her opinion as well. When I would find out later, through Kody, that there was an issue or disagreement, I was so upset that she didn’t tell me her thoughts or opinions while we were having the discussion. I felt as if she was lying to me, and I felt betrayed by this. I thought we were in this marriage together to have a close, if not completely open, relationship, and didn’t understand why she wouldn’t communicate honestly with me, when that’s what I was trying to do with her. I hadn’t yet learned how to be softer in the delivery of my words and not so overbearing.

  Naturally, the tentative friendship I had with Janelle deteriorated even more in the months following her marriage to Kody. I had hoped that with her in the family, we would be able to work on improving our relationship. I wanted, and almost expected, to have a special sister wife bond with Janelle. I realized early on, however, that wouldn’t be the case. Janelle seemed very reserved toward me, as far as becoming close friends. I felt that I had to accept that we wouldn’t have the close sister wife relationship that I had always hoped for. To make things worse, Kody had taken a job setting up new accounts for Schwan’s Frozen Foods, which required him to be on the road for long stretches of time. This left Janelle and me at home with our growing list of complaints against each other. Since Kody was new to the principle and the practice of plural marriage, he had no idea how to negotiate between the two of us. I know he was aware of the tension between us, and did his best to deal with it, but we all were going to have to sort out our new roles, and learn how to live together and love one another.

  During the early years of our plural family, there were many emotions rolling around among all of us—mostly, I feel safe to say, between Janelle and me. In living plural marriage, you definitely have to go through a huge learning curve. Janelle and I had a lot of rough times in those early years. We both did and said things to each other that I’m sure we would like to forget. There is a lot of past history, things that I won’t talk about in specifics in public out of my respect for Janelle, and my desire to protect her. Even now, we still struggle with the residue of those early years. I truly hope that Janelle and I can work through some of those haunting issues of the past, so they will stop recurring in our lives. Someday, when we’re both ready, I hope it will happen.

  While Janelle, through no fault of her own, brought a level of tension to the house, she also brought her own strengths to the marriage. Kody was busy with his job at Schwan’s while I was engaged in my own job hunt. Janelle urged me to apply for the job as an engraver at a trophy company, a job I would hold for ten years. Eventually, moments like that would help us appreciate what our relationship could be.

  The most difficult emotional battle I would face during the first year after Janelle joined our family was when she got pregnant. Kody and I had been married for three years and, naturally, we’d been trying to conceive. But we’d had no success. So when Janelle conceived before I did, I was pretty devastated, even though deep down, I had expected it.

  I could immediately see how thrilled Kody was by Janelle’s news. While I tried to be as happy as possible about the first child coming into the Brown family, I felt betrayed by my own body. It had let me down and made me feel like both a disappointment and a failure. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, so I turned inward and started to withdraw from Kody and Janelle.

  At the time of Janelle’s pregnancy with her first child, Logan, Kody decided to pursue a courtship with Christine. We had all become friends soon after Kody and I got married. Somehow, in the back of my mind, this courtship had always seemed inevitable.

  Kody’s courtship with Christine was much more difficult for me than his with Janelle had been. I never felt that Janelle threatened the overall happiness Kody and I shared. Kody and Janelle were friends, very close friends. I knew Kody loved Janelle, but it was in a totally different way than he loved me. Around her, he never behaved in the silly, romantic way he did with me. I found this reassuring. When Janelle came into our family, the day-to-day nature of my marriage with Kody changed, but our relationship stayed the same. Despite having added a second wife to our lives, I never felt that Kody loved me any less than the day we were married.

  With Christine, however, things were different. Christine was cute and energetic. She was young and girly, and quite flirtatious. I had always suspected that Kody was more than a little smitten with he
r—and when they began to court, I could immediately sense that Kody was not just smitten but in love. The two of them glowed around each other. They had fun with each other and loved to goof off together. Where Kody and Janelle’s courtship had been less outwardly romantic, this new relationship was grounded in an undeniable emotional attraction.

  When Kody proposed to Christine, I suddenly felt as if I were less important to him than I had been before. I felt threatened by their relationship and the friendship they’d built over the first three years of my marriage to Kody. Although she was our mutual friend, I always knew that Kody was somewhat taken with Christine. Kody seemed so much more engaged with Christine than he had been with Janelle. I think that he had learned from the experience of bringing Janelle into the family how he needed to behave with Christine—how much more expressive and responsive he had to be to her needs and wants. He had gained knowledge from his relationship with Janelle and seemed much wiser when it came to courting Christine. He also seemed more devoted to the cause—at least that’s how it appeared to me. It cemented my feelings of inadequacy in our relationship when Kody called me only once while he and Christine were away on their honeymoon.

  When Christine came into our family, she chose to live in a different house rather than squeeze into the same house that Janelle and I shared. She wanted her own experience with Kody before joining the “family” experience, so she moved into a small cottage nearby. Even though this meant Kody would be spending several nights a week out of our house, it seemed like a healthier and more reasonable choice for everyone.

  Although I had a hard time with Kody and Christine’s courtship, I was surprised by how easily I became friends with Christine. Of course, this didn’t happen overnight, but her fun and outgoing personality livened up the mood in our household. Eventually, Christine and I discovered that we shared the same predilection for silliness and we almost always managed to embarrass Janelle with our antics.

  Although Christine and I had a much easier relationship than I had with Janelle, I couldn’t help my disappointment when she, too, became pregnant. Nearly five years into my marriage with Kody, I was beginning to worry that I’d never have a baby.

  When Christine was four months pregnant with her first child, Kody started urging me to take a pregnancy test. My period was a little late, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for me. Still, he wouldn’t let the subject drop. Eventually, I agreed and took the test. I absolutely could not believe it when the little stripe on the stick told me I was pregnant. I was certain the test had made a mistake. But it hadn’t. I could barely contain my joy!

  The next morning, Janelle and I drove to Christine’s house to pick up her and Kody for church. I was struggling to hide my excitement. I couldn’t wait to share my news with Kody, but I had to. I wanted to tell him about our baby privately, not blurt it out in front of everyone in the car.

  Sometime in the middle of church, Kody remembered the pregnancy test. He got my attention and shot a knowing glance down at my stomach. At first I tried to ignore him. But he kept looking at my belly. Finally, I just nodded. The most enormous smile I’d ever seen burst onto Kody’s face, and his eyes welled up with tears of joy.

  Kody and I were beside ourselves with happiness. The very thing we’d been hoping for since we got married had finally happened. We were going to have our first child.

  The only thing that tempered my joy a little was knowing that Christine was going to have a hard time with my pregnancy. She was new in the family and four months pregnant with her first child, and now here I was pregnant after a five-year struggle. I was carrying a miracle baby. I was afraid that a lot of the focus would shift from her to me. While I didn’t blame her for being slightly resentful that I stole her thunder, I tried not to dwell on it. I was so excited and happy that I’d finally gotten what I’d always wanted.

  After Mariah was born, I was certain that I was going to have more children. My entire life I’d always wanted eight kids. In fact, when Kody and I started dating, this was something we talked about on a regular basis. But once I had Mariah, my body didn’t want to give me any more children. Kody and I tried everything to help me conceive, from medical doctors to holistic healers, but nothing worked. The most difficult thing for me was knowing that the fertility problem lay with me, not with Kody. Since Janelle and Christine got pregnant so often and so easily, it was clear that Kody had no problem fathering children. I struggled to come to terms with the fact that I was somehow defective.

  Kody never once made me feel bad for the fact that I wasn’t able to get pregnant again. Yet I sometimes couldn’t help but feel that my sister wives used their pregnancies to validate their marriages to Kody in a way I couldn’t. I know they never intentionally flaunted their fertility, but because I struggled so much with my infertility issues, I often wondered what place I had in the family.

  When Mariah was twelve years old, I’d pretty much given up all hope of having another child. Then, completely out of the blue, I got pregnant again. My joy, however, was short-lived, and I lost the baby after only a couple of months. I was devastated. My body simply didn’t want to have any more children. I was blessed with one and I would have to be content with that. There would be no more babies in my future.

  During the twelve years between Mariah’s birth and my second unsuccessful pregnancy, our family went through a lot of growing pains. I know that Janelle struggled to find her path in our midst and was always on the lookout for a way to assert her own identity in such a large family with three wives and twelve children. We had to learn to work together and to make decisions in a way that put our family first.

  The root of many of our problems stemmed from two issues—our living situation and Kody’s job. Kody was often employed in positions that required him to travel a lot, which would essentially leave the three wives behind, functioning as single mothers. During a period when he was on the road a lot, Janelle moved into her own house. Although she and I had been struggling under one roof for nearly ten years, the separation of our children was difficult.

  For the most part, we hid our lifestyle from the public. Yet there were people who were aware that we were a polygamous family. Some of these people would refer to “Kody and his families.” This always rubbed me the wrong way. Despite our differences, we were one big family who happened to be divided into three different houses. Our separation was causing an identity crisis. How can you be one unit if you are living apart? How can Kody be the best dad possible if he isn’t present for all of his children all of the time?

  During this time, Janelle and I both had jobs while Christine took care of the majority of day care and homeschooling. Eventually, Kody found a job in Utah that didn’t require any travel. This meant that he would be present in our children’s lives on a much more regular basis.

  While this was a major and important development in our lives, what really changed our situation and brought us together as a family was when we found a house in which our entire family could live together under one roof. The house had formerly belonged to a polygamous family. It was a large home, divided into three separate yet attached apartments—one for each wife. This was the perfect solution to many of our struggles. It joined us into one, unshakable family. The big house allowed us to forge and cement our identity as a family.

  This house allowed Kody to be home with his kids every night. He would be able to see all his children equally. In other words, even if Kody was to be at my house on a particular night, he would still be able to see Janelle’s and Christine’s kids—tuck them in and do all the fatherly things that would have been impossible for him if we’d still been living in separate houses.

  Around this time, I really started coming to terms with the fact that there were no more biological kids in my future. However, now that we were living in one house, I was able to come to a deeper appreciation of the blessings that plural marriage has provided me. While I cannot have any more children of my own, I have been able, through
my sister wives, to give Mariah many brothers and sisters. She has siblings her age—peers with whom she can share all the experiences of growing up—as well as siblings who are younger and look up to her. If I hadn’t chosen polygamy—if I hadn’t been called to it and listened to that call—I would never have achieved the large family I’d always dreamed of having. Plural marriage has blessed me with what my body denied me.

  I have a wonderful relationship with all the kids in our family. Naturally, with so many children, I’m closer to some than to others. It’s hard to describe my relationship to all the children who are not biologically mine. I have been an essential part of their upbringing, in the same way that Janelle and Christine have been a part of Mariah’s. I may not be their biological mother, but I am a mother to them.

  Since I have more time on my hands and since my living area is always quite a bit more peaceful than the others, I’m the mom the kids come to when they want a little quiet time away from their siblings. They call it “Meri Time.” It’s a wonderful feeling knowing there is a huge pack of children who love me and want to hang out and have fun with me.

  When we moved into the big house in Utah, the one featured on the first season of Sister Wives, it was time to start working through a lot of my difficulties with Janelle. We are both incredibly devoted to our family and our faith, and despite our differences, we are committed to creating the best, safest, and warmest environment for our kids.

  Often, people ask me if I’d be friends with my sister wives if they weren’t married to my husband. This is a difficult question, but goes a long way to understanding the nature of sister wives. Janelle and I are very different people; we see the world in opposite ways and handle situations in entirely different manners. I’m sure if we weren’t married to Kody, our friendship wouldn’t have gone past basic cordiality. But since we share a husband, a lot of our differences are brought out into the open and confrontation is impossible to avoid.