Sister Wives

by Brown, Kody;Brown, Meri

  I know I should be stronger and not allow the opinions of our viewers to bother me. But so much of my marriage is tied up in the show, it’s impossible not to be aware of the feedback and the audience reactions. I’ve had to be very open with Tim, our producer, and tell him that in certain areas he has to tread lightly so as not to give America’s women another reason to hate me. If the audience dislikes me, then we’ve failed in our mission to convey the joys and the stability of our lifestyle. We want to dwell on the positives, not only on dramatic things that sully the picture, if only temporarily. Any woman living a plural life will tell you the struggles that we have shared about a new wife coming into a family are very normal and over time things get better.

  It’s ironic that the show itself was the catalyst for many of the troubles and struggles that we dealt with on camera. If not for the show, Kody and I would have married quickly and quietly with little fanfare.

  The wedding became a storm cloud that hovered over us during the “couch sessions.” Things that should have remained personal and private to Kody and me—things that could have been beautiful and special—were fodder for analysis. I had to deal with the world’s opinion about the fact that Kody picked my dress. I had to deal with the world’s thoughts about him kissing me during our engagement. Everybody on the couch—and in the audience—felt the need to participate in what seemed to be an endless commentary and judgment on my wedding, the reception, and the honeymoon. For me, at least, it cheapened and stripped away the beauty of something special. I felt that because of the show, nothing had been left for me. Huge portions of my life were turned into an open book available to public comment.

  While the show certainly caused tensions to rise and tempers to flare concerning my marriage to Kody, it definitely paved the way for Kody and me to be open about our relationship. I don’t know any plural wives who have had the freedom to publicly court and date and enjoy their husband’s company in the same way that I have. This for me is one of the show’s greatest blessings. The other blessing, of course, is creating a more tolerant world for our children.

  Not long after the first season aired, Kody and I were at a restaurant near our house. It was obvious that we were on a romantic date—we were holding hands and being our usual affectionate selves. The waitress kept giving us the evil eye. I didn’t understand her behavior. What had we done to upset her? Then Kody realized what was wrong. He’d been to the same restaurant with Meri a week earlier and been served by the same waitress. She obviously thought he was stepping out on his wife.

  He wanted to let the misunderstanding slide. But I decided to speak up. “Excuse me,” I said to the waitress. “I know that you think something strange is going on here. I wanted to clarify the situation. I am this man’s wife. The woman you saw with him last week is also his wife. We are a plural family.”

  Her eyes widened, first in shock, then in realization. “Oh,” she said, “you’re that family from TV!” Immediately her demeanor changed from frosty to friendly.

  It felt immensely liberating to be completely honest about our marriage. While I had my reservations about the show when Kody first mentioned it, I now know that it has been a remarkable step forward for our relationship.

  More and more people recognize us these days, not just in our hometown, but all over the country. While I’m not comfortable with being called a “celebrity,” I do love the outpouring of support we receive. I love it when I see that someone identifies with our family and is able to see that we all have something in common. Still, it’s disconcerting when a person I’ve never met walks up to me on the street and starts talking as if she knows me, when she’s only seen me on TV. Sometimes I want to say, “Don’t judge me on the show alone.” But I never say this, because people identify with our struggle and our decision to open our lives to the world. I don’t want to alienate anyone.

  Growing up polygamous has made me aware of all other repressed people in the world who are treated as second-class citizens on account of their beliefs, their choices, or their races and ethnicities. Living the way I do and being treated as I have been has made me extremely tolerant and open-minded. We all have the right to choose our partners in this life. Every adult should be able to choose whom to love and practice the faith of his or her choice. I hope that our story goes a long way toward making this possible in our community and for others who are persecuted. I feel confident that I will be able to check “change the world” off of my life list.

  One of the other things on that list that I have been able to check off is “meet Oprah.” Oprah has always been one of my heroes, a person I respect in all ways. When I put this goal on my list, I never in my wildest dreams imagined it would come true. So I was astonished when our publicist booked us on Oprah to promote the show.

  Before we went to Chicago for the taping, I rehearsed in my mind what I would say to Oprah. When things were at their worst in my life—during the end of my first marriage and divorce—I would watch Oprah every afternoon with tears running down my face. “This woman is so wonderful,” I’d say aloud, even if there was no one in the room. I wanted to tell her this. I wanted to let her know how much she had meant to me during my hard times. She was the bright spot in my day. Oprah was my favorite escape.

  When we arrived at the set for the Oprah show, it looked nothing like it did on TV—pristine and graceful, awash in soft colors and low lights. Instead it was rickety. The furniture looked temporary. It was cold. It felt more like a warehouse than a studio. Onstage, with my microphone on, I felt distant from the audience and the whole Oprah experience.

  When you watch Oprah on TV, it is a magical experience. The environment is warm and friendly. It’s a place for dreams and aspirations. But sitting there in that cold soundstage, I realized that Oprah is just a television show. Like all other television programs, it creates fantasies for the at-home viewers. It’s part make-believe. It invites them into a world that doesn’t entirely exist. I realized that the magic I had watched on TV wasn’t real.

  It was interesting to watch Oprah deal with her team of producers and camerapeople. We watched her take care of mundane details that go into producing her show every day. Without the high gloss of the television camera, Oprah could have been any other businesswoman.

  When the show assistants sat me down beside her, I took my chance. I leaned over to her and told her she was wonderful and an inspiration to me. She was so humble and sweet. I realized then that Oprah was just a woman like me. She probably dealt with the same kind of scrutiny and pressure the camera and an audience can put on you as I did, just in a bigger way. I realized that I had made her into some sort of demi-god when she probably had just been doing what she felt like God had called her to do. It really grounded me and made me realize that, TV or not, we are all just people trying to get through the day.

  Being on Sister Wives has taught me so much about myself and others. I have realized that while Sister Wives tells our story, the real magic is in our own home. No matter how many televised interviews I do, how many famous people I meet, how many seasons our own show runs, there is one constant in my life. What matters to me when the dust settles and the lights are turned off is what mattered before all of this started: my family, my faith, my love, and my responsibility to myself and others.

  EPILOGUE

  Kody

  When we decided to tell our story, I figured that the benefits would outweigh the risks. I wanted to make the world a better place, not just for my family but for polygamists worldwide. I wanted to show the public how wonderfully stable, loving, and caring my family is. I thought we might pave the way for a safer and more tolerant future for our community.

  Nevertheless, it wasn’t a decision I made without careful consideration, prayer, and consultation with all my wives. I wanted to proceed with caution. I had thought that in deciding to do a reality show, I would help to bring other plural families out into the open so they could benefit from society as all other citizens do. While I f
eel terrible if Sister Wives has driven any fundamentalist Mormons back into hiding, I do feel, for my family at least, that the benefits far outweigh the costs. The fact that my family can live openly is one of the greatest miracles I have witnessed in my lifetime, a miracle that I had never even dreamed was possible until recently. I love that all my wives are accepted as my spouses. This has given us a great boost of confidence as well as made us stronger as a family.

  Our move to Las Vegas changed my life irrevocably. I felt an overwhelming peace and tranquillity with our arrival. I felt as if we had moved to a world of opportunity. To put it simply, I felt safe. But although I felt a new spiritual peace, we had sacrificed so much from our lives in Utah—the transition was for the best, but it was still difficult. Janelle and I had left thriving careers. We had all moved away from the fellowship of our church and our dearest friends. We left behind the most wonderful home our family had ever lived in, and one of the safest communities in the country. Our children had done the same, without sharing their parents’ understanding about why. I was shell-shocked from the stress of our lives during the sixty days before the move. During the move, I felt deeply bitter about the whole experience of becoming a public polygamist. Frankly, my own tolerance and open-mindedness meant that I was naive about how living publicly would effect us as a family.

  Why did we leave? I am a husband and a father first, and as a parent, my first responsibility is to keep the family safe. Our simple world in the sleepy town of Lehi, Utah, became very volatile in the fall of 2010 due to the investigation and the stresses of our family becoming public polygamists. We no longer felt that our family was safe. By the beginning of December, all five parents agreed that our family would be better off in Las Vegas. By Christmastime, we had told the older children.

  They were very upset by the news. At first, Mariah was so opposed to leaving her home and her friends that she flat out refused to move. Finally, just three days before our move, we told the younger children. Some were excited, some were shattered. Paedon stayed in his bed for two days. It wasn’t pretty, but we figured the collateral damage of our children’s emotions was a small thing compared to some of the trouble and attitudes we were experiencing as a family in Utah. Our children did not agree that moving was the right thing to do. They did understand, however, that the family needed to do whatever was necessary to stay together. I don’t believe they fully understood the need to move away until we had been in Vegas for several months.

  We rented a temporary vacation home in Las Vegas for thirty days in order to stage an aggressive search for new homes from this shared location. We acquired the rental and made the agreement only days before we left Lehi. We were literally living day to day. Life in the vacation home was a bit of a struggle. Everybody had become used to his or her own space and autonomy in Lehi. Now I had four wives sharing one kitchen and only four bedrooms. There were no specific rooms for the children. So we placed older girls in the family room, older boys in the living room, and the younger children in the bedrooms with their own mothers. Our first priority was getting the kids in school. We felt right about a particular high school, so we needed first to find a home in that specific school area. The school district does not allow transient enrollment into the school, so we needed to get a permanent address from which to enroll the children. We decided for the sake of Robyn’s children, who weren’t as used to living in such a big family, and who had already moved so often in the previous two years, that we should find her a home first. We moved her just in time for the teens to start high school in January.

  Back in Lehi, I had coined our move “the Vegas Vacation” in order to keep our attitudes positive about the whole move experience. We had no idea how much work was cut out for us. We moved four complete households in a matter of four calendar weeks. That way we were out of the vacation home as contracted and living in the school area we wanted. This move was exhausting. I felt as if we were constantly working to finish the production of the TV show for the season, while documenting the whole move experience for the following season. We were working our tails off and still had the pressure to get jobs and a real life going again.

  In spite of the wonderful sunshine and beautiful sunsets in Las Vegas, everybody was a bit off. The elementary school children—Dayton, Gabriel, Gwendlyn, Aurora, Ysabel, Breanna, and Savanah—were adjusting very well to school. However, the tight integration of our family culture seemed to be eroding in significant ways. Janelle and Christine had been running their households almost as if they were a single unit, and now they lived a half mile apart. Gabriel and Gwendlyn, who have birthdays four days apart and have grown up almost as twins, are no longer living in connected homes. The structure and help with school that Christine had given Janelle’s children was no longer available. Our high school kids were welcomed warmly by their peers, but their hearts were still connected to Utah. Now our family was separated. One friend of ours suggested that we were experiencing something very similar to a divorce. We no longer lived together, and the adjustment was damaging our well-being.

  As time went by while living in Las Vegas, other problems arose. Hunter, for whatever reason, maybe out of love and loyalty to his football team in Lehi (state runners-up two years in row!) refused to play football. He actually refused even to make friends. He seemed to sink deeper and deeper into depression as the summer came closer. Nobody knew what to do for him. His counselor at school told us not to worry until it had persisted for six months. At least his grades remained good.

  All these things shook our family to the foundation. I had only married Robyn a year ago, and we were still getting used to being a family. Now we had to change everything again, and work together as adults on more than just our marriages and managing family matters. The move had all of us reevaluating our relationships and our individual identities. We had to clean house, emotionally speaking. We needed to detox our relationships and some of our deepest issues. The family needed to get well, both the children and the parents.

  When I reflect on the personal growth and development of our family over the years, I am pleased and overwhelmed. Getting to where we are now from where we had been has been a long process. I reflect back on my life and see how much we have grown from those immature places of years gone by and wonder, Will I be as pleased with our emotional growth over the next ten years? Will I look back at this past year and think, boy, was I immature? During the sixteen years before Robyn came into the family, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and I had a lot of growing to do. In the last five years, before Robyn entered the family, we really had found a very comfortable groove. We were stable and generally happy. The children were well adjusted and very happy. Something was missing though. Our individual marriages and the sister wife relationships were far from ideal.

  In years past, when Meri, Janelle, Christine, and I used to have family meetings about money concerns, kids’ problems at school, or any of the other things married couples deal with, it was hard not to become defensive, and I would often feel antagonistic. I tried to understand all the charged emotions coming at me from three different directions. My patience would grow short and we would not communicate as well as an enlightened family should. This was all in our most recent years. We were even worse back when we were all new at it and the oldest children were toddlers. I knew that in our acceptance of the principle of plural marriage, we were being challenged to be kinder, more patient, and more loving in our mundane day-to-day life. We didn’t always rise to the occasion. We needed improvement in our relationships, and we didn’t even know it.

  Robyn and I had been courting for about two months when we got engaged. She had been received by Meri, Janelle, and Christine with open hearts and open arms. Within a month of our engagement, however, everybody started to struggle with the emotional adjustments of the courtship. Robyn quickly realized that we had been avoiding many of our problems. In my pride, I had rejected the idea of any form of marriage counseling. We did not know how to validate each othe
r in our feelings. We were hiding our problems in career pursuits and other outward efforts. In our marriages, and the sister wife relationships, we had started to settle for less than our best. We became complacent with mediocre lives, relationships, and marriages. There was nothing wrong with that if we didn’t mind living a mundane life. However, plural marriage is only lived well when those involved seek to strengthen and better their relationships. Some of us had become aggressive, some of us had buried our feelings, and we weren’t emotionally healthy enough to have another wife come into the family. I put off the wedding until the following spring because we didn’t have the financial means to support Robyn and her family—but we actually needed that time to heal our relationships so that Robyn could enter a family that was ready for another wife.

  Families living plural marriage have to expect emotional and spiritual growth. Our move to Nevada brought on new problems we never expected. We started working together to find and build businesses. Many married people love each other very much, but enjoy time apart while they immerse themselves in a career. Most people will tell you that it is a struggle to work in business with their spouse. Many tell me they could never work in business with their husband or wife. Now I am working every day, and in every way, with all four of my wives. This experience has caused us some significant new challenges. My wives are all very independent, free-thinking women. They each have a mind of their own, and frequently like to give me a piece of it. Getting consensus is somewhat like pulling teeth. Some days when we first moved to the four homes, I wanted to just walk away. I actually got tired of working with them all the time. There were many days when I thought we wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I just kept telling myself that it was necessary. If I want to be with them for all of this life and beyond, I had sure better be able to work with them in a business.