Before you pack up and move to UTAH, consider these things which I've learned from the two books.
To be in an Independent Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamous Marriage:
1) You must be a woman who wants to have as many children as God allows, meaning you probably won't be using contraception and you could mother more than ten children and will be sharing those children with your SISTER WIVES. You may have those children at home with a midwife. If you have two sister-wives you will probably sleep with your husband every three days. If you have six sister-wives, you will probably sleep with him once a week. These men seem up to it. Having sister-wives is not keeping the population down. The men are spreading their gene pool.
2) So you really must want and enjoy and be able to cope with lots and lots of children. You must be a natural nurturer and a teacher, maybe even home schooling. You must have or develop a lot of patience and understanding.
3) You don't get your way much. Expect a life of self sacrifice. You'll be compromising a lot. You'll be working on your jealousy and love for you wife-sisters, but there won't be any sex with anyone but your shared husband, and one at a time. You'll be subject not only to your shared husband but you sister-wives. Some decisions will be made for you or are subject to not only family group decisions but reviews and permissions by committees, including the committees of church authorities.
4) Men such as husbands and fathers, as well as men church authorities, will decide if you are allowed to marry or allowed to leave (divorce) a husband. You will be judged by their values. There is no feminist movement here.
5) Financially, you may still have to work outside the home for pay to help support the family, but you may not be able to build a career which depends on staying put or transferring around the country. If you husband moves the family, you go with. You will probably have a work history/resume that is choppy.
6) Although you will have the support of your sister-wives when it comes to child care and finances, you will have near no societal support for your alternative arrangements and neither will your children outside your own church/community. Even some Latter Day Saint children will tease and discriminate in their friendships with your children. You may have to live a secret or double life, live in rural areas far from main stream culture, or be subject to investigation by governmental authorities.
7) You must be religious in a Fundamentalist Mormon (not Latter Day Saints) way. Without practicing the religion there is no point and it's only religion that makes this lifestyle respectable to a small percentage of the Western World.
The books are BECOMING SISTER WIVES The Story of an Unconventional Marriage by Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown C 2012 Kody Brown Entertainment LLC, published by Gallery Books and LOVE THREE TIMES Our Story of a Polygamous Marriage by Joe, Alina, Vicki, and Valerie Darger with Brooke Adams and is C 2011 by all those authors. The publisher is HarperOne.
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