DO MULTIPLE WIVES COMPETE TO BE THE MOST LOVED? SISTER WIVES UPDATE - MISSY ON SECRETS VERSUS OPEN RELATIONSHIPS

I devoted a month to the Open Polygamy that is part of the Fundamentalist Mormon lifestyle. The modern Latter Day Saints no longer support the polygamy of the founders of their church. Many of the women who accept being co-wives have grown up in families in which their own mother was a "sister wife." When this lifestyle became the subject of reality television series, the world got a glimpse into the possibilities.  Was it better when it came to child care? Could any of the women expect to ever have the man to herself? What about sexuality?

Recently it came to light that the Sister Wives reality TV show's star Christine, who was the third wife of Cody Brown, left him and the arrangement after 25 years of it.  This Daily Mail article is one of a few that came out in that publication recently about the situation.

DAILY MAIL - SISTER WIVES- CHRISTINE LEFT - ROBYN 4th WIFE PREVAILS by Tracy Wright and Christine Rendon

The reason I focused on this example of an alternative lifestyle for MISTRESS MANIFESTO here is that we are exploring the lives of Mistresses who are often known to the Wives.  When a wife knows her husband has an ongoing relationship with another person, she often accepts that this is so, preferring to keep her marriage.  Sometimes she prevails and sometimes she doesn't.

Sometimes a person is not naturally monogamous. I recently met a man who told me that when he first met the woman who has been consistent in his life for near 50 years, meeting her when he was 16, he told her he could not be faithful.  She said it would not bother her if he had other women.  He told me that he had sex with other women along with being alcoholic and that when he quit drinking over 30 years ago, he stopped sleeping with other women. For other men who were not addicted or promiscuous, men who married and never thought they would, cheating is something else - a desire to love more than one person perhaps - or perhaps to move on out of the marriage or - well, there is no one reason.

While some people have Open Marriages in which one or both partners at various times also have other relationships. others are scandalized by their partner being sexually involved with someone else and see it as the reason for divorce.

I say relationship because while the stereotype is that it's "just" an affair, or only about sex, many of the couples who are -one or both- are married to someone else legally - do have significant and ongoing involvement with each other.  So while the Sister-Wives - Open Polygamy lifestyle is one in which everything is in the Open, Mistresses are often thought of as secret clandestine relationships - taboo - just plain wrong.

DO YOU HAVE A PARTNER WHO HAS ANOTHER RELATIONSHIP?

SISTER WIVES REALITY SHOW UPDATE

 June 2021  Missy here!

The original video from my April 2014 post about the reality TV series and displays of jealousy went poof. I took down the post, hoping for a replacement. There are so many! The reality TV show was considered to be a shocker when it came out in 2010. Various decisions have been made - to stay or go - since it aired. An April 2021 show was supposed to be the end of the series, in its15th season. SISTER WIVES was the special topic here at Mistress Manifesto in 2014 and you can summon up those posts in the archives!

I posted about a form of polyamory that is unusual because of the great number of women who are openly man sharing within a form of commitment, not in ancient China or present day Africa, but here in the United States where serial monogamy is probably the most common way of approaching relationships. 

Today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints goes against polygamy though it was very much part of the foundation of their church, which was referred to as Mormonism.

However Fundamentalists with a huge number of wives, usually the first one being the only one legally married to the man, and a huge number of children, exist in Utah and some other enclaves where it seems there is lots of tolerance except when it turns out some of the wives were well under age. Sister wives have often had polygamy in their heritage. Their mom, for instance, might have also been a sister wife. These women are at ease with having many half siblings and their children having many half siblings as well. They are cooperative with sharing work, child-care, and often have to seek outside employment to help finance the set up.  To me the intention is to bring as many children (souls) into this earthly world. Some women who enter into this lifestyle even say they choose to be a second wife or a third or a fifth, sensing what is different about that from being a first wife.

A reality TV show that went for 15 seasons of changes, each person has their fans.  This article from The Sun does a good job of explaining who is who and what's happened.

SUN - SISTER WIVES CAST

i.e. Meri, the first wife, who has one child with Cody Brown, was married to him from 1990-2014 when they divorced so he could marry Robyn....

With Janelle  he has six children and two grand-children.

With Christine he has six children.

With Robyn he has two children plus three from a previous marriage that he adopted..

All of these relationships are out in the open.

PROFESSOR XIE ZOUSHI SUGGESTS POOR CHINESE MEN SHOULD SHARE A WIFE?! MISSY HAS SOME STRONG OPINIONS!

DAILY MAIL - CHINESE MEN SHOULD SHARE A WIFE?

(check out my previous posts on CHINESE MISTRESSES!  Use the search feature embedded in the side bar to search within this blog using the word China, or for September 2015  Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, or for January of 2011, Chinese concubines and Mistresses!)

EXCERPT:

A Chinese economics professor has made the daring suggestion that China's poorest bachelors should group together and share a wife.

 

Xie Zuoshi, a professor at Zhejiang University of Finance in eastern China, made the proposal in a post on his personal blog reported People's Daily Online.
 

The post was in response to the recently unveiled statistics that predicted China will have 30 million more men than women by 2020...

MISSY'S OPINION!

 



China's one child policy, which resulted in MILLIONS of female fetuses being aborted in favor of having just one SON, this incredible and horrible sexism in Chinese culture (which used to be played out by forms of infanticide such as throwing female babies down wells or smothered to death simply because it used to be that the FIRST CHILD had to be a SON) has now resulted in about 30 MILLION MEN who have no choice of brides.  Possibly this is an economic problem only, but not probably.  Where there are so fewer WOMEN, women do have a greater choice of men. 

But a friend who once moved to ALASKA because she was so very tall, though beautiful, that she was not being asked on dates, came back to America and said, "There are men in Alaska but the problem is that Alaska is in the men..." 

I suspect that  while CHINESE WOMEN can be pickier than perhaps ever before, choosing a husband isn't only about money but also CLASS and TRADITION, such as parents doing the matchmaking, as well as issues such as PHYSICAL APPEARANCE and DISABILITY, and LOCATION, factoring in.

Maybe the Professor was being practical, but the article doesn't seem to mention what he thought WOMEN might think about HAVING TWO HUSBANDS in CHINESE CULTURE.  It's true that there have been some cultures in which a woman had two or even many husbands AT THE SAME TIME, all living together or close by, but I've taken the anthropology class; most often these men are BROTHERS and basically, she does NOT have to sexually satisfy ALL OF THEM.  Instead, the genetic and economic issue means that the brothers total a smaller number of children to support though this shared wife, because the WIFE is very much stuck at home doing FEMALE SPECIFIC work.  And if you sleep with a bunch of brothers, maybe none of them are going to know for sure that they are or are not the father of a certain child.

Also, American men are IMPORTING CHINESE WOMEN AS BRIDES to live here with them and become U.S. Citizens and wealthy Chinese women are also coming right here to HAVE 2nd and 3rd children!  (I recently saw a group of them being given a tour of a garden together, with one man who spoke some English as the guide.  How rare to see a bevy of young Chinese beauties, all seven or more months pregnant, sans wedding bands, walking through the garden!)  I've previously read that Chinese men are importing South Korean women to marry.

So if you happen to be a CHINESE MAN WITHOUT ANY PROSPECTS FOR MARRIAGE (or if you happen to be Professor Xie Zoushi), may I suggest that some people will have to LEAVE CHINA to marry? As in the history of the United States, a starting point is to find Cousins here in the U.S. to sponsor you!  Further, you may have to give up on the idea of marrying another person who appears Asian!  As there is a surplus of women all over the world who want to be married and who are attracted to men outside their own race or ethnicity, this is also a possibility. 

And, of course, some of you never married Chinese men, actually will prefer to remain unmarried, but have one or many Mistresses through your life time!  Just like the old Emperors!

Missy

 

STUDY SUGGESTS WOMEN BEING BISEXUAL IS BETTER FOR POLYGAMY

DAILY MAIL - FEMALE SEXUAL FLUIDITY REDUCES CONFLICT - MEN WITH MULTIPLE WIVES  by Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com

EXCERPT:  About the scientific opinion of Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, Evolutionary psychologist.

The analysis revealed that women are more fluid in all of the proposed facets. 

And, the study confirmed his predictions, including one which proposed that women who experience increased levels of sexual fluidity have a larger number of children, and that women who experience marriage or parenthood early in adult life also experience increased levels of sexual fluidity.

 

The researcher says this suggests that women’s sexual fluidity may have been evolutionarily selected as one method for facilitating polygynous marriages, in which a husband can have more than one wife.

 

‘Even though humans have been mildly polygynous throughout evolutionary history, polygynous marriages are often characterized by conflict and tension among co-wives,’ Kanazawa writes.

 

‘I propose that occasional sex among cowives may have reduced such conflict and tension, and increased their reproductive success. Female sexual fluidity may have evolved as an adaptation to facilitate it.‘

 

The researcher also acknowledges earlier research which explains that historically, women left their homes in order to marry, while boys stayed in their natal groups for their whole lives.

 

OPINION from MISSY

 

Don't you just LOVE it when they call all the women who are sharing a man WIVES... 

I'd like to know more about this study.  For instance, did all the WOMEN who were sharing a man, live with him or even KNOW they were sharing him?  Don't you just LOVE it that they call bisexuality or POLYAMORY "fluidity?"

WILHELMINA "BILLIE" JOHNSON MCCANDLESS - CHRIS' MOM - MISTRESS OF THE MONTH JULY 2015

 

BILLIE JOHNSON MCCANDLESS

Image photographed from the book and cropped -

All Rights Remain that of the author.*

 *****

Image from Google Images search for public domain.

 

Magazine articles like this caused a stir and lead to an International best seller book named INTO THE WILD by author Jon Krakauer, as well as a documentary film, another film called by one source a "Biographical drama" in 2007, also titled INTO THE WILD, which was nominated for two Academy Awards (Sean Penn wrote the screenplay), dozens of YouTube videos, and recently, another book authored by Carine McCandless, the full sister of Chris McCandless, the hiker who was found dead in this bus in the wilderness of Alaska in 1992.

 

THE WILD TRUTH

Published by HarperOne

C 2014 Carine McCandless  (Billie's daughter)

 

This month I'm going to think aloud as I review this book and take a position.

 

Carine McCandless, daughter of Billie and sister of Chris, wanted to tell the underlying story of her brother's wish to divorce their family - their parents - and sees the reasoning behind his planned disappearance from the family and so, eventually, his death by starvation in the Alaska wilderness in 1992.  She blames a dysfunctional family, replete with violence and tension, and Chris' discovery during his travels after high school that their parents marriage was a years long charade, as additional motivation. The charade meant that this recent graduate of Emory College, an educated young man from an upper class Virginia family, was upset about being illegitimate and in effect, the child of a long time mistress.

 

It seems to me that someone like Chris, who is typified as being deeply thoughtful and philosophical, and literary, might have had many realizations about his parents before he died alone, and while it's clear that he made no contact with ANYONE in his family for over two years, from the time he left to the time he was found dead, it's also true that in his travels he experienced some good times, some new friendships, had taken intermittent employment, and that his travels around the United States were part of a young man's rite of passage.  Chris McCandless was trying to test himself in new situations and see the world before settling anywhere ; perhaps he really did intend to go to Harvard Law. 

 

A break from parents in young adulthood is what we do, unless we want to be one of those people who still lives with their parents or lets them pay our bills while "adults,"  though perhaps not so dramatically or with a history of witnessing and being subject to an abusive relationship that Chris and Carine experienced.  Many upper class college students take a year off between their junior and senior year to see the world and experience another culture.  Chris McCandless needed to redefine himself as separate from his family and begin a life of his own in which he aspired to greater accountability then they.

 

Chris wrote letters that reveal that he was disgusted with his parents and suffering the effects of childhood abuse, but my feeling is that he was willing to cut off Carine and his other siblings as well in the effort.  It may have been pay back time for him, but they all suffered. Carine and her siblings will never know if he had any intention of ever being back in touch with them. Now that his story has been told in so very many ways, it has become a story about how parents and siblings cope with a beloved siblings unusual death and notoriety.

 

Chris and Carine were the children of Walt Mc Candless and Billie Johnson McCandless, Billie being our Mistress of the Month this July 2015.  Walt, who actually was a rocket scientist, a genius involved in space exploration and aerospace, was a married man with a family and Billie's boss at Hughes Aircraft in Southern California when they met and started an affair which went on and on despite his unwillingness to get a divorce.  Walt began splitting his time between two households and families, having sex and children with both for some time with both Billie and his wife, Marcia, finally settling with Billie.  Their relationship has gone on to this day.  The scenarios Carine provides that reveal their childhood, which includes the blending of the two families while the women live in separate houses, show that both women were accommodating of Walt and  sometimes each other. 

 

Walt never managed to leave his wife, Marcia, as he said he intended.  Juggling two families, but alcoholic and violent,  spanking his children and beating his wives reportedly for "release", (and Billie him), eventually Marcia  did divorce him and moved back to their home town with their six children.  He then moved across the country with Billie.  Still, he never married Billie in any ceremony, civil or religious. 

 

(But hold on a minute.  Think of the rock star Sting, who was married and having children with the wife he was leaving and the wife he has since been married to at one time.  They all seem to be OK... I have to wonder.  If Chris and Carine only knew that being the children of a Mistress is not so uncommon would it have made a difference?)

 

Billie Johnson studied dance in her home town and headed for Los Angeles (or perhaps more correctly Hollywood) hoping to work as a dancer (but not an exotic dancer or stripper) and became a secretary instead. Not so unusual.  Like many women who aspire to a relationship with a man who makes good money and who is intelligent and charming, Billie fell in love with Walt.  She was also intelligent and accomplished.  You don't get to be hired as a secretary at Hughes Aircraft without being skilled.  She was able to play a significant role in the home business she and Walt had together, while also not a feminist or liberated woman, and also tried to be a great housewife.  Billie worked hard to achieve a beautiful home and garden, cooking tasty home made meals from scratch, was involved in Scouting, but also worked in the home as an essential partner with Walt in a business that made them eventually wealthy.

 

Did she live too much for what their neighbors and people at church might think?

 

"Oh Carine, isn't it you who's making up false family scenarios just to get attention," she said.  "You're not as smart as you think you are.  I don't even understand what wrong doing you're talking about.  Besides, when I met him, your father had his own apartment and lots of girlfriends."  (page 203)

 

Perhaps it was a bit over the top of Billie and Walt, considering, to also aspire to be well regarded church members of a small local Protestant church as well, and personally I have to wonder at the role of religion and faith in this family story, something that goes unexplored in Carine's book, when perhaps what many parties needed was therapy, or to run off to an abused women's shelter (though there were few of those back in the 1960's), or for social workers to intervene, but Billie and Walt were living in Virginia, far from their home towns or the California where they met, and it doesn't sound like any of the neighbors, teachers, or pastors were concerned enough to call them in. 

 

And it comes to me that the concern about illegitimacy that Chris may have had testifies to his own conservatism.

 

No doubt Billie Johnson knew she was in a love triangle, an unconventional relationship that her own parents would not approve of or understand.

 

Early in the relationship Billie went so far as to arrange a picture and post wedding announcement to be published in her small hometown newspaper which gave their real names and Walt's employment and profession.  When she went through periods where she and Walt held family meetings to talk about divorcing or claimed that she was moving out and looking for somewhere else to live, it was an exercise in futility.  For whatever reason, Billie decided to stick with Walt and he with her. 

 

BILLIE HAD THIS (SORT OF) MARRIAGE ANNOUNCEMENT

PUBLISHED IN HER HOME TOWN NEWSPAPER

Image photographed from the book and cropped -

All Rights Remain that of the author.*

 

 

I thought, "If you've never married legally you don't divorce legally!" but realized that is probably not true and depends on the time and place.  Because Walt and Billie lived together as husband and wife for many years before and after he divorced, they are probably correctly regarded as in a COMMON LAW MARRIAGE, which includes you holding yourself out to be a married couple in your community.  (In some states you have to live together for about 7 years for the relationship to be considered COMMON LAW.  Another issue might be how Taxes are filed.  But legally married people can still file separately.)

 

Through this book Carine doesn't consider her parents to be in a common law marriage and apparently her brother Chris didn't either.  She doesn't consider her parent's relationship as something of the times they met in or that she will never know, even with what she has experienced, witnessed, or been told, what was really going on between these three people who brought a total of 8 children into this world.  There was a lot of experimentation with Open relationships, multiple relationships, triads, and so on during the 1960's and 1970's and, well, it still goes on today, especially in California, and instead the relationship is thought closer to be something that the Mormon Fundamentalists might try for. 

 

Carine, at the time she wrote this book, has had three divorces herself.  She considers her mother unsympathetic to that.

 

As for Chris, who you'll learn more about here this month as well, ...

 

"He'd written them a long letter, he said, that detailed all the emotional trauma and abuse we had suffered as kids.  How their actions had caused him to lose all respect for both of them."  (Page 96)

 

No doubt Chris intended to divorce his parents and explained that to Carine, knowing that she would understand, but by the time of his death, he may have been reconsidering. Though traveling under the name Alexander Supertramp, he still had his new ID's, Social Security Card, and W2's under his real identity but this was not known until many years later when his backpack was returned to the family and it was all found in a secret compartment.  So my take on calling himself by another name when he traveled was for privacy and security not because he had divorced his heritage.

 

I encourage you to check my archives for the January 2013 edition which features Louis Isidore Kahn, an important architect, who had more than one ongoing relationship that included children, and the April 2014 edition which features the Sister Wives of the Independent Mormon Fundamentalists.

 

C Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.  Missy Rapport  2015

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights on Original Writing/ Review.

 

*  Using Google Image Search there are a number of images available from this book and surrounding this story.  Since I didn't see this particular image from the book at that time, I decided to try photographing it myself and have cropped them.  However the original images remain the Copyright of the author.

BECOMING SISTER WIVES - TV SHOW - FALLOUT - CANCELLED or ANOTHER SEASON ?

June 2021  Missy here!

The original video from 2014 went poof so I took down this post, hoping for a replacement.  There are so many! The TV show was considered to be a shocker when it came out in 2010. Various decisions have been made - to stay or go - since it aired. An April 2021 was supposed to be the end - the 15th season.

I posted about a form of polyamory that is unusual because of the great number of women man sharing just one man but within a form of commitment, not in ancient China or present day Africa, but here in the United States. Today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints goes against polygamy though it was very much part of the foundation of their church, which was referred to as Mormonism. However Fundamentalists with a huge number of wives, usually the first one being the only one legally married to the man, and a huge number of children, exist in Utah and some other enclaves. 

A reality TV show that went for 15 seasons of changes, each person has their fans.  This article from The Sun does a good job of explaining who is who and what's happened.

SUN - SISTER WIVES CAST

i.e. Meri Brown, the first wife, who has one child with him, was married to him from 1990-2014 when they divorced so he could marry Robyn and he adopted her three children....

With Janelle he has six children and two grand-children.

With Christine he has six children.

With Robyn he has two children plus three from a previous marriage.

THOSE POLYGAMOUS HUSBAND-SHARING "SISTER WIVES" : SUBJECT OF THE MONTH

You may have watched Reality TV and seen Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown, or you may have heard media reports on the  Independent Fundamentalist Mormons who live in compounds in Utah.  (They're the sect that does not marry underage girls off to old Patriarchs.) 

Why talk about this at all at  MISTRESS MANIFESTO? 

Well, I wonder, do you like me see the similarities and differences between these women and mistresses of a more traditional type? 

Mistresses aren't always involved with legally married men. Sometimes they are kept by not legally married men or men who prefer to live unmarried. (And at this blog we also acknowledge that the relationships may not be heterosexual.) 

Who is or isn't a mistress these days is not so clear.

More than one wife has found out she was sharing her husband with a mistress or two, unless he asked her about bringing another woman into their lives in advance of doing so, and she maybe helped pick out the mistress, like Yoko Ono  may have when she suggested May Pang to John Lennon.  (May Pang was Mistress of the Month here at Mistress Manifesto two years ago in April 2012!)

The majority of us in the Western or First World are raised to believe that there is only one kind of marriage and that is the marriage of one man with one woman.  Any variation on that theme is considered to be wrong - bad - sinful.  Yet, divorced parents integrate their children into new families, and children take on having two fathers and two mothers.  While gay activists fight for the right to marry a member of the same sex, there are those who would like to see Polygamous marriages legal as well.  I think it will happen.

In Polygamous marriages of the Independent Fundamentalist Mormon (not to be confused with the Latter Day Saints), the first wife is the legal wife.  The other wives are married in their Church quite seriously and spiritually, but not legally, but with the full knowledge of the first and other wives. 

I do wonder how these extensive families can afford to have this lifestyle financially.  It seems that the men tend to own businesses or ranches or land and sometimes the women are also out working, supporting the family in a communal way.  There has been some controversy about how the state and federal governments determine benefits for a family of say five wives and 35 children, but there are those who say Polygamy could not be afforded without those state and federal government benefits, help with medical care, food, and other costs, because in most of these Plural Marriages there are very many children.

There are a couple books you might want to read about the subject and you can sort of try out the lifestyle vicariously and decide if maybe you should be moving to Utah and converting to the Fundamentalist Mormon Faith!

One of them is called "Becoming Sister Wives" by Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown.  (It's copyright 2012 and published by Gallery Books.)  Another is called "Love Three Times" by Joe, Alina, Vicki, and Valerie Darger with Brook Adams which is copyright 2011 and published by HarperOne. 

I've read both and am interested that the people involved in these marriages talk quite a bit about it as a "calling" and very spiritual.  (Mistresses are called "Home Wreckers" and considered to be Evil, even when they preserve marriages.) 

In the case of Kody Brown, he married his first wife Meri and they were together monogamously for three years before he married Janelle.  In the case of Joe Darger, he married Alina and Vicki the very same ceremony.

As for sex, well, sometimes a man who has a Mistress is not having sex with his wife any more and that's one of his reasons for having an affair, if not a Mistress.  The fact that the wife may not be interested in having sex anymore, but wants to continue as a wife in most other ways, may contribute to the fact that she understands and accepts the Mistress.  Is there jealousy?  Sometimes, maybe often or most of the time. 

If you believe that you should have the entire focus of your spouse, any romantic relationships outside the marriage are a problem for you. I used to think that the place to find a faithful, loyal man was in church but what about this church?

Sister Wives must also be having sex with the same man at the same time and, it seems, mostly without using contraception, sometimes helping each other deliver the babies.  Some of these Sister Wives have had children born in the same years. You may even be on a schedule to see your mutual husband, to have an evening of intimacy, and have to negotiate that with the other women when you need to do something else.  Unlike many wives whose husband are off seeing someone, as a Plural Wife, you may know exactly where he is and who with all the time!  Your children will all be co-siblings.  Your daughters will probably also seek Plural Marriage.

Here is a link for the LOVE THREE TIMES site! LOVETHREETIMES.COM

Here is a link to a Blog called SISTER WIVES! THESISTERWIVES.BLOGSPOT.COM

THINKING ABOUT THIS, I would like to say that psychologists, preachers, and most parents (especially mothers) try to instill the idea that a woman deserves so very much today, and if she herself does not expect and get that so very much, the next question is of her self esteem.  But we cannot all have our own way or everything we think we want or deserve.

Some mistresses have written books heavily invested in therapy and say that no woman with self respect or self esteem can become a Mistress.  I note that these books seem to blame the women so much more than the men!

Yet, not everyone can be the Number One Priority. 

There are even real Princesses, women of privilege from birth, among us who don't find themselves as Number One in their husband's esteem. More than other women, many married women feel themselves alone and neglected because their husband is married to his business.

Missy

C 2014 All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights
Missy Rapport / Mistress Manifesto