Secrecy

My last post resulted in a lot of comments and I just now read through all of them. I was away for the weekend, with Mr.Hubby and 4th, visiting some friends - who know about our lifestyle and are on the same path in terms of faith but are not polygynous themselves. It was a nice time, though 4th started squeaking again - I have a new nickname for her.. you know how Barb in Big Love is called Boss Lady by Nicki.. I call 4th Boss Baby now..

The comments on my previous post came dropping in slowly on my cell during the weekend and I read some when I had the chance, others I read now. Donald, it’s strange that we are that much on the same page without even knowing each other. Thank you for the elaborate comment, you said what I was thinking when reading anonymous’ words.. I am always pleasantly surprised when I find out I have male readers – and then to find out I have great male readers – even nicer.

Secrecy, I have mixed feelings about living in it, but I fundamentally disagree with the notion that it is by default wrong – for many different reasons…
In our particular case 1st’s kids are even demanding it from us. They have loads of friends and are the popular kids in school so they demand that our lifestyle be a secret. They do not want to be ridiculed, out casted or isolated because of this.

Someone asked whether we are confronted with social isolation – no we are not, though I think we would be, were we open about it. We know different families that live in polygyny, though all of them are far away and we meet them once in a while. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it. One of these families also consists of four wives and many children. They have chosen to be honest about their lifestyle, and that has come with consequences. They have had family members break all ties, they have been rejected by neighbors, they have had difficulty finding jobs. The kids are happy I would say, but they have only each other. They are a bit like hippies in mainstream society - everyone looks at them funny. It works for them they say, but 1st does not want this lifestyle, 1st’s kids do not even want to consider it, and I really wonder whether that would be that much better.

Honesty can be selfish sometimes. Sometimes we want to be released from this burden of secrecy and then it seems so much better to just tell the world. But is it worth the pain I would be inflicting on my relatives? Telling them about this would be like dropping a bomb.. is that really in their benefit, or in mine? Is it really in our kids’ benefit if they can tell honestly about daddy having more wives? Will they not be faced with much bullying if we allow them to be honest? Will they resent us for not teaching them to keep it to themselves, for not telling them the truth about how the outside world thinks of us?

From a religious perspective, I also don’t agree with the notion that we need to be honest all the time. I dislike religious debates, and I’m writing this with some hesitation, since I foresee tons of comments with quotes from religious texts, debates between readers and the like.. but I will write my point of view anyway. If you pertain to an Abrahamic religion you will know that the Jews kept their faith in Moses a secret under the rule of the Pharaoh, that the Christians kept their faith a secret during the Roman empire, that the Muslims kept their faith a secret while still living in Mecca. Abraham himself said that Sarah was his sister when they entered a foreign kingdom, out of fear of being slain. All of them were practicing their religious beliefs openly when they had their own societies, their own rules and regulations, or were in an environment which was accepting of their faith.

Were we living in a society in which polygyny was normal, or even allowed, there would be no excuse for keeping secrets, I agree with that. However in this society, it’s naive to claim all should be in the open. Donald was right when he said “If 'Anonymous', who claims to 'have nothing against plural marriages', can judge your lifestyle with such venom, I can only imagine what comments you might get from someone who does have something against it!” That’s also my reply to anonymous – your comment just affirmed my belief that keeping this lifestyle a secret is better – is protective of my family – though it’s hard.

I hope to work towards informing and being open to a few close family members of which I expect acceptance. Maybe not about polygyny at first, but at least about Mr.Hubby and then maybe work towards being open about polygyny someday. I’ll talk about this with Mr.Hubby and with my sisterwives, since it involves all of us eventually. Still the challenges with the kids would remain.. it’s just hard.

Kids and polygyny

I've been thinking about kids lately.. having a baby of my own. It's starting to occupy my mind more often nowadays, I am not really sure why. Sometimes I’ll be driving somewhere and I have these daydreams of me with my baby. How would that be? A small desire to be a mother sneaks up in me.. to take care of a baby and nurse it and give it all the love I could possible give.

When I think of the practical consequences I get very sad though. As a parent you have such a major impact on your children, and in many cases there is no telling beforehand whether you are doing right or wrong. 1st is a public wife, so you’d think that for the kids it’s quite easy – they have a mom and a dad, and then dad has some more wives, which is weird, but it really doesn’t impact their daily lives. Well, it’s more complicated than that. The thing which they absolutely hate is when their dad goes out with another wife. Their friends might see him and that embarrasses them so much. Once I was with Mr.Hubby in a café, when one of 1st’s daughters passed by with a friend. Even though we were just sitting there, at the table, we could have been co-workers, it resulted in such a huge fight between them. They don’t want to have to carry the burden of secrecy for something which they did not choose for. Their friends don’t get why their dad is gone for three days of the week…they get tired of saying he’s working. I feel sorry for them.

2nd’s kids – they are small still, but once they start talking freely – what then? Her family does not know about her relationship with Mr.Hubby because she was friends first with 1st and her family knows him as 1st’s husband. They think she just got knocked up. How to explain to the little ones that they shouldn’t talk about daddy in front of relatives? How to explain that they shouldn’t tell at (pre-)school that daddy has more than one wife?

What would happen when I get pregnant? My family thinks I am single. I might tell them I am in a relationship with Mr.Hubby someday. Though I dread telling about it. He has picked me up before with my sister and she saw 1st as well. I don’t know, that hurdle could be overcome by saying he’s divorced.. but really would that be an idea? What would we tell our child? Can you keep it a secret that daddy has more than one wife? Should you keep such a secret from your children? What’s worst – them finding out at an older age that we live in polygny and be shocked – or them having to carry a secret from a young age already?

I don’t know. I have no idea what’s best. I try to think that if you provide a loving and safe home for your children nothing will matter. But is that really true?

Wow!

A single home is left standing among debris from Hurricane Ike September 14, 2008 in Gilchrist, Texas. Floodwaters from Hurricane Ike were reportedly as high as eight feet in some areas causing widespread damage across the coast of Texas. (David J. Phillip-Pool/Getty Images)

From Big Picture

About the nature of men

This week I had a strange customer visit. It was supposed to be a tough conversation, since they were planning on switching to a competitor. My colleague who manages the account asked me to come with to maybe try and smooth things out and help create a value proposition so they would continue. This whole business issue is not important, what I am trying to explain is that we expected a hostile environment, but it turned out completely differently as they are now considering continuing the relationship.

Afterwards my colleague and I were evaluating the positive outcome and he said that he already scored points when he brought me in. We were in a room with eight men – all from our customer’s side, and then my colleague who’s a guy. So I was the only lady in there. He (my coworker) said that they were already less hostile just because I was there and that it would have been way tougher were there only men. He told me that while I was speaking one of the guys was just staring at me with his mouth open. So my colleague was happy – he said he fought half the battle just by bringing me in. I am realizing this more and more. How much a woman can accomplish among men. It’s a delicate balance, since you can’t make a man think you’re available, but you can make him feel at ease and happy to be around you – enough to make it easier to achieve whatever you want to achieve.
Sometimes, I wonder, why are men so weak when it comes to women?

See Hidden Sage’s post about how he fell for this lady which lead him to lose all his focus towards spirituality.. Reading it made me wonder about how hard it actually is to achieve things in spirituality. Though the verb “achieve” is misplaced here since it really only pertains to the material life. In spirituality there are no achievements, there is only submission. But if you are striving for it, trying to reach it - to get there is hard.

I guess for a man not to desire women must be so hard. So if a man needs to leave that in order to reach God, whew… that’s huge. Maybe that’s why they get more than one wife. Then they are at ease, not easily distracted by all other women, so they can focus on God. But hey, then the ladies start to make trouble between themselves and with the husband. And he is left solving problems the whole day.. LOL Each step brings new problems I guess..

I guess the hardest thing for ladies is jealousy. It’s not sess, it’s not desire for men, it’s jealousies, and maybe shoes. Leaving shoes and nice dresses for ascetic life is hard on us too. But nothing compared to dealing with the egoistic, selfish, and downright mean characteristics of the sisterwives and husband..

So maybe polygyny is a double-edged sword meant to cut bad characteristics away from both men and women.

Overcoming the lows

I was feeling low last week.. sometimes, anything can be too much. When I feel like that I am not walking around ranting or screaming or anything of the kind. I just feel very tired, very quiet and lonely. Lonely in the sense that I wish to be alone, because the cheery mood of others hurts, and yet I long for warmth of people at the same time. It’s a mixed emotion - I don’t even know what to make of it let alone explain it well to Mr.Hubby.

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Sometimes I wonder what the root is, since I have been having such mood swings forever. They have become much less frequent and less intense in the last years, still they do come back occasionally.

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When I was younger I would lock myself up in my room and cry for a full day, now I just get silent, reflective. I always end up looking forward and thinking ‘there’s still so many years ahead’. I think that with a sense of heaviness. I start to wonder what the use is of life, of all the things we go through. We end up in the soil anyway, and life continues and we get forgotten, our deeds are so small, futile in comparison to the creation, so why aren’t we already in our final destination? I start thinking of all the people that enjoy themselves in this life, that are so happy with all the material things, all the achievements they are striving after, and it’s as if someone turns on the light when you are having a migraine. It so turns me off, I just want to crawl in a small hut in the middle of the desert and stay there, alone.

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I don’t really know what it is, why I get these feelings, what I should do with them. I can write them down now, but I can’t when I am actually feeling them. So Mr.Hubby makes the effort to talk with me, tries to understand what’s wrong. And all I can do is sob and utter one or two words. He holds me, says he is sorry for whatever he does wrong, for everything which I am carrying due to his ignorance.

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I asked him what God intends with marriage, with sharing a life together. The movie “Hancock” kind of describes what I was trying to say. The way I see it is that God creates a mutual attraction, liking and love between two people, but He doesn’t want us to lose ourselves in that love and thus forget about Him. So He creates distances through polygyny. In the movie Hancock they were so powerful when apart, and so weak when near.

Mr.Hubby said that God makes us be together to find solace, comfort and companionship in one another. “If a group of people goes to a movie, they might all like it. But out of ten people maybe there will be just one other person who will like the exact same scenes that you did, or will see the same message that you did. You will feel a connection with that person which you will not feel with the other nine. Still the main thing is the movie, not talking with each other. Watching the movie may merely be more enjoyable when together..”

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“Our lives are about gaining nearness to God. We draw nearer to one another through this mutual goal. That makes us to have a special and deep bond. The reason I liked you when we met is that I recognized your yearning for faith, your questions.. that made me want you in my life – as a companion. People with no faith say we use our faith to make ourselves believe we should do all these things for God. As if we are brainwashing ourselves. But for us it’s the other way around - without faith there is no reason for being together – life, relationships are empty, dead.”

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And all of a sudden life seemed so full of possibilities. It might be that I will not have to wait until I pass away for nearness, for the taste of true spirituality, for that liberation from this material heaviness. I have had small appetizers in the past, who knows what God might bring on my path. And Mr.Hubby would be there to experience these things with... and share the adventures.
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I felt so relieved and cried all the previous heaviness away on his shoulder. I needed that talk.

Daily Life

Part of recent conversation with a male high-school friend

Guy: He's cheating on her…

3rd: What do you think of men cheating on their wives?

Guy: I do get why they feel the need for it, but I would never do it.

3rd: Are you for real, or just saying that because I'm a woman?

Guy: For real. I think about other women sometimes, but my girlfriend is my only one and that's the way it should be. If I would ever truly want to be with someone else I'd be honest, not go out and cheat on her.

3rd: You'd be like the guy on Big Love… chuckles

Guy: Man, they are crazy!

3rd: What do you mean?

Guy: Every time I turn on the show they're sessin'.

3rd: LOL! Well, they have to sell the show! But I think it's cool he's honest to his wives and takes care of them. Much better than all the men cheating on their wives.

Guy: They are big time hypocrites. Keeping it a secret from the outside world. All nice and decent on the outside, but then mad crazy household. It’s fun to watch, but they are really hypocrites!

3rd: Yeah... So, how's your Mom, still having back ache?

Off-topic

I am out of town again for work.. :s and I had the opportunity to visit a spa here. Very beautiful old building with awesome hot baths. It's one of those places where men and women have separate area's, which I think is just perfect. I never go to places where men and women mix.. I feel watched and uncomfortable. An exclusive women's area gives me a sense of freedom and ease...

Well, it turned out some ladies felt way too free..

The young girls were decent, with bathing suits or bikini's. But the older ladies just had to fully express their sense of liberation I guess..

so there were absolutely liberatedto be admired all over. And every time one of them came towards me I felt all my toes curl up in absolute horror.

And while I came to the spa for relaxtion after a day of travel, I ended up just focusing on the distance between me and the "freedom fighters" and trying to anticipate what their next move would be. I try to be forgiving though, after all they are from the hippy generation.. you have to judge people in the correct context... :p