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Saturday, August 15, 2009

A couple of good questions

Emily asked about what if I wasn't able to have children and part of my being here was a trip to the OB-GYN who checked me out for fertility, STDs, and just to see if I was healthy. Sooner or later I'll be having children.
But if I was not able to have kids then I would not have been with this family. Shari is very set that she wants more children in the house so my being able to have kids is a big deal. I'm okay with that because I want to have kids anyway.

FallenStar had a great comment that is really worth its own post.

FallenStar said...
Megan, I for one am a bit disappointed in what you said about not loving Steve before you married him. I may be old fashion or have different beliefs, But I think that Marriage and Love go together. I think it is hurtful for anyone to marry someone without loving them first. This is a big reason my husband and I currently do not have a sister-wife, since our last breakup. We have met a few woman that we like and everything clicks, but when the big question is asked She said she doesn't love us yet, but wants to marry us and let the love grow. We refuse the marriage and instead opt. to date and let the love grow. The women then say never mind and leave.

Does Steve and your sister-wives know that you didn't love Steve when you married him? What would you of done, if now five months later you still didn't love him? What if you two had a baby together and you still didn't love him?

I am glad that you do Love him now and that is what counts, but a bit disappointed that you didn't at first. But overall, I am glad that things have worked out for you and that the love is there now.




This really was something that was a very big concern to me back in February and March before (and after) the wedding. I liked Steve and I liked the family but I wasn't all mushy in love with them. But this is the way they do things.

I had asked Pastor Jeff why the big rush on getting married and why not let people love each other first and he said that one problem with poly families is trust and trust is most important than love. He said you can have trust and not love but love without trust won't last very long at all. My marrying Steve and the family was a way for me to say I trust them and them letting me marry into the family said they trusted me. Everyone makes a big deal about the risk I took doing this but they don't see the big risk the family took doing this.

If I leave here I have a right to ask for 25% of the value of everything in the family trust to take with me. That's their big risk in letting me join the family so it goes both ways. The big thing then at the start is everyone saying they trust each other and then you build on that. I never really trusted anyone before and I had really good reasons for that and to think that these people risked their home and everything that I would work out as part of the family is pretty awesome.

It sounds weird, but if someone trusts you with everything they have it becomes easy to start loving them because you already know you all trust each other.

One of my emails a few months ago was from a woman in Canada who went to India when she was 16 and her family had her marry this guy she did not know. Her family had arranged the marriage when she was born and they did not tell her about it until she was in India and being told she was there for her wedding. She said her first month was just awful but then time went by and her husband turned out to be a really good guy. He was a lot older than she would have picked on her own but he was also a good man to her and she eventually loved him. She did not allow her kids to be put in arranged marriages just because they live in Canada and that is not how it is done but she said what I had was like an arranged marriage and she said the way those work is you have to trust your parents to choose a good husband or wife for you and then you learn to love that person.

For me here it has been easy and hard sometimes to learn to love and to let myself open my heart to love this family. Some people commented in the past that this is like a fantasy and too good to be true and don't you all think I see it that way too? I kept waiting to see what they were really like here and kept waiting to see someone yell or scream or fight over something and it never happened. It is still on my mind that I expect things to get ugly but that is just my old life speaking to me and not my new life. I mean like little arguments here never, ever blow up into screaming or anything. It just never happens.

It is a little complicated but I trust them to be who they say they are. And after I started trusting them it just naturally happened that I loved them one day.

With Steve I had only known him just more than a month when we got married and my friend Steady used the word traumatic to describe my wedding night when I talked to her about it. That was a good way to describe it. I think that part would have been a lot easier if I loved Steve first but then it was my decision to make my first time with him on our wedding night so the problems I had were all on me. I'm serious that I was allowed to be married but could have waited for the wedding night if I wanted to. I just had it in my head that I wanted to have as much a traditional wedding as I could so I wanted a wedding night just because it was a thing to do.

When I say the next few things remember this was all my choice and the feelings and problems I had were all things for me to deal with. Steve, Shari, Christie, and everyone was nothing but nice to me and wonderful to me when I married into the family.

I was so not ready to be married! I had no clue what all it meant and I was really selfish in wanting things for myself and not thinking about what it meant to actually have those things. Pastor Jeff said to me one day be careful what you wish for because you might get it. Me marrying Steve was not just about me it was about what I could do to make this family a better family. All I was thinking about was how this was going to make me happy and how I was going to get what I wanted and thinking about what other people needed from me wasnt something I ever stopped to think about. I wished for something and got it but never stopped to think of how what I wanted was going to effect the people around me.

I probably posted this before but I wanted a baby and never stopped to think about that you usually have sex to have a baby. I also never stopped and thought about what you do on your wedding night.

Like I said remember the wedding night was all my choice okay?

When the bedroom door closed and I was alone with Steve and I had said it was okay to let's do something together it was like it was too late to back out. Honestly, at that point I could have said to Steve I needed to wait and he would have because he is that kind of man. Instead I went ahead and let things go and then I decide to change my mind right as things got started and then I got to find out that Steve is a man and a real person and you don't play with that. Then when it came to the time to finish things I realized that I really could be having a baby with Steve and it could happen in the next few seconds and that was scary as hell.

Later on Steve said he knew I was mixed about that first time and said he thought I would be better if we got the first time out of the way and I hate to say it but he was right. I mean it was something I basically wanted but I wanted a baby in a real way and then I was also afraid to take and be serious about what all that meant. Steve just took and got it over with and things got better after that. Way better!

But this all went back to trust. I trusted Steve when I was in bed with him and he trusted me, too. We built on that and one day he told me he loved me and he did it with this look in his eye like he would die if I broke his heart. I was starting to love him but when he said that to me that way it was like my heart just opened up and said YEAH! and I knew I loved him! I love him so much now sometimes it hurts to be away from him. He can come home from work and I will be missing him so much that I just take his hand and off we go! I went from being stupid and scared five months ago with him to now sometimes I want to be with him so bad it is like I don't relax until he is making love to me. I want him as close as he can be to me.

I've had other moments like that with Shari and Christie and the girls and the babies where it just hits me that I love them. I know Shari is a sisterwife but I honestly love her like the mom I wished I had growing up. She is just so motherly to me and everyone and she just does some things for me that have made me cry when I think of them like she will sit next to me sometimes and pet my hair and it just makes me feel really close to her but like a mother-daughter thing.

I have been frustrated with trying to love Shari as a friend and sister and it was one of thise things with me being selfish and not loving her for who she is to me and not for what I want her to be. We talked about it last night and she was straight up saying she just can't help but see me like another daughter and she says it isn't like I don't need to have some things taught to me and I decided to just accept this and her the way it is. Christie is my sisterwife and Shari is my momwife. Okay! :-P I know someday we will be more like sisters but for right now I am okay with this and after thinking about it I kind of like it too.

Christie was easy to love. She is like the rebel sister of the family and she is a lot of fun. We are very close and very much sisterwives and she loves me being in the family because she has sort of the same momwife relationship with Shari that I do. Christie has been the person I get to talk about Steve with and she knows everything I want to talk about and she has been a great person to talk to when I have had bedroom problems or questions or when I want to have a friend I can be a silly girlfriend with.

But all of it is built on trust and it is okay to do that. Trust is like a foundation for love and you can have love without trust but then it is like a house without a foundation.

Fallen Star I am saying the next part to you.

It hurts me a little to think you said no to someone who was honest and trusting you enough to tell you she didn't love you but was willing to let it grow. What if she had lied to you and said she loved you? You would have let her into your family and maybe you would have love but you would not have honesty and trust and what happens when your love is tested and there is no honesty and trust to depend on?

Love is really, really important but when you start out trust is more important. You just look at all the divorces in the world where someone cheats on someone else or does something else stupid that causes a divorce and then you hear the people getting divorced say they still love each other! But what they were missing was trust and without the trust their love didn't really matter and love was not enough to keep them together.

If you think about it trust is a kind of love. You trust someone you love not to break your heart. You trust people you love not to lie to you. But how long can you love someone you don't trust?

I wrote about my Canadian email friend because she learned to love her husband. Most everyone in India gets married in an arranged marriage and that happens that way in most of the world. It works just fine for them and it can work for you too. It is working for me if you think about it.

Fallen Star, I really want to thank you for a really thoughtful comment! I hope my answer explains what you asked about.

A sleepy chicken in your lap in the morning.

9 comments:

  1. ((Hugs))
    I love it!!

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  2. Wow. That has really given me something to think about. Like FallenStar, I wouldn't have wanted to marry someone without a strong love and attraction there first, but you make some excellent points… Trust is a solid foundation to build love upon isn't it. I guess I still would have wanted to wait until the love and attraction was there too, but hey… it worked for you, and like you say it's working for many others.

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  3. Yes Megan I understand how your family worked with the marriage and love issue now. Thank you. And I'm sorry if I sounded abit bitchy, I didn't mean too. :)

    I said we said no to marrying her, Not to dating and growing. She refused to date us or spend time with us, She wanted a marriage right away and babies. We said no marriage without Love. We never told her to leave, She made that decision on her own and last I hear she got with a family, got pregnant, and left them. So perhaps we were right in saying no marriage/babies without the love first. You can date and be together, which is what we offered. The dating could of taken five or more months til the love grew and we would of married her the nite she said she loved us, because we loved her. We have been hurt too many times to take chances, we have had a former sisterwive decide that aborting the baby without telling us was the best thing to do, because she didn't want to quit smoking. We've had a woman come in to our lives and then decide that she didn't want to be a sisterwife, she wanted to be the only wife and she tried to make my husband leave me for her.

    ANYWAYS, certain things work for certain families. For us its Marriage and Love or no marriage. We'd never say no to anyone that didn't love us at first, just she'd have to date us and spend time with us and let the love grow first before she married us. It's what works for us and I can see now and understand how it wouldn't work for your family.

    ~Heather

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  5. Wow, thank you for this post. I really appreciate your honesty here and I have a great deal of respect for both that and for the honesty and love you all have in your relationships with each other. You have made me come to appreciate the love and respect I have in my relationship much more than I ever realized before.

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  6. ALM, I deleted your post by accident. There will not be a 4th wife here because no one wants a 4th wife. I have said this a lot already.

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  7. Megan and FallenStar,
    Those were very interesting and well written stories, thank you. A state of mind, and committment of soul may appear as trust to some, or as love to others. In either case, it is always important to keep one's eyes open, and not shy away from thinking rationally about the evidence that tells you what exactly the thing is that you are linking your love and trust to.

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  8. FallenStar, that's a sad story, and I think there is wisdom in what you have learned and shared.

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  9. It's interesting she started out her question with "maybe I'm just old fashioned" since the idea of love and marriage being linked is actually a fairly modern one. The concept of marrying and then growing to love a person has been around far longer.

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