December 3, 2017: Answers to Questions

Welcome to December everyone!

I am going to wish you all a very Blessed and Merry Christmas and a very Happy 2018 before I get started! God bless and keep all of you!

On to the questions from the blog:

Q: Did you get my email about me changing emails?

Yes, I did. I am thinking about it.

Q: Also, how often is Steve home, and how often is he home with you? Is it mostly just a whole bunch of wives?

It depends on how much work he has and where the work is. Like when he was in North Dakota all the time we could count on him coming home on weekends. Right now he has a lot of work in Texas and we see him when he can get away so you're right that a lot of the time it's all wives and children in the house!

Q: Hi Megan! I'm curious if your sexual relationship ever extends to the other women in your life. Are you sexually involved with each other or have a strong intimacy with them? Lots of love!

I think "strong intimacy" is probably the best answer here. I mean you get used to seeing each other all the time, we share responsibilities with breast feeding when we can, and we're around each other all the time and we really do love each other! There's a lot of kissing and cuddling that goes on but anymore it's really rare when any of us have the time for anything more than that. I think I would have had a different answer for you a few years ago but it's not like that anymore or at least for now. I will say when it is cold in the house I really love having someone to cuddle up with at night!

Q: What would you suggest to do if someone was interested in this type of lifestyle? I'm a female uni student who really relates to what brought you into polygamy, but I have no interest in the more common polyamory thing, like I think plural marriage is pretty neat but I would want to do it in a Christian way like you, if that makes sense lol but I've never come across any Christian community that really accepts that or any Christian :/ It's too bad because its something I've always had an interest in, which is how I found your blog :)

You could start by joining a site called Biblical Families. They're mostly Christians on that site and I think most of them seem pretty normal compared to our church or some other poly friendly churches. Yahoo Groups still has a lot of poly people active but they're mostly pagan (their word, not mine) and it's more about just sex than having families from what I have seen. It never hurts to look around because I can say I met my family on a Yahoo Group and it worked out for me. I will pray that you find what God wants for you in your life!

Q: How is Shari? Does she stay in touch with the family? How is Stevie and her husband? Do you see them?

Shari stopped keeping in touch with us and we respect her choice. She moved to Seattle, she has a job, and she has a new boyfriend and I think she's happy with her choices.

Stevie (Stephanie) is Steve's oldest daughter by Shari and she is married and has her own family now. Her husband did really well with the oil boom and he has a permanent job with an oil company. They have a second wife who was a Mennonite and she's had two babies with them. We had them at the house last year for Christmas and we're going to have a family Christmas again this year and it will be a pretty big crowd and we'll see Stevie, Lauren, and then Hannah is coming from California with her fiancé (they will not be a poly family).

Q: Hello Megan, Do you relate to any of the women who have been talking about sexual harassment and abuse lately? I ask because some of what you have written over the years indicates that you have had similar experiences and from what I can tell your sister wife Macy was abused by the first family she lived with. Would you say that abuse is more or less common in your church than in the general public? I am not asking for statistics here, just your opinion.

This is a really difficult question. I believe you are a Muslim so I imagine you probably see the same things in Muslim relationships that go on in traditional or fundamentalist Christian relationships. The first thing is that when a woman decides to join a family in the church there's a big effort to make sure that she really wants to do this because no one wants the problems that can happen when someone leaves. They also want to make sure that women who choose this really understand what they're getting into.

And the difference between things being they way they should be and then being abusive can be kind of blurry if you ask me.

The church is patriarchal and that even used to be part of the name of the church. It means the men are in charge and the husband is the head of the house and the women in the house submit to him in all things.

As a woman you agree to this and that's what I did. That's what a lot of women do. Then you discover that your very first responsibility is to have children and there's a HUGE amount of social pressure to have children. If you're okay with this then that means a lot of sex. I had to get used to that and sometimes that means the sex isn't all that romantic. That's the point where things can start to be abusive and Macy absolutely suffered because she really didn't want that. Fortunately the church helped her and she was with us for a few years and now she's back home in Ohio with her parents and her kids.

I don't know of much actual violence going on and that's one of the things that is a big plus to me about having other women in the house is I have never worried about Steve ever acting that way (and he never would) because there are other women around. We do have problems with drugs even in the church and meth and heroin have been problems ever since the oil boom. We've only had one poly family break up over drugs but a few other families have had problems. The drugs sometimes cause abuse in a family but that's not unique to the church.

Both of my parents went crazy because of meth and I have to wonder if people really know what they are wishing for when they want to legalize drugs.

I could write a lot more but it's hard to get my thoughts all put down just right and I hate for people to misread what I say. But I hope that answers your question.

- Megan