Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage by Kody Brown, Meri Brown, Janelle Brown, Christine Brown, Robyn Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

then she will tell her father, who then speaks to the father of the husband in the family. Now, Janelle didn’t exactly play by the rules, but since my father had been involved in trying to find her a husband, it seemed appropriate enough.
    Ever since Meri and I got engaged, we had affirmed our commitment to the principle of plural marriage. There are many couples who are polygamous in belief, but live monogamously—in other words, while they believe the principle, they don’t live the principle and never take other wives into their families. Meri and I did not want to be one of those couples. We both felt that we’d been called to open our family to additional wives. We’d been married for three years and had three wonderful years of monogamy.
    If Meri had misgivings about Janelle, she didn’t voice them to me. She seemed happy enough to welcome Janelle into our home. Back then, we were still very young and didn’t have the wisdom or the vocabulary to talk about our deepest emotions. So if something was troubling her, I fear she would have been unable to express it in a way I understood.
    Meri and I moved back to Wyoming to get ready to bring Janelle into our family. We had to find a house that was big enough for all of us. Janelle and I were officially courting, butthings were moving quickly. For various reasons, courtships for second and third wives are traditionally quite short. The most important of these is that it’s neither appropriate for a married man to be spending excessive time with a woman who is not his wife, nor is it fair to the other wives to sit at home during a long courtship.
    Even in comparison to most plural courtships, Janelle’s and mine was particularly short. We managed to go on only one date. And it wasn’t much of a date. It took place sometime after New Year’s and it was freezing cold. I had been working a fifteen-hour shift, so when I finally got off work, it was late. The town where Meri and I were living in Wyoming was really small. By the time I picked Janelle up, all the restaurants were closed. So we drove around in the dark. Janelle’s mother had given me a ring that had been hers. I put the ring on Janelle’s finger and asked her to marry me. It was more of a formality than an actual proposal. It was dark, it was late, and it was cold.
    Two weeks later we got married. We had a spiritual ceremony on another bitterly cold January night. Then we went on our honeymoon. We had no plan. We just drove and drove, staying wherever we felt like stopping.
     
Janelle
    Except for that brief car ride during which Kody proposed, until our honeymoon, the only time we’d been alone was when we went out to retrieve something from the cow pen on the ranch. Although I was looking forward to finally having the freedom to be alone together, it was awkward at first.
    Our courtship had been chaste. We’d only shared one kissand it was a very innocent one—when a man is married it’s extremely inappropriate to have any physical intimacy during a courtship.
    During the first few days of our honeymoon, it was difficult for me to consider our relationship as a married couple. Even though we’d had the spiritual ceremony, which committed us to each other in a newer, deeper way, I felt no closer to Kody than I had a week earlier. We had been friends, but now we had to learn to be husband and wife.
    I know now that Kody and I weren’t in love then. But there wasn’t a moment that I didn’t believe I’d made the right decision, not just about Kody, but about my new faith.
    When I announced my intention to convert from LDS to fundamentalism, I was challenged by many members of my family. They believed I was not just making a mistake but committing a sin. Nevertheless, I never once wavered in my decision to accept the beliefs of my new religion. In marrying Kody, I alienated my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandmother. My sister, too, initially rebuffed me. Although it was hard for me to