The schedule hadn’t been changed, but somehow she still had a problem with it. And Carolyn was vocal when she had an issue with something. She wanted to make sure that I was aware that she was displeased with her life and circumstances. She clearly didn’t want me to have anything. She didn’t like that I vacationed with Alec, and she dislike when my time with Alec fell on the non-Muslim holidays.
She text me during the day while Alec was still with her. The text said that Alec had been doing all types of things to her sexually. I wonder what my business with that was and why she was inclined to share it. But, of course I knew.
Carolyn wasn’t shy with the message, but then again, she never was. She was descriptive as to what it was. She was telling me how he was going to put certain parts of his anatomy into her orifice and was saying how he was going to slob her down and stuff.
Alec was a bit later than usual getting home to me that evening. I knew Carolyn must have been up to something to keep him from arriving in a timely manner.
When Alec arrived, I let him know that she was trying to ruin our evening. Alec said he was late because Carolyn wanted him and her to read the Quran together before he left. I’m like,
WOW, she used Quran reading as an excuse to keep Alec there with her. I won’t touch that. God sees and knows all things.
While I knew she tried to ruin my time with Alec, knowing what her motive was, I was determined that she wouldn’t get a rise out of me. I simply ignored her. Alec and I enjoyed our scrumptious meal and had a relaxing evening together afterward.
Three days later, when it was time for him to leave me, he left late to return to her. I was pleased with Alec that he let her know that she hadn’t achieved a thing by keeping him there with her the extra time on Thanksgiving Day. He made up the time with me.
It wasn’t the last incident to occur with Carolyn, Alec and me. She was tireless when it came to trying to annoy me, especially now that I was no longer fazed by her. I was no longer the way I was years ago. I didn’t expect that she’d do something devious to me during her vacation, but how could I call it? She was good for surprising me.
As you know by now, she always takes her vacation with Alec during the Christmas holiday. So, here we are; it’s Christmas time, and Alec is with her for her vacation. Her vacation didn’t get off to a good start. She couldn’t foresee that her job would call her into work. It was one of those type of jobs that expects managers to be available anytime she or he is summoned. She was a night manager still at the Walgreens.
When they called her in, she tried to get Alec to change the schedule to accommodate her. He didn’t bother me with it other than to call me and let me know what was happening. I knew Alec didn’t want to do that song and dance with me again. He wouldn’t want me flipping out over a schedule once more. He could see how well I was doing. He knew it was wrong to subject me to a change in schedule.
Alec and I had come a long way in keeping peace and tranquility in our marriage. He didn’t want us to quarrel about the schedule, and I respected him for it. We had gone down that road before, and it wasn’t pleasant. Neither Alec or I were eager to go down that path again. We would prefer to stay clear of the issue entirely.
She, apparently, was very upset that he wouldn’t change the schedule. I had never had those issues that she did when it came to vacations. With her, thing always seem to go haywire. There always seemed to be some obstacle in the way of her being able to have a nice time with Alec during their vacation together.
I wonder if it had anything to do with her always trying to wreck my vacation time with him. You know the saying, “What goes around comes around.” My mom always said, “If you dig a grave for someone else, you better dig two, because the other one will be for you.” Carolyn always tried to wreck my vacations, but hers got wrecked instead.
Anyhow, the next morning, I woke up for Fajr (Morning Prayer) the way I usually do, but this morning was Christmas day. When I checked my cell phone, there was a text message. The phone number for the incoming text was Carolyn’s.
I looked at the message and, lo and behold, there was a pic of Alec’s naked penis. She had decided to up the ante this time around. Up till this moment, she hadn’t done anything this risqué. She, apparently, had taken the pic while he was sleeping. It was an up close pic of his full package.
Even though Carolyn had pulled stunts in the past, I hadn’t been expecting anything of the sort. I was stunned, and my eyes couldn’t believe what they saw. She was taking it too far. I couldn’t move. It was as though I was frozen still. I had to think for a moment whether I was awake or still sleeping and dreaming.
I looked at the pic again and there was text to go along with the pic. It said what I should do to Alec’s penis. Furthermore, she called me a *itch. Her exact statement was “s*ck it, *itch.”
I pulled myself together, regained my composure, and prepared myself to offer the salat prayer, as I had set out to do when I woke up.
I couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened. Thus, it came down to what to do about it. Should I send a message to Carolyn and confront her? I discarded the idea immediately. I’d be playing right into her hands. That would be giving Carolyn exactly what she wanted which was attention. It could also open the door to unpleasant interactions between us and I was done with all that.
I wasn’t going to give Carolyn the satisfaction that she seemed to require so much. I further debated with myself about what I should do, and eventually I came to a decision. A couple of hours later, I forwarded the pic and message to Alec. I let him know what she had done. After all, it was a pic of his penis that she was sending over the airwaves, out into cyberspace.
It seemed only fair that he should know what transpired. He text messaged me back and needless to say, he was furious. He said,
“She will pay for what she did.”
He wasn’t playing. I could tell by his text that he meant business. She wasn’t going to get away with it, not this time.
I didn’t hear more from Alec until he came home as scheduled. It was the day before New Year’s Eve, and he took me out to dinner. He mentioned that he would not be going back to Carolyn when scheduled. He said he took her three days from her as a punishment. I listened calmly and didn’t input. We just enjoyed our dinner and said nothing more about what she had done or about him taking away her days.
I thought Alec may regret what he had decided about her days, but he didn’t. He was lively, jovial and quite content for us to be together during that time, and he was off work those extra days as well. I was in my glory, spending quality, joyous time with my husband. I did feel a tinge of sorrow for Carolyn, which I, myself, was surprised to feel.
It is strange that all those years, I was acting out and was trying to get her to acknowledge me, even if I had to do terrible things to get her to respond. I had been driving myself crazy, doing things so that Carolyn could see that I exist. Who does that–marry someone else husband and doesn’t acknowledge his other wife?
She had thoroughly ignored me, and I was left appearing to be the crazy one. I was perceived as the lunatic. I exhibited obsessive and compulsive behavior. I was obsessed with her and acted compulsively towards her. She had been playing me the whole time. She had played me like a fiddle. Alec had always said to her and to me that one of us had to be the “bigger person.” I never paid much attention to that cliché.
During that time when I was acting out, she was acting to be the “bigger person.” She had been the calm one who took all of my acting out in stride. All the time, she was perpetrating a fraud. It had all been for show. She stopped acting and showed her real self once I pulled myself together. Once I straightened up and flew right, she went crazy.
All the while I was working on myself. I was gradually growing in faith and getting better, while she wore a mask and lived a lie. Now that I’ve changed, I no longer care that she is a part of Alec’s life. I finally have come to accept God’s decision that I am a part of a polygamous marriage.
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She can’t take it now that basically I ignore her. The tables had turned. Now, she was acting the way I had in the past. I’m running from her, and she’s chasing me now. Remember what a chase is about. What you chase runs from you, and what you run from chases you. I love that line, and I’ll never forget it. It proved true.
Here she is apparently wanting me to acknowledge that she exists. She went overboard to indoctrinate herself into my life and my space. But now, it no longer matters. I made a conscious decision to let Carolyn alone and no matter what, I’m sticking with it.
To this very day, nothing has changed. Carolyn and I still don’t communicate with each other. She is Alec’s wife, based on what he says and what she says. I only have their word that they are married. For her it’s probably make believe.
I don’t intend to have anything to do with her. Gone are the days when I tried to reach out to her. She and I have absolutely nothing in common other than that she is involved with the man whom I am married to.
Whether she is Muslim and how she and Alec decided about their relationship is their business, not mine. I’ve investigated enough to know where I stand in my dealings with her. Now, I’m no longer interested in finding out more. She not worth my time, nor trouble.
I learned a valuable lesson from all this. I learned that I must listen to God at all costs. He says, don’t take anyone outside your rank into your intimacy. I should have known at the onset that Carolyn and I were not of the same rank, and there was no chance of us getting along. Yet, I pursued her and suffered the consequences for it. I sank to an all-time low, chasing behind her. Why and for what?
She had just taken the vow to be Muslim, and I suspect the reason wasn’t because of the religion. There was no way that she and I could have had a meeting of the minds and been on the same wavelength when she apparently cared nothing about the religion.
Besides, there was no way that faith could have entered her heart so soon after taking the vow to be Muslim. God lets us know that faith cannot enter a person’s heart so quickly when she was so far away from faith just yesterday.
If a sister-in-faith were to ask me for words of advice about polygamy, I’d say, just because your husband has married another woman doesn’t mean that you have to be her friend or have any dealings with her at all. Investigate based on what God tells us in the Quran. If she’s not a believer in Islam, your only obligation is to be kind and cordial to her, if you communicate with her.
I’d say, expect to have turbulence and rocky roads that you will travel on your journey in polygamy. And expect the unexpected, which leads to what came next in my life on the journey.
A peculiar twist is that I have so much joy and happiness in my life now, and nobody is more surprised than I am. When all of this was at its peak, I hadn’t thought it possible, but here we are. I had to go through so much to get to a good place. At a point, it had seemed that it was never going to end, or it was going to destroy me, but I was wrong.
While everything that I had to go through was painful and tested the very core of my being, it had to happen. And I am the stronger for it now. Maybe I bent, but I thank God because I didn’t break.
I started out on this journey of polygamy as a Muslim. I had been learning and living Islam for years. I thought I had it going on. I thought I had myself together. I thought that I was a believer. I had small trials and tests back then, but I had a mentor (my wali), helping me along the way. Nothing seemed monumental to the point that I couldn’t handle it. Everything seemed minimal and manageable. Life was going so well.
And then, bam, it hit me. Polygamy knocked me for a loop. Polygamy hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had no cover. It hit me hard, and it affected me in every possible way imaginable. Everything that had ever happened to me before polygamy became a part of my life had been child’s play.
I thought I had avoided a life of polygamy. I thought I had escaped it and was so far away from it that it was virtually impossible for me to have to live it. I had let Alec know from the onset that I had no liking for it and didn’t want to live it. I had done all that I could do to avert it from ever being a part of my life.
I had forgotten that I wasn’t the one in charge of me and my life; God was and is. God willed a polygamous marriage for me. What I have and what I am are what He willed. I didn’t know what a test was until I got the real heavy duty one. Polygamy was it for me.
When God asks, do you think that you won’t be tested like those who came before you? Well, I guess I did. I certainly wasn’t expecting what I got. It knocked me out cold and it was a long road to recovery. While I was at the peak of devastation, it seemed that I forgot all that I had learned in my Islamic studies.
I behaved and thought the same as any woman who thought herself deserving and wasn’t getting her way. I didn’t see the reality of God. I forgot to focus on God, my Creator. Instead, I focused my attention on humans whom God created and the problems that I could do nothing about.
I lost my focus and my priorities became skewed. I thank God for taking me beyond that phase and for making me a stronger person for everything I had to go through.
No, it wasn’t a stress free journey. It took me years to get to where I am today. I went through an awful lot. I had so much pain. My heart ached. It was broken. It was so broken that I didn’t think it could ever be mended again.
I thought surely this was the end of me, and it would kill me. It was hard, and it hurt so much. The feelings that I had weren’t anything that I can adequately put into words or explain. Another sister-in-faith who was going through what I was going through said, “It’s the mother of all pains.”
No one could imagine unless she goes through it herself. During the time when I was at my lowest, I committed a lot of wrong for which I am terribly sorry. I couldn’t have avoided the pitfalls of wrongdoings, as I hadn’t found my source of strength yet.
I know that God is an Oft-Forgiving God and a Most Merciful God. I pray that He forgave me for all the sins that I committed on my journey in polygamy. While it hadn’t seemed that way at the time, in retrospect, it was a journey that I needed to make to grow nearer to Him. At my lowest, I had seen at a certain stage that only He could help me, and I had to drawer nearer to Him.
I’m infinitely grateful to God. God says we cannot enter Paradise without being tested. While it is not stated explicitly what our tests would be, they come in different forms. I think polygamy was a test for me, and a huge one it was.
I got through it with the help and permission of God. I won’t minimize it and say that it was easy for me, because it wasn’t. It broke me into pieces, and then I had to pick up the pieces and make something meaningful out of them.
I had to live it and learn it. I had to try to put into effect all that I learned from reading the Holy Quran. Only then did God change my heart. He then gave me the comfort and the ease that He promises the believers.
I was not a believer when I started the journey, but I didn’t know it. I had thought that I was but when I had to go through this phase of my life, I could see very clearly that I was far from it.
No one can enter Jannah/Paradise with an impure heart. Sometimes we must go through certain trials to help get our hearts purified. Polygamy could be a part of it for some. God knows best.
I hope my story helps others who find themselves in polygamous marriages and are dealing with the struggle. Let me tell you this: it’s doable. If it’s a test, you can pass it and find yourselves happier than you’ve ever been in life. You wouldn’t want your life to be any other way.
There is light at the end of that tunnel. I mean that sincerely and I want you to believe it. Thank you for taking the incredible journey with me.
God bless!
About the Author
Robin Johnson is the founder, owner and administrator of the blog www.polygamy411.com that launched in February 2009. She revised the blog in September 2014, and made it a support group as well. It is a blog for all who have
a positive interest in polygamy.
Johnson is a veteran detective. She worked for a law enforcement agency in her home town for many years and is now self-employed. She has specialized training and experience in investigating domestic violence cases, and expertise in interviewing and helping victims of domestic abuse.
Having a sincere passion to help others, she uses the education, knowledge and skills that she acquired from her profession to help women in polygamous marriages.
Johnson lives in NJ with her husband.
It is with great pleasure that she presents to you, “The Silent Tears of Polygamy”: Based on a True Story of an American Female Living in the US.
URL for the Silent Tears of Polygamy is:
www.thesilenttearsofpolygamy.com
Contact Information:
Email address: [email protected]
The Silent Tears of Polygamy Page 23
