While we were filming the first season, I got swept away by the project. It was exciting. A new energy had been injected into our lives. I was so caught up in filming and all the coordination that comes with mobilizing our entire family to move as a unit to various shooting locations that I didn’t give much thought to the fact that the show would eventually be seen by, we hoped, millions of people.
I wasn’t nearly as afraid while we were filming the first episodes as when we finished. Suddenly, the show was done. They were editing it. It was going to be on the air. There was no turning back.
The summer before the show aired, I was stressed out beyond belief. Many of our peers had parents who were put in jail during the governmental raids of the 1950s. There had been no recent raids on our communities. The raid in Texas was on an FLDS community, a completely different group from ours. But the stories in our cultural memory suddenly took on a new life for me, especially at three o’clock in the morning when I was lying awake in bed.
I couldn’t put my worries aside, even going so far as to seek counseling at one point. This annoyed Kody. Before the network announced our show as part of the fall line-up, Kody told me, “You need to think more positively. This is a positive thing for our family, our faith, and the world.” I tried, but I’m more of a realist than my husband.
After my concerns about my family, one of my gravest worries was about my job. I’m completely career minded and working means a great deal to me. To make things more difficult, I worked for the government in a job I loved. If there was any employer who would fire me, I was sure it would be this one.
In Utah, everyone always assumes that you are Mormon, especially if you don’t smoke or drink. Since I was raised LDS, it was easy for me to be a chameleon at work. I could talk the talk and walk the walk. I wanted to seem Mormon enough not to draw attention to myself. This was easy since I understood conversations about aspects of conventional Mormonism, such as “visiting teaching lessons,” and “wards.” While I understood this sort of office chatter, I always stayed on the periphery of these conversations.
Sometimes I tried to throw my coworkers off the scent about my religion and disassociate myself from all forms of Mormonism, LDS, or fundamentalist. I started drinking coffee, something Mormons are prohibited from doing. I sorely needed caffeine at work when I had five kids under the age of six! I’m not sure what my coworkers thought when I started drinking coffee, but they never once asked me about my faith.
Before we traveled to Los Angeles to introduce Sister Wives to the public, I still hadn’t come clean to my coworkers and my superiors about either my lifestyle or the show. I was nervous about having this conversation. Kody told me not to bother. He urged me to let them discover the show on their own. We had no idea it would become front-page news in Utah.
It’s not in my nature to share more than necessary, but I felt that the ethical thing to do was to tell my supervisors the truth about the show and my family. I figured if I was to be terminated, I wanted to allow them to do it discreetly before Sister Wives began.
I waited to tell them until the day before we left for California to announce the show to the Television Critics Association. After all, I wanted to keep my paycheck as long as possible. It took a moment for my bosses to get over their initial shock—not only was I a polygamist (because I didn’t look like one), I was going to be a public one. After we finished talking, they went to the Human Resources Department to see what should be done about my situation. The people in Human Resources were very open-minded. They told me that as long as I never mentioned my job, what I did in my private life was up to me—even if my private life was going to be on television.
I was thrilled with this outcome, since I had been expecting the worst. Contrary to conventional belief, Utah is quite diverse: My coworkers were a mixed bag of races, religions, and sexual persuasions. When I came out as a polygamist, I was delighted to discover no discrimination in my workplace. As I see it, God loves everyone equally regardless of lifestyle, religion, or race. I was glad to find that my superiors seemed to hold the same opinion.
Despite everything, I was still unbelievably nervous when it came time to announce the show. At the Television Critics Association, we waited backstage while they played a clip from the show. After the clip finished, we were ushered onto the stage in front of a room full of critics. There was no going back.
Immediately, a journalist from the Deseret News in Salt Lake raised his hand. “Aren’t you worried that you’re going to go to jail like Tom Green?” he asked.
My two greatest fears coalesced into this one question. First off, the world thought we were criminals who would be sent to jail. And even worse, we were being compared to Tom Green, an independent Mormon fundamentalist who had been jailed for statutory rape after marrying his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter. But ending these sorts of repulsive comparisons was reason enough to go public with our story. Although this was precisely the reaction I most feared, it also told me that what we were doing was necessary and right.
At first we were all taken aback by the journalist’s question. After a few seconds we gathered our composure. “We’re nothing like Tom Green,” we told the reporter. “That’s why we feel we have to tell our story.”
After the show was announced to the public, TLC began to air promotional clips on a pretty steady rotation. Naturally, they wanted to draw as much attention as possible to the show, so they chose the sound bite where we briefly discuss sex. We had decided to address this issue head-on and quickly get it out of the way, so we could move on with the rest of the show. But the brevity of the clip made it seem as if we were going to come out with something really juicy and salacious! Of course, the truth was just the opposite, but the promotional ads started to create serious waves in our community. To TLC’s credit, when we told them it was making our day-to-day lives more difficult, the network changed the clip immediately. We felt so honored that our requests were taken seriously.
When our church community saw the preview they understandably became upset. Many hadn’t been thrilled with our decision to do the program in the first place, and now they were worried that we were going to be sensational and improper. Once they discovered that we intended to film Robyn’s wedding reception, some members became even more concerned.
The wedding ceremony in either a fundamentalist faith or in the LDS church is sacred and private. No one outside the faith is allowed to witness this ceremony. It’s never discussed. The promo for our program aired shortly after the HBO series Big Love had filmed a sensationalized version of the temple ceremony. So when our church community got wind of the fact that cameras were going to be at Robyn’s reception, they were alarmed. Eventually we managed to convince our fellow church members that we had absolutely no intention of sensationalizing either our lives or Robyn’s wedding. Our plans were only to film the reception and show our collective happiness at Robyn and Kody’s nuptials.
Soon after the show aired, I noticed that we had already had an impact on the way the world perceived polygamy. I was flipping through the TV directory looking for something to watch when I came across a show called The Lost Boys. The brief blurb described the show as being about “Members of the Warren Jeffs FLDS sect.” This was progress. A few months earlier, I’m sure that the description would have been about “polygamist Mormons.” But now people were beginning to differentiate between the sects, and understand that we had nothing to do with Warren Jeffs and his abusive practices.
Although the show helped the public to understand our faith a little better, it also led to misunderstandings within our own family. I don’t think anyone in the family was prepared for the emotional toll of our “couch sessions.” Suddenly, what was supposed to be a lighthearted look at our fairly normal family turned into an investigation into our emotional scars and private struggles.
When we set out to do the show, we imagined it would something like 19 Kids and Counting, which follows the daily life of the Duggar fami
ly. This show is light and frothy with an emphasis on family. We thought our show would touch on the sweeter side of our life and never probe beneath the surface. We were totally unprepared for the reality of confronting our issues in front of the TV cameras.
Initially, these sessions were intended to allow us to recap events on the show, but we found that we were unearthing emotional hurts that we had skimmed over to keep the peace. There are times when we don’t watch our words and put our feet in our mouths.
When Kody let slip that he had selected Robyn’s wedding dress himself, even after Meri, Christine, and I had taken her shopping as an important bonding experience, Christine was devastated and walked off set. The show has to fit into an hour of television, so the necessary edits made it look as if she returned immediately. The truth is that she didn’t come back for three days. We were a mess after that session. It took a while for us to heal, but we are stronger for it.
Robyn is usually instrumental after a particularly difficult couch session. We really give her mediation skills a workout. Sometimes she starts the healing process right there on the set, not letting us leave the room until we’ve settled whatever troubling topic our producer has asked us to talk about.
Misunderstandings within the family are not the only problems that have cropped up in light of the show. The way the media perceives and treats us has been something of a surprise. Educated, intelligent people have made strange and off-color comments that have not just shocked us but offended us on a very deep level.
When people hear the word polygamy, their minds often jump to salacious conclusions. For some reason, many intelligent Americans cannot differentiate between a healthy, polygamous family and a man cheating on his wife—or even a harem! On our first publicity tour, during a preinterview for a nationwide talk show, the interviewer asked us some unbelievably personal questions about our intimate lives. We were asked about whether we compare our sex lives behind Kody’s back and if we could comment on the difference in the intimate natures of each marriage. Our publicist jumped to our defense and demanded to know what woman in her right mind would answer the sort of questions we were being asked. Our publicist pointed out to this interviewer that she certainly would not ask the same questions of other reality show stars—not even on the most sexually provocative shows. We were so grateful to her for stepping in, because I’d been left speechless at the interviewer’s complete lack of tact!
Of course, I understand that people want to know about our private lives. Everyone always wants to find something scandalous in something pure. I hope that the show has firmly established that we are involved in four separate marriages and we keep our personal intimacy as private as possible. None of us want to know what goes on between Kody and another wife in their private time.
Of course, the show has made it more and more difficult to remain unaware of how Kody and my sister wives behave in their individual marriages. In fact, since much of our lives is televised, I’m confronted with a great deal more of these other marriages than I was comfortable with in the past. I have to do my best to fight the impulse to compare my marriage to those of my sister wives. There are certain things on the show that I’m not comfortable watching, such as Kody’s intimate moments with another wife. (Robyn’s honeymoon certainly falls into this category.) I’m not a jealous person, but I just don’t care to see how Kody and Meri or Kody and Christine interact. This has always been one of my personal boundaries. It’s the problem of apples once again. This show has made it necessary for me to find the security and strength to not want apples simply because someone else has them. If I want a pear, I’m going to ask Kody for a pear.
Even though interviewers often tried to dig for something juicy and salacious in our private lives—for exactly the kind of thing we never discuss—I enjoyed myself on our publicity tours. I love watching the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into our show. I enjoy learning about marketing and media and the business side of the reality TV business. Since I handle the contracts for our family, I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge about the financial side of the entertainment industry—something I’d never imagined I’d come into contact with.
I have always loved to travel. With six kids and a sixty-hour work week, for most of my adult life, travel was put on the back burner. Once we began to promote the show, we were able to visit major cities as a single-family unit—something I never imagined would be possible. This freedom to be ourselves is unbelievably liberating. It’s almost a luxurious feeling to go around in public as a family without fear or shame. Before this, only Meri, the legal wife, would go with Kody to any official functions. But now we go as a group. Whether or not people condone what we do, everyone acknowledges me as Kody’s wife. The simple peace of not having to remember to use my “cover story” has been a relief. I love being able to express my pride in being Kody’s wife without fear or anxiety.
Naturally, the show has provided me opportunities to experience other things I would never have been able to, such as taking the kids on a camping trip to Big Bear, renting a cabin in the mountains at Christmas, and going snowmobiling. But there was a damper put on things very quickly. The Lehi City police department announced on the day our show premiered that they had been investigating our family since we introduced the show at the Television Critics Association.
We introduced the show in September and by November it was clear that we were going to have to leave Utah or risk the safety of our family. We decided not to tell anyone—not our friends, coworkers, or even the producers of our show. We didn’t want to make a big deal out of our decision and we wanted to protect our children while we figured out our next move. In fact, we told TLC only shortly before we moved. We obviously had a production schedule lined up and this was a huge change in those plans. We really weren’t sure they would continue the show, but we had made our minds up as a family that it was the best thing for us to move out of state.
We felt it would be best for our kids if we put some distance between our family and some of the emotional stressors in Utah. It was a heartbreaking moment when I explained to my children that we were moving to Las Vegas. Madison, my oldest daughter, began screaming, “You can’t make me go! I’m going to run away.” Hunter, my second boy, just sobbed and sobbed. My oldest, Logan, was stoic. He simply squared his shoulders and said, “Okay, let’s do what we need to do.”
It was devastating having to separate the kids from their friends and take them out of the big house. But it is my belief that everything happens for a reason. The move to Las Vegas has been instrumental in exposing our children to a more diverse culture. This is an important step to help them decide what faith they will follow when the time comes. For some of my children, I think polygamy would be an appropriate choice. For others, I’m not yet sure. I know that most of them are eager to return to Utah. The morality evident in Utah still appeals to many of the kids, and for this I am grateful.
However, exposure to different types of people and different lifestyles will help my kids make better and more informed choices. I’m sure when they are off at college—and the only thing I ask of them is that they go to college—they will look back on their time in Las Vegas not as a trial but as a period of intense and important growth.
I have also seen some wonderful benefits for myself in the move to Las Vegas. Since we are living openly for the first time ever, I no longer have to censor myself and hide my home life from new acquaintances. I have a much richer and diverse social life in Las Vegas than I ever had in Utah or Wyoming. I no longer worry about people coming into our houses. In fact, I am always excited to welcome our neighbors—something I never imagined I’d be able to do back in Utah.
Despite that fact that for the first time in my life I have a much larger circle of friends, leaving Utah has also been a period of personal upheaval for me. Obviously, my government job didn’t travel with me. I struggled through a period of unemployment, which was difficult for a gal who had always defined herself by her career. I
did a lot of behind-the-scenes family administration, but it didn’t take the place of a full-time job.
Kody and I had both more and less time together. Less time, as Kody was spread thin between four separate homes, and more time because we were all looking for work. Kody and I really struggled with each other. When I’m yanked out of familiar surroundings, I often begin to question my place in the world and in the family. Not having a job for the first time in ages really shook me. I have always identified myself as a career woman, and now, for the first time in my life, I was a stay-at-home mom.
Shortly after we arrived in Vegas, I found myself in the throes of a full-fledged identity crisis. I was miserable and I took that misery out on others, especially Kody. I was on a veritable fault-finding mission. He couldn’t do anything right. Every issue I’d ever had with him in the past began to bubble up and boil over. Our whole lives were in upheaval. I knew that in order for things to settle down both physically and emotionally, Kody and I would have to clean house, throw out the trash that had accumulated in our marriage, and move forward. But first, we had to hit rock bottom.
I didn’t know who I was anymore, and Kody was as lost as I was. We had to work to an even deeper level of honesty with each other. It was a very hard time. At one point, we even looked at each other, and for the first time in our lives said, “Are we sure we married the right people?”
For two weeks, we could barely be civil to each other. Being alone was unpleasant to say the least. I was in a foul, dark place, and Kody, instead of trying to lift my spirits, sunk down with me. There was no sweetness and little love. After eighteen years of marriage, we were being downright, brutally mean to each other. I knew that this couldn’t continue. I didn’t want our relationship to disintegrate. So one day, I decided to say something caring to Kody. He immediately responded with something loving in return. And that was all it took.
Sister Wives Page 21
