There is an affiliate link in this post.

I watch a handful of reality TV shows. All reality TV shows seem to have a certain amount of hate-followers. It feels t me that the disgust for Sister Wives is more common than the other shows I watch. The most common complaint I see is that the husband is ‘creepy’. I’ve never found him creepy. He’s certainly quirky, and I’ve definitely cringed a time or two. The worst by far was a comment he once made to his teenager daughter about how hormones come out of your mouth when you kiss. I cringed pretty severely at that, and I do feel like his discussions with his daughters’ partners is a bit….awkward sometimes. However, when thinking about how much more closed-minded the majority of their religion is, I feel like they have progressed a lot. Another really common complaint is the belief that he secretly only loves one wife, and they almost always say it’s Robyn.

I’ve watched the show for many years and while I do understand why people see more ‘romantic’ type of feelings between Robyn and Kody, I don’t feel that he genuinely loves her more than the others. They had “new relationship energy” in the first few seasons which I think is a lot of what made people feel that way. In more recent seasons, they’ve been very open about the fact that Meri has a strained relationship with him right now. However, I see people claiming that his feelings for Christine and Janelle are also lacking, and I just don’t see that. Early on, I noticed that he had a very light, playful relationship with Christine. She seems to be more outgoing and just more of a jokster than his other wives, so I feel that it makes sense that their love is expressed a bit more playfully than romantically on screen. With Janelle, I thought I felt a bit of a distance between them in the early seasons. It felt like she had less time on TV to begin with, and their relationship felt very matter-of-fact, which I read as lacking in deep emotions. However, after reading Becoming Sister Wives (their book) I felt like I grew to understand Janelle much better. She is a very logical and reasonable person. She did not grow up polygamist, and I believe her to be the most liberal of the bunch. It’s definitely a generalization on my part, but I feel like conservatives tend to lean heavily on their instincts and feelings, Kody, Christine and Robyn all seem like people who follow their heart first. I think Janelle is one to argue things about between her heart and her mind a bit more than simply following her feelings. I think this is a big part of why she often seems to be the one who kind of says “wait a minute, what about (this problem)?” or “Have you guys thought about this or that detail?”. Anyway, I’ve grown to believe that the reason her relationship with Kody is a bit more ‘matter of fact’ than the other wives is because that is her personality.

I certainly don’t agree with all of their beliefs, but I love that they are rather open-minded compared to the culture they came from. The fact that they are open to their children changing religions, and getting married to a same-sex partner, is truly progressive for them, in my opinion. I think they mean well.

And ultimately, I just have a hard time understanding why people feel the need to make plural marriage illegal, when the reason people think it is wrong is because of child marriage and underage pregnancy. It seems simple to me, that the best way to truly help girls in situations like existed in the Warren Jeffs sect, is to let plural families “come into the light” and not be criminalized if they are simply having multiple partners. Then once they don’t have to live in the shadows, it may be easier to catch on to the ones who are marrying children, or even impregnating children – then we can prosecute those very important crimes.

I can’t imagine ever living polygamy personally, but it surprises me that others think we have a right to say each person can only marry one person, whether it’s based in religion or not. For me, it comes down to live and let live. If nobody is being harmed, why should we intervene?