To the ladies of NOM

[MoPag]

Occasionally the topic of what we would do if the other one died young would come up in discussions with my wife. Usually, my wife would say things like she didn't want me to get remarried. I never understood it. Especially if she died young, why wouldn't she want me to be able to experience the joy of marriage again if she were dead? Why wouldn't she want our kids to have a step-mom to love them after their mom's death? If I died, I would want my wife to do whatever makes her and our family happy. It just seemed unnecessarily possessive and jealous. We were talking about after one of us dies, not what we wanted to do next week. . . It all came down to not wanting to be polygamous in the celestial kingdom.

I know people IRL who have made their husbands promise not to remarry if they were to die before him. One of them did, and the husband has been faithful to his promise, but it's been lonely for him. This is a prime example of how polygamy lives on in the church today and continues to hurt both men and women.

Polygamy, not in the past but its potential to be in my future, was my biggest issue with the church when I still believed, and the only way I kept it from overpowering all the other things that I found good and helpful was to take a deep breath and yep, to put it on the proverbial shelf. All a woman has in LDS doctrine is the promise of being a queen and helpmeet and mother . . . but without even the security of being someone's one and only. She's just one of several or many. And while she may have children without number, as a heavenly mother she will be nameless and faceless and barely acknowledged.

Sorry for the rant/threadjack. It's been a hard week.

((Hugs)) I hope your week gets better!

One thing I love about the brethren on NOM is that you let us rant. (And I can get super ranty) And you even try to learn from our rants. I've been on other places in the DAMU where women are dismissed and shut down just like we were all TBMs in SS. It is sad and discouraging. But look what we can learn from each other when we actually hear each other out. I had no idea that you guys as YM were shamed for how your bodies naturally worked. I thought body shaming was just something the church did to us.

Fifi just gave us a great breakdown of the abysmal future the church gives its women. On top of that, they gas-light us into thinking we are so blessed and to have such a "wonderful" future eternity. This creates and insane amount of cog dis and sometimes we can seem, like Shadow pointed out "unnecessarily possessive and jealous." I have totally been that woman. I bet a lot of us on here have been there too.

This is why NOM is so great. We rant, we listen, we learn. We work together to untangle ourselves from the mess the church has left us in.

[Silver Girl]

I didn't want to hijack this thread, so I posted a related thread to share a few ways women are sometimes treated. As I mention in that thread, I am not trying to bash men, and am most especially not trying to bash the great men on this board. After reading the comments here, I realized that some women on the board (including me) have often felt invisible. And some men have not personally seen how that can happen.

I love you all!

Silver Girl

Here's the thread I just posted: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1570

[DPRoberts]

I know people IRL who have made their husbands promise not to remarry if they were to die before him. One of them did, and the husband has been faithful to his promise, but it's been lonely for him. This is a prime example of how polygamy lives on in the church today and continues to hurt both men and women.

Polygamy, not in the past but its potential to be in my future, was my biggest issue with the church when I still believed, and the only way I kept it from overpowering all the other things that I found good and helpful was to take a deep breath and yep, to put it on the proverbial shelf. All a woman has in LDS doctrine is the promise of being a queen and helpmeet and mother . . . but without even the security of being someone's one and only. She's just one of several or many. And while she may have children without number, as a heavenly mother she will be nameless and faceless and barely acknowledged.

Sorry for the rant/threadjack. It's been a hard week.

Apology not needed, Fifi. (And I do hope your week improves). You gave a wonderful example of a perspective on polygamy that escaped me as a TBM male. Precisely why I value the input of the women on this forum.

[shadow]

Occasionally the topic of what we would do if the other one died young would come up in discussions with my wife. Usually, my wife would say things like she didn't want me to get remarried. I never understood it. Especially if she died young, why wouldn't she want me to be able to experience the joy of marriage again if she were dead? Why wouldn't she want our kids to have a step-mom to love them after their mom's death? If I died, I would want my wife to do whatever makes her and our family happy. It just seemed unnecessarily possessive and jealous. We were talking about after one of us dies, not what we wanted to do next week. . . It all came down to not wanting to be polygamous in the celestial kingdom.

I know people IRL who have made their husbands promise not to remarry if they were to die before him. One of them did, and the husband has been faithful to his promise, but it's been lonely for him. This is a prime example of how polygamy lives on in the church today and continues to hurt both men and women.

Polygamy, not in the past but its potential to be in my future, was my biggest issue with the church when I still believed, and the only way I kept it from overpowering all the other things that I found good and helpful was to take a deep breath and yep, to put it on the proverbial shelf. All a woman has in LDS doctrine is the promise of being a queen and helpmeet and mother . . . but without even the security of being someone's one and only. She's just one of several or many. And while she may have children without number, as a heavenly mother she will be nameless and faceless and barely acknowledged.

Sorry for the rant/threadjack. It's been a hard week.

((Hugs)) I hope your week gets better!

One thing I love about the brethren on NOM is that you let us rant. (And I can get super ranty) And you even try to learn from our rants. I've been on other places in the DAMU where women are dismissed and shut down just like we were all TBMs in SS. It is sad and discouraging. But look what we can learn from each other when we actually hear each other out. I had no idea that you guys as YM were shamed for how your bodies naturally worked. I thought body shaming was just something the church did to us.

Fifi just gave us a great breakdown of the abysmal future the church gives its women. On top of that, they gas-light us into thinking we are so blessed and to have such a "wonderful" future eternity. This creates and insane amount of cog dis and sometimes we can seem, like Shadow pointed out "unnecessarily possessive and jealous." I have totally been that woman. I bet a lot of us on here have been there too.

This is why NOM is so great. We rant, we listen, we learn. We work together to untangle ourselves from the mess the church has left us in.

Reading my own words in quotation made me realize thatI was framing my wife's thinking about death and remarriage from my perspective. We were speaking of a hypothetical future with me as a widower. I simply wasn't thinking about eternal consequences. That was true at different times in my life, whether TBM, closet disaffected, or whatever I am now. I was only thinking of what this life would be like. Because of this, to me, the jealousy seemed unnecessary.

But to my wife considering the hypothetical, I can't say the jealousy was unnecessary or unwarranted. To believe that me getting remarried would result in a sister wife for eternity (even if it would get us into the highest level of the celestial kingdom ) gives rise to understandable jealousy. Polygamy definitely continues to harm.