Sister Wives: 5 Threads, 5 Adults...Or Are There?

[LacyMay]

5 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

Mariah picked a bedroom in Meri's house based on where the sun rose.  She had a choice of several rooms.  Whether it was smaller or larger than her room in the plyg house was somewhat up to her. 

Early on Meri did dote on Mariah, they were super close. Meri also advocated really hard (to some annoyance) for Mariah to be able to attend her exorbitantly expensive university, she seemed to feel awful when it looked like they wouldn't get into their house on time because MARIAH wanted to be in the house. 

TBH Mariah has at times (especially early on) been the teenager who has grated on me the most, it's likely that some of it was learned behaviour from Meri but she has come off as spoiled, selfish and immature. (ETA) How much of that is Mariah, how much of it is TV and how much is a result of the weird/co dependent relationship that her and Meri had I don't know.

I didn't watch a lot of the catfish season but from what I saw Meri worked to try and repair her and Mariah's relationship and Mariah was angry, miserable and having none of it. Even Kody admitted to being concerned that Mariah was trying to taint him against Meri. 

Meri is not my favorite wife, I think on the show she comes off as flighty, immature and selfish. But Mariah has definitely (in my mind at least) inherited some of those traits.

[Fun Undies]

On 1/21/2018 at 10:53 PM, Alice in Fundieland said:

@mstee They said they realized with a new baby and some other challenges they’ve faced that they need to move back, plus they want to be closer to the family for the baby. Several times it was mentioned that they’re both still in college so it seems they’re hoping for help from the family while they finish school.

That's all good and fine and everything - I just hope that there was actual discussion involved, and it wasn't an "assumption".  Like, "Hey we're pregnant, also, we need a room."

On 1/22/2018 at 1:42 PM, DugFan said:

OK, someone mentioned it earlier so I'm going to start it.  Feel free to add. The Tony/Mykelti wedding drinking game:

One shot if/when:

1. Tony tries to get Kody to pay for something or 2 shots if assumes that Kody will pay for something.

2. The word "taco(s)" is used.

3. Tony vetoes one of Mykelti's decisions.

4. Christine painfully talks about how much she just LOVES Tony!

5. The word "mocktails" is used (just cracks me up)

 

 

Disclaimer: FJ is not responsible for alcohol poisoning 

On 1/22/2018 at 3:23 PM, OyToTheVey said:

Because Meri stated that she didn't want to parent all those kids. She wasn't interested. Which I don't understand the point of staying in a plural marriage if you don't want to parent other mothers children. 

I still feel conflicted about that statement . . . on one hand, why go into polygamy if that's somehow off the table?  Seems like a major point for the "positive" on the polygamy-front. 

On the other hand, every woman deals with infertility differently, and it might cause her a lot of emotional pain to get close to other kids that aren't her own.  But she also dragged out her answer for Robyn's surrogacy offer (and Kody's suggestion of IVF).  I think she was ready to say "no" from the get go, but didn't know "how" to tell them without possibly "offending" them.

Then again, she seemed fine with raising the older kids alongside Mariah - I think she struggled with the idea of raising toddlers and babies, when she herself hasn't raised in 20 years?   

21 hours ago, Berta McGee said:

Am I wrong on thinking that TLC pays for the weddings they broadcast?

I think TLC might offer a certain flat fee for broadcasting rights.  But obviously that's just a guess.

[Rosalie]

I think Meri would have been better off if the family lived in one shared house, similar to the one in Utah. Then everything would have been more “all mine is yours” and “one for all, all for one” (sometimes the cliches explain things best...). When under the same roof and in a shared garden, it would have been more natural for the kids to go to Meri, and it would have been easier for Meri to pitch in without intruding “another family”. B/c living in separate houses makes the Browns to four families, not one big one.

I do hope Aspyn will be happy with her spouse. And that she does not let herself be pressured into polygamy. I do believe polygamy can work, but seeing how unhappy Christine often has been and have alienated Meri is, it’s easy to see that it’s not for everyone. And choosing it b/c religion, and/or tradition says so, is not really a choice...

[Berta McGee]

I too wondered when they choose that location, how it would affect the family dynamic. It seems like sharing is a major part of polygamy. 

Once you're living separate lives you're just getting a part time husband and none of the benefits. 

[Eternalbluepearl]

7 minutes ago, Berta McGee said:

Once you're living separate lives you're just getting a part time husband and none of the benefits. 

I think this is why all of the wives and Kody have seemed awkward with each other for a long time. Only Janelle and Christine have ever seemed close to me and at times, Meri and Robyn. 

[Rosalie]

43 minutes ago, Eternalbluepearl said:

I think this is why all of the wives and Kody have seemed awkward with each other for a long time. Only Janelle and Christine have ever seemed close to me and at times, Meri and Robyn. 

Yes. Now they’re more like four neighbourhood families, not one family.

I also think they would have been  much better off economical in one big house than in four separate houses. Both due to building expenses and to household expenses. 

[OyToTheVey]

@Fun Undies I understand your point. But I also think that Meri stopped being in the family after that catfish incident. Because didn't one of the girls, Ysabel, live with her for a while?They never really talked about it but they made it sound like she's living with Meri full time. I guess she felt more included when Mariah was little and they lived in that huge house. It felt like she had more kids than one.

[Pretzel]

Thank you @Coconut Flan for explaining how the four separate houses and their floor plans came to be. I didn't consider that they had to follow regulations for the floor plans. I do see now how the layout of the houses was unfortunate yet necessary.

That also explains why they built four separate houses and not one big house. Four separate houses in a development area have higher resell value and they probably struggled selling their plyg house in Utah, so they didn't want to go through that again. I don't know if the building lot in the cult-de-sac would've been big enough for such a big house anyway. I assume that when there are 4 families, with who knows how many people, the house would have had to be humongous. A really smart architect might have come up with the right ideas to maximize the space and found a reasonable balance between common and separate areas. They could have shared a mud room, a laundry room, storage rooms, a huge living room where they could all gather, a play room for the littles...

 But I digress. The Browns chose not to have one big mansion and some of the Browns chose not to be too involved with the family that could have lived as one in a big mansion. Oh my. 

[Berta McGee]

Yes, they could have chosen their own land and their own builder but went with an established neighborhood of mcmansions in Las Vegas instead. 

[Coconut Flan]

The building codes in Las Vegas would make a typical plyg house difficult to get approved.  They could have bought or built an actual apartment building, but I don't think that was glamorous enough for Kody.  They could not have built any different kind of house in the cul-de-sac.  The builder already had approval for one set of plans and that's what they had to choose from. 

[Berta McGee]

1 minute ago, Coconut Flan said:

The building codes in Las Vegas would make a typical plyg house difficult to get approved.  They could have bought or built an actual apartment building, but I don't think that was glamorous enough for Kody.  They could not have built any different kind of house in the cul-de-sac.  The builder already had approval for one set of plans and that's what they had to choose from. 

That was true when I had a house built as well. There was a stack of designs to choose from. They could be modified slightly. Move a door or a window for example but we had to stick with the plans. 

I didn't express it well in my last comment (shh I'm at work)  but I was trying to say that the Brown's chose that neighborhood in Las Vegas. They may have explained their reasoning on the show but I'm not aware of it. 

No one said you must live in this neighborhood of big expensive houses and each have your own many bedroom house. A quick search of public records will tell you, they are in fact very expensive houses. And the show will tell you they're very big. 

There must be 100s of choices of places for them to flee to if they're afraid they'll be persecuted in Utah. I feel like they didn't think this out well.

[Carm_88]

I have gone through periods of feeling bad for Meri and thinking that she's insufferable. I think that Meri lost a lot when they left Utah and then Mariah graduated. She really didn't have anyone. Kody wasn't too into having another child and then she lost the only thing that she really had, legal wife status. She got catfished and humiliated, when she thought that she was moving on with the perfect guy. I can see her growing apart from everyone else. 

Polygamy isn't for everyone and maybe Meri needs to get out of it! 

[usedbicycle]

5 hours ago, Rosalie said:

I do hope Aspyn will be happy with her spouse. And that she does not let herself be pressured into polygamy. 

Fun fact: Did you know Aspyn's fiancé is the brother of Vanessa Aldredge from Seeking Sister Wife? (On the right in the photo)

He's definitely the closest Brown fiancé to the polygamist lifestyle. 

 

[LacyMay]

1 hour ago, usedbicycle said:

Fun fact: Did you know Aspyn's fiancé is the brother of Vanessa Aldredge from Seeking Sister Wife? (On the right in the photo)

He's definitely the closest Brown fiancé to the polygamist lifestyle. 

Where did you get that juicy tidbit? I don't think they will end up living polygamy but it's interesting that he has such strong ites to it. Were his parents polygamist as well?

 

[usedbicycle]

TLC disclosed it in this article, which I'm kind of surprised about. 

I went down a giant rabbit hole last night looking up these families' social media. The Briney family is especially interesting. Drew is quite a character behind his nerdy attorney look. He writes fantasy fiction and was once a jazz musician and professional juggler. His third wife Angela was infertile for 20 years but she conceived with Drew shortly after their wedding at the age of 41. She credits a special blessing Drew prayed over her body during their honeymoon for healing her. I could keep going on... these people fascinate me. 

I don't want to hijack the Brown thread though. Is Seeking Sister Wives being discussed anywhere else on FJ?

[Rosalie]

3 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

The building codes in Las Vegas would make a typical plyg house difficult to get approved.  They could have bought or built an actual apartment building, but I don't think that was glamorous enough for Kody.  They could not have built any different kind of house in the cul-de-sac.  The builder already had approval for one set of plans and that's what they had to choose from. 

And I think it was not a wise choice to go for a neighbourhood/city/state with such strickt building regulations.

Frankly, I never understood why Vegas, of all places. And I wonder how much each of the adults really had to say in that discussion. Remember they had serious problems getting places to rent when they moved there, they nded up living quite far apart, and then they struggled to find land to build on that were big enough and not too expensive. I can’t recall hearing any of the wives saying “Vegas baby”, if anything they were concerned reg. getting work/income, explaining to the children why they had to move in such a hurry and so far away, living so far from family and friends.

I think K-man had the only vote in the discussion, and I wonder how happy he is now going for the manly man dream of Vegas instead of a smaller town with some other plyg families and sleeping plyg laws. After all, he’s family is collapsing from the inside.

[Fun Undies]

I forgot to comment on it earlier: In the talking head Kody said he wanted to move back so they could have a better connection with others of their faith.  Because there aren't any in LV.

Robyn seemed to back up the idea.  Janelle seemed indifferent.  Meri wasn't there.  Christine dug in her heels because of the painful memories.  Kody seemed like he would seriously consider it, if Utah made it legal.

We haven't seen them do the home church thing in years, ever since Robyn's tearful "don' have sex before marriage" speech.  That doesnt mean they arent doing it, but between no appearances of it in the show, and now  discussions of needing to move back to get more involved in their faith again . . . I'm leaning towards they arent practicing much, or consistently  (besides the polygamy thing obviously).

[Eternalbluepearl]

I think I remember Christine once saying that Kody had always wanted to move to Las Vegas. I remember Kody and Christine taking their kids there once on a vacation when Truely was a baby. The Utah legal troubles seemed to give Kody the perfect excuse to live his dream. 

[StepMonsterInLA]

On 1/15/2018 at 5:39 PM, bananabread said:

Why are Maddie and Caleb living in Vegas? Why is Maddie hawking LuLaRoe like Misery Meri...? I thought Janelle and her kids were the industrious ones.

She’s Janelle’s daughter.  

Great observations on Meri and the rest!  

[Bethella]

6 hours ago, usedbicycle said:

I don't want to hijack the Brown thread though. Is Seeking Sister Wives being discussed anywhere else on FJ?

[LacyMay]

So I've totally been trying to play a bit of devils advocate and almost defend (not quite the right word) Meri. But I saw the preview for tomorrow's episode and it looked like she was talking about having her mom live in the B&B house but not actually run the B&B? 

I know Sister Wives is THE WORST for sneaky promo editing... but I'm thinking that I'm going to have some serious snark after watching the episode. 

[ChunkyBarbie]

13 hours ago, LacyMay said:

So I've totally been trying to play a bit of devils advocate and almost defend (not quite the right word) Meri. But I saw the preview for tomorrow's episode and it looked like she was talking about having her mom live in the B&B house but not actually run the B&B? 

I know Sister Wives is THE WORST for sneaky promo editing... but I'm thinking that I'm going to have some serious snark after watching the episode. 

I saw somewhere that the B & B is up and running. I think it is called Lizzie’s Heritage House. I have no idea where I saw this.  None. 

[Coconut Flan]

47 minutes ago, ChunkyBarbie said:

I saw somewhere that the B & B is up and running. I think it is called Lizzie’s Heritage House. I have no idea where I saw this.  None. 

We talked about it some up thread.

[ChunkyBarbie]

4 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

We talked about it some up thread.

Good gravy!  I have no memory of this, I’m sober, I swear. 

[ChickenettiLuvr]

Sister Wife Chickenetti, party of one. Here to watch tonight's installment.

Disclaimer: not totally invested in it ... body is fighting flubug crud.

Y'all please dazzle me with snark and pithy observations. Bonus points for making me laugh.