Chris's article

Growing old is bittersweet. Not everyone gets the opportunity and it comes with difficulties you once couldn’t even imagine. The old phrase “I’m not as good as I once was,” comes to mind. On the other hand, the years of experience provides invaluable wisdom you can share with those willing to slow down and listen. You’ve loved, you’ve lost, and were able to persist. As polyamory becomes more common it’s inevitable future elderly generations will face evolving needs and expectations based on their intimate relationships with multiple partners. An abundance of love will certainly provide for a happy life, but can lead to circumstances that will need pre-planning along with intellectual and emotional preparation. Life is complicated enough for two people sharing life. Add multiple partners in the mix and potential complications grow exponentially.

Preparing for the loss of a loved one when you have multiple partners means finding the right amount of space and the right amount of support for everyone surviving. If the entire plural relationship functions as one family it’s wonderful to lean on each other, but vital to be prepared to accept the different ways in which people grieve. Leaning on your lover is a good thing. Trying to be your lovers therapist, or them being your therapist, is a very bad thing. Grief counseling needs to be a completely unrestrained and open process where any qualms or resentments can come out and be discussed with no risk of creating issues with surviving lovers. If you are a sister wife, maybe you felt your husband neglected you while he looked for a new sister wife, and you have a weird sense of relief now that she is gone. Maybe you were the new sister wife and felt like an intruder because the sister wife that passed never seemed to really embrace you. People can live with feelings like this and maintain a healthy life and relationships, but when unresolved feelings go to a grave they can haunt you. Many plural relationships have little imperfections you may need help forgiving in yourself or someone you love.

Death is not the only challenge for aging polyamorous people. Poly and polygamy dating don’t always lead to a legal marriage, or marriage at all. When laws are set against your plural relationship it can be difficult to guarantee everyone involved can grow old together and enjoy the rights and protections monogamous people simply expect. Too often, when a woman becomes a sister wife, she will have relatives that refuse to recognize her family as valid and they’ll be willing to ‘prove’ their point legally if given the opportunity. If there is discord in the relationship two people with a legal marriage contract can cause great harm to others involved, but without any legal ties to the relationship. 

Countless gay people have lost everything when a lover died historically because the family of the deceased could swoop in and use the courts to keep their relatives money and property. Legalizing gay marriage changed the lives of millions for the better. No movement to legalize plural marriage seems to be gaining any steam which means polyamorous people are left at a higher risk of having the carpet pulled from under them. 

There are even situations where poly people, especially polygamists, can get into legal trouble due to the nature of the family they’re building. 

Granted, there are some bad apples in the polygamy world, but most poly minded people are living harmless and productive lives. It’s important to investigate laws in your region then take the necessary legal steps to ensure your poly family is protected. It will make growing old together a far less scary process.

When you’ve organized your poly life and family and begin to grow older the unique challenges that stem from plural relationships will be sure to arise. Imagine a busy husband deciding he wants to seek a new sister wife while the three he already has can’t imagine enduring the process of growing their family again. Think of three lovers that have always chosen to live separately then two of them decide to live together while the third remains in their own place. As we get older the option of living alone can easily be removed. There has to be an openness to change. On top of all of these scenarios is the fact that polyamorous people are able to date potential new lovers no matter how old they and their partners are becoming. Some can see this as refusing to ever settle into a more peaceful life, but the truth is that polyamory is natural right along with the desire for human connection. Meeting new people and experiencing new energy can keep you younger, healthier, and happier in the long run. Never letting go of, and always respecting, the polyamorous nature of your love life and partners is the only way to maintain a life full of love and joy.

Aging doesn’t have to be a scary process, though there will be scary moments as our bodies ache and wear down. If you have been blessed by choosing a polyamorous or polygamous life remember that you’ve given yourself the gift of a life so full of love you sometimes can’t even handle all of it. A little preparation goes a long way in ensuring the security and well-being of any family, especially an alternative family. 

Choosing to be a sister wife, or to join any type of polyamorous family, can be the best choice you’ve ever made if approached with logic and care. Don’t fool yourself into thinking everything will always work out fine. You and the people you love deserve as many guarantees in life as you can find. Never let go of the light that started your poly life by placing nefarious limits on yourself or lover. Keep your open mind and heart that will allow your relationship to exist and evolve organically. 

You’ll find as you get older that the more you try to force something that isn’t going to work, the more frustrating and difficult to let go it will become. Be patient with yourself and others, especially lovers, and let the aging process carry you gently to a peaceful end.

Published By: Christopher Alesich 

Matchmakers, Inc: Sisterwives.com

Timing can make or break many things, including relationships. Moving too fast, too slow, or not at all can send mixed signals or add too much strain on a relationship. It’s nice to believe that when people love each other they can trust their mutual affection to compensate for poor planning, but it won’t for long. There are no rules to follow that will guarantee success, but there are general concepts to embrace that will encourage healthier choices and behaviors. Never be ashamed of falling too hard for love. Instead, harness the power of love and use it as motivation to improve in all aspects of life. Once you build better decision making habits you’ll find yourself becoming an expert at timing, patience, and knowing when to take a leap of faith.

A concept everyone needs to understand is known as ‘New Relationship Energy,’ or NRE. It occurs when you meet someone you’re really into and they are also really into you. It’s exciting! Your hormones go crazy, serotonin spikes come every time you see each other, and you literally are building an addiction to each other. The sudden validation and acceptance compensates for years of yearning or loneliness and you can’t imagine not having this person in your life. Understanding NRE doesn’t mean you need to avoid it or fight it. It simply gives you the tools to approach new relationships with some level headed perspective. Everyone is on their best behavior with someone new, including yourself. You’re presenting the best possible version of yourself in order to win your new love completely over, and so are they. With a little care, new relationships can completely immerse themselves in the beautiful NRE without making life changing decisions before they really know each other. Far too many people blindly follow their revved up emotions and end up in painful situations that could strip away every ounce of love you had for a person. Use your head to tame your heart!

NRE is not unique to heterosexual monogamous situations. If you’ve been looking for a sister wife or trying to become a sister wife for years you’ll be in for a rush of intense passion when you’ve discovered a woman or family that would work for you. In fact, polyamorous people are fortunate to be able to expeience the energy of new relationships multiple times in life. Polygamous families and poly groups are priviledged to grow their loving family as expansive as they’d like. 

Even so, it’s equally important for everyone to take it easy and get the timing right. Remember the old phrase about one bad apple? Keep that in mind.

Pay close attention to life situations and motivations. An extreme example of a terrible situation that would only work so well in a movie is the story in ‘Pretty Woman.’ It’s perfectly acceptable to love the movie and embrace the value of accepting all people as they are, but one shouldn’t be fooled into looking to hookers as viable options for a relationship. Could it happen? Sure. Will it? Almost always a big NO. 

Assuming you aren’t dating a hooker, there are other life circumstances and motivating factors that should raise red flags. It’s not reasonable to expect everyone to have their life completely together, but a person that is a complete wreck is likely to take advantage of your stability. 

They might not even intend to. They may have the best of intentions. The fact is, people that aren’t somewhere near the same level of a playing field will drag someone down far more than the other can drag them up. 

Maybe you’re okay with that? Do what you want, but do it with full knowledge of what you’re getting into.

Don’t shy away from background checks. A checkered past shouldn’t necessarily disqualify a person from joining a polygamous family or polyamorous group, but it should certainly influence the decision for everyone involved. If you meet someone claiming they’ve never been married and are thrilled to finally become a sister wife then find they’ve already had three failed marriages, well, something isn’t right. 

Someone with a drug problem might sincerely fall in love with you and your current partners, but you can almost guarantee they can easily fall in love with their drug of choice again any time. It’s a thing that will need to be addressed and monitored before all of your jewelry or expensive electronics suddenly disappear. It’s not about refusing to forgive people. It’s about managing risk and assessing whether or not the possible negative outcomes are worth it.

Spending ample time with friends outside of your intimate relationships or marriage is vital to maintaining perspective and avoiding foolish choices. Friends with no personal interest in your affairs can tell you what your relationships look like from the outside. Good friends won’t disparage you for falling in love, but they will pull you down to earth if they notice red flags you seem to be missing. You need friends that are not involved intimately (beyond friendship) with your polygamous family or polyamorous group. Poly and Polygamy dating, or expanding any polyamorous group, is complicated and it’s far too easy to be blinded by NRE. In fact, if all of your current partners are blind to red flags because you’re all drunk on love you could reinforce each other's urges to make poor choices. Established relationships deserve extreme care to prevent damage. A new lover needs to be vetted and tested by a little time before making moves or commitments.

Love is supposed to be fun. It’s exciting! Running around like teenagers with a new love is natural and healthy. It would be nice if we never had to grow up and pain never affected us so deeply, but we’ve all been hurt and know that’s just not the way it is. We have to protect our hearts and our lives while leaving ourselves open to new love and change as poly minded people. Greatness, like polyamorous relationships, comes with challenges. Part of our openness needs to include acceptance of criticism and ears willing to listen to advice from people that care about you. Do your homework, don’t neglect your existing life or friends, and use New Relationship Energy to accomplish big things for yourself and your loved ones. When these things become a part of your routine you’ll always know when it’s time to make all the right moves in life and love.

Published By: Christopher Alesich 

Matchmakers, Inc: Sisterwives.com

At the very core of policies limiting the nature of the relationships you may choose in life is a gross overreach of power. Looking back through history you’ll find the origins of modern laws concerning marriage and love weren’t always well intended. Some served a good purpose in addressing problems in their respective era, but most are about controlling and limiting one or all people involved. The idea of forcing any loving relationships to live in secretive or gray areas in order to avoid legal consequences is truly unconscionable as the ability to define the love people share has no need for outside interference. 

Pushing to legalize all reasonable forms of intimate relationships is an important cause if we hope for a happier, more fulfilling, future with more control of our own destiny.

One of the top so-called ‘taboos’ that comes to mind is polygamy. 

Everyone knows the horror stories about young girls being forced to marry a man that could even be older than her father, or women living under the strict control of a cruel husband. There are sociopaths out there that will use plural marriage as a form of control over women in their community. It’s unfortunate this seems to be the face of polygamy to the general public rather than the more accurate reality of thousands of happy group marriages. When a woman is allowed to choose becoming a sister wife it completely changes the nature of the marriage. Same for men, really. Rather than following arbitrary religious orders to marry multiple women a man can choose to seek sister wives with the purest of intentions. When polygamy is viewed with an eye for truth it’s clear it can be a path for any loving group to express their commitment to each other. So, why is it illegal? Why aren’t there more laws protecting individuals from dangerous people rather than strict laws forbidding a perfectly healthy way of life?

Taking power away from women has been a long tradition. Marriage itself has more roots in ownership and business dealings than love. Marrying off your daughter was a way to gain wealth, status, or even create alliances between families or even nations. For the most part, until fairly recent times, a woman’s choice for a husband wasn’t even a slight consideration. This tradition continues in far too many places to this today. Dowry’s are exchanged, contracts are made, and teenage girls are used as bargaining chips. Somehow, this behavior has fallen under less legal scrutiny than a group of three or more adults wishing to obtain a plural marriage contract with each other. Polygamy is viewed as favoring patriarchal power when the term doesn’t refer to gender at all. It simply defines any marriage involving more than two people. Polygyny and Polyandry are the gender specific descriptors nobody ever seems to mention! Polygamy is also not exclusive to any sexual preference. Anyone in the LGBTQ community involved in a committed relationship with more than one other person is engaging in polygamous dating or behavior. The fact they can’t express their commitment by marriage to all of their loving partners is yet another discriminatory and outdated policy.

There are efforts underway to at least decriminalize polygamy. This article is focused on the United States where polygamy is illegal in all

50 states. Utah is the only state that has adjusted the law thus far, and only recently, to reduce the severity of punishment down to the equivalent of a traffic ticket. It’s better than nothing, but a drop in the bucket of the changes likely to occur over the next decade as an entire generation entering their mid-life holds far more open views about individual rights concerning their personal relationships and sexual preferences. This rundown of polygamy policies around the world are interesting in that they show no nation in the world allows a woman to have more than one husband, yet many allow a man more than one wife. 

Sexism is alive and real. Part of the modern action to update marriage laws to allow polygamy is also an effort to correct the sexist roots of marriage laws overall. Women deserve justice for the way their mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, and ancestors were treated just the same as the LGBTQ community deserves for their horrifying treatment both past and present. Part of that justice is making the world safer and more fair for everyone.

Part of making the world safer and more fair includes protecting monogamy right along with polygamy by ensuring the respect of people involved in either form of marriage. Granting equal rights to your fellow citizens does not mean reducing your own. If a friend expresses their desire to find sister wives or a polygamous husband to marry. 

Treat her the same as your friends that latched onto the first handsome fella they could find to marry and be his only wife. If a buddy mentions interest in finding a husband and a wife don’t blow up and tell him that’s sick or crazy. Help him find good options. There is no harm in adults engaging in consensual relationships of any form as long as they are involved by their own safe and healthy choice. The focus of the law should change to ensuring protecting people in dangerous or difficult situations. Offering mechanisms to safely report abuse and programs to help get away from abusers is far more important than telling a woman she shouldn’t look at other women sexually if she already has a husband. 

Why do we think the sexuality of others is any of our business?

The world is changing. There will be ups and downs while sometimes we feel we’re just taking three steps forward then two steps back. Progress is gradual and difficult. The fact is that polygamy is gaining a foothold as people realize it’s the polyamorous answer to marriage. As those people choose to express their commitment to their multiple lovers through plural marriage and realize the law doesn’t allow it they’ll begin fighting for their right to live as they choose and be treated equally under the law. This is already happening and the numbers will continue to grow. The legal safeguards and benefits offered through a marriage contract should not be privy to only heterosexual monogamous people. As we move into a better future remember to respect the choices of others while demanding respect for your own as well. Be the beautiful poly person that can help spread the word about how wonderful the lifestyle can be.

Published By: Christopher Alesich 

Matchmakers, Inc: Sisterwives.com