Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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LDS Watchman
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

hyloglyph wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:53 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:44 pm
hyloglyph wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:37 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:29 pm

What a completely nonsensical response.

Me: I agree with Kimball

You: See you disagree with Kimball! You're entire argument just fell apart!!!

Me: LOL this forum really is the twilight zone.

Ahh shoot. Don’t backslide on me man!

You were doing so good!

You had my hopes up :(


(The disagreement you have with Kimball is his instruction was to deny the people temple recommends whereas you mentioned that you thought that they should not have to be commanded in all things. Simple to understand. Wake up bud! That shouldn’t be over your head! Get a little reading comprehension! Your twilight zone comment is idiotic. You are literally the only person reading this forum who doesn’t understand)
Oh, I completely understand. You're clutching at straws. My argument doesn't rest on Kimball's every word. And I agree with his take on oral sex being an unnatural perversion. Yet somehow in the LDSFF twilight zone this means my argument completely fell apart. Crazy!

Come back when you have an actual rebuttal to my argument.
Once again over your head still?

Let’s see if you can see where this leads. If you can’t, then just humor me and answer the one question at the end.

The whole reason for that part of the official signed memo was was to notify the bishops to withhold temple recommends from married couples who tell them that they engage in oral sex.

The purpose of the memo was not just to teach the bishops what is and what isn’t unholy and impure. The purpose was to specifically tell them to not allow married couples who engage in oral sex into the temple.

Clutching at straws? Let’s see if that’s true (it’s not)

Answer one question:

Do you believe that married couples who engage in oral sex should be denied access to the temple? Yes or no?

(My guess is that you will not be able to even answer that question. A normal person could answer it. But you most likely won’t)
Again, the discussion was about masturbation not oral sex. Oral sex is an issue that has been much more murky over the years.

I honestly don't really have an opinion on whether or not couples who confess to oral sex should be denied a temple recommend or not. I don't care either way. I can see a valid argument for either position. If the goal is to keep the temple as pure as possible then it makes sense to keep them out until they repent. It the goal is simply to enforce a bare minimum standard of worthiness, I have no problem with allowing people in who are doing this. I'm fine letting the First Presidency decide this and I don’t care if the policy changes back and forth to fit the current needs and goals.

Now, I'm sure you'll berate me for not giving you the simple yes or no answer you desire.

hyloglyph
captain of 1,000
Posts: 1043

Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by hyloglyph »

Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:06 pm
hyloglyph wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:53 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:44 pm
hyloglyph wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:37 pm


Ahh shoot. Don’t backslide on me man!

You were doing so good!

You had my hopes up :(


(The disagreement you have with Kimball is his instruction was to deny the people temple recommends whereas you mentioned that you thought that they should not have to be commanded in all things. Simple to understand. Wake up bud! That shouldn’t be over your head! Get a little reading comprehension! Your twilight zone comment is idiotic. You are literally the only person reading this forum who doesn’t understand)
Oh, I completely understand. You're clutching at straws. My argument doesn't rest on Kimball's every word. And I agree with his take on oral sex being an unnatural perversion. Yet somehow in the LDSFF twilight zone this means my argument completely fell apart. Crazy!

Come back when you have an actual rebuttal to my argument.
Once again over your head still?

Let’s see if you can see where this leads. If you can’t, then just humor me and answer the one question at the end.

The whole reason for that part of the official signed memo was was to notify the bishops to withhold temple recommends from married couples who tell them that they engage in oral sex.

The purpose of the memo was not just to teach the bishops what is and what isn’t unholy and impure. The purpose was to specifically tell them to not allow married couples who engage in oral sex into the temple.

Clutching at straws? Let’s see if that’s true (it’s not)

Answer one question:

Do you believe that married couples who engage in oral sex should be denied access to the temple? Yes or no?

(My guess is that you will not be able to even answer that question. A normal person could answer it. But you most likely won’t)
Again, the discussion was about masturbation not oral sex. Oral sex is an issue that has been much more murky over the years.

I honestly don't really have an opinion on whether or not couples who confess to oral sex should be denied a temple recommend or not. I don't care either way. I can see a valid argument for either position. If the goal is to keep the temple as pure as possible then it makes sense to keep them out until they repent. It the goal is simply to enforce a bare minimum standard of worthiness, I have no problem with allowing people in who are doing this. I'm fine letting the First Presidency decide this and I don’t care if the policy changes back and forth to fit the current needs and goals.

Now, I'm sure you'll berate me for not giving you the simple yes or no answer you desire.
I won’t berate you man. You are two moves away from a logical checkmate no matter which way you move. It’s okay. I’ll let you save face. I don’t even need you to move. I could just run through all possible scenarios without you. But it’s fine. Plus you already answered the question earlier. Before you realized that you shouldn’t.

It’s fine.

I’m just off to bed before they ask me to speak in general conference.

I’m giving the brethren a run for their money with all my prophetic predictions!

How on earth did I know it would be a non-answer!?
Last edited by hyloglyph on September 22nd, 2022, 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

LDS Watchman
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7390
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

hyloglyph wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:10 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:06 pm
hyloglyph wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:53 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 8:44 pm

Oh, I completely understand. You're clutching at straws. My argument doesn't rest on Kimball's every word. And I agree with his take on oral sex being an unnatural perversion. Yet somehow in the LDSFF twilight zone this means my argument completely fell apart. Crazy!

Come back when you have an actual rebuttal to my argument.
Once again over your head still?

Let’s see if you can see where this leads. If you can’t, then just humor me and answer the one question at the end.

The whole reason for that part of the official signed memo was was to notify the bishops to withhold temple recommends from married couples who tell them that they engage in oral sex.

The purpose of the memo was not just to teach the bishops what is and what isn’t unholy and impure. The purpose was to specifically tell them to not allow married couples who engage in oral sex into the temple.

Clutching at straws? Let’s see if that’s true (it’s not)

Answer one question:

Do you believe that married couples who engage in oral sex should be denied access to the temple? Yes or no?

(My guess is that you will not be able to even answer that question. A normal person could answer it. But you most likely won’t)
Again, the discussion was about masturbation not oral sex. Oral sex is an issue that has been much more murky over the years.

I honestly don't really have an opinion on whether or not couples who confess to oral sex should be denied a temple recommend or not. I don't care either way. I can see a valid argument for either position. If the goal is to keep the temple as pure as possible then it makes sense to keep them out until they repent. It the goal is simply to enforce a bare minimum standard of worthiness, I have no problem with allowing people in who are doing this. I'm fine letting the First Presidency decide this and I don’t care if the policy changes back and forth to fit the current needs and goals.

Now, I'm sure you'll berate me for not giving you the simple yes or no answer you desire.
I won’t berate you man. You are two moves away from a logical checkmate no matter which way you move. It’s okay. I’ll let you save face.

I’m just off to bed before they ask me to speak in general conference.

I’m giving the brethren a run for their money with all my prophetic predictions!

How on earth did I know it would be a non-answer!?
Dude it wasn't a non answer. "I don't care either way and can see the logic in either approach" is an answer. It's just not the one you want because you are trying to catch me in my words, not actually discuss the issue at hand in regards to masturbation and sex outside of marriage. The brethren have been very consistent in denouncing this and the scriptures back them up.

You know this, which is why you resorted to the red herring approach.

Do actually have a rebuttal to my position on sex, including masturbation, outside of marriage being sinful? Do you have any scriptures or words from prophets that say that this isn't a sin?

LDS Watchman
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7390
Contact:

Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

.
Last edited by LDS Watchman on September 23rd, 2022, 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

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abijah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by abijah »

🍿

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Mangus MacLeod
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Posts: 193

Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Mangus MacLeod »

Obviously, at this point we need a referee, so I'm going to step into the fray, and offer something else to chew on.

Ever since I started this thread I've been getting more PMs than ever, mostly thanking me and/or wanting to talk about this subject matter, etc. With authorization, I am going to share one. Although I am going to do it verbatim, in quotes, I am not using the quote feature, so you don't have to scroll. I do think this is interesting, and I encourage others to share their stories. I will be glad to help facilitate that if I can.

"First of all Mr. MacLeod I want to thank you so much for having the courage to start this thread and address the issues that you are addressing. Although I have just been lurking, I have been following it from the beginning, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I opened an account so that I could reach out to you with a private message, and ask you to share it anonymously, because I am not comfortable doing it myself.

A lot of the most recent discussion in your thread reflects the sad story of my life. But there are some unique aspects that might be helpful to others, so I am going to share the story so that hopefully someone else might be able to learn something from it. So, here goes.

I have been married to one woman for over 30 years. Like so many young couples, we were married in the temple and started off very cluelessly, but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it didn’t take us all that long to discover that we had very different sex drives. I don’t think my was abnormally strong, but I am a man, and definitely had some drive, while hers seemed to be almost non-existent. It was quite disappointing and fairly frustrating almost from the beginning. I’m sure I didn’t have a clue how to help, but nothing I did seemed to help, so it was mostly just very frustrating for me. It wasn’t that many years before she basically said “look, your male sex drive is not my problem, so you deal with it.” So I dealt with it the best I knew how, through masturbation. But that left me riddled with guilt because I had grown up in an era where there was no doubt in my mind that aside from murder, essentially the two worst sins in the world were masturbation and smoking a cigarette.

Eventually, I started my career and did very well financially, but that didn’t change anything. I provided very well, but that didn’t change anything. Eventually we had a couple of children, but that didn’t change anything for the better. And once we were done having children, she had no use for sex whatsoever. And unfortunately, this had all kinds of consequences. We quit having any physical contact whatsoever. No hugs. No kisses. No cuddling or pecks on the cheek. And one of the biggest reasons for that was that I was so starved, so hungry for physical affection that if she ever even touched me it would ignite this hope in me that it might possibly lead to something more, but it never did, and I was disappointed so many times, that eventually just completely gave up, and completely ruled out any physical contact as a means of helping to manage my own expectations. We tried couples therapy. It made little difference, but she did start taking anti-depressant medications, which she has now been taking for about 20 years.
Although I was often tempted to turn to substance abuse, I never have. The only way I was able to deal with my “male sex drive” was through masturbation. But amazingly enough, I have also steered mostly clear of pornography. I already felt guilty enough.

I don’t know if most women can fully understand how vulnerable this whole scenario can make a man. But let me attest to that vulnerability. Eventually, I had an affair with a female co-worker that I had become good friends with. It was more than just a physical thing. We had a genuine emotional bond.

But, eventually I broke it off, and came clean with my wife, in order to try to “save” our family for our kids’ sake. My wife had started divorce proceedings, but ultimately chose not to follow through with the divorce. I don’t know why, but she did tell me that If I ever pulled a stunt like that again she would not only take me for everything I had, but she would also essentially cut off my testicles. I ended up being disfellowshipped from the Church. And I specifically remember at the time that the primary reason they didn’t excommunicate me was because of how that would effect my eligibility for possible future Church callings. But virtually nothing changed in our relationship, and I continued to masturbate as a coping mechanism. At one point, while I was still disfellowshipped, I had something of a relapse, and reconnected with my former co-worker. We didn’t have intercourse, but we did mess around a little bit. After that I was more riddled with guilt than ever, and was convinced that I would and should be excommunicated. But I never dared mention it to my wife, and I actually started thinking that excommunication might be my best way out of this whole mess. Based on my subsequent “stunt” and resulting excommunication, my wife would divorce me, and I would just try to figure out where to go from there.

But, just when I was feeling the very most guilt about the whole thing, my stake president called me in and said it was time to re-instate my membership because there was a calling in the ward that they needed me for. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it, so I just went along with it. But nothing really changed in our relationship, and certainly not with respect to any physical intimacy. All I could do was attempt cope with it through masturbation.

Eventually, we got a new stake president who was actually a good friend of mine, and a man who I had a lot of respect for. At some point, my previous relapse and ongoing masturbation had caused me to feel so much guilt that I decided to make an appointment to go in to talk to him about it, again fully expecting that I would probably be excommunicated based on my subsequent transgressions. I confessed everything to the stake president, and was absolutely floored when he simply thanked me for voluntarily confessing my sins, and told me that he had been meaning to call me in, because he wanted to issue a calling to become a ward clerk. I couldn’t believe it. What had just happened? And why? What was going on? I mean I’ve heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this made no sense whatsoever. But I accepted the call, and served as ward clerk.

Since then I have had a variety of responsible Church callings. Through all of this, and for the next 20 years, my only means of dealing with my “male sex drive” has been masturbation. Although I have had multiple subsequent opportunities to have affairs, I never have. Although, for a very long time, I felt very guilty about my masturbation, and confessed it to several other bishops, they always just said thanks, and took no further action. I have always been very candid about it in my temple recommend interviews, and no one has ever denied me a temple recommend. Ultimately, I have just come to accept it to be the lesser of two evils in my very unsatisfying marriage relationship.

In a nutshell, at this point, I have been married for over 30 years. I am the sole breadwinner in our family. I haven’t had sex with my wife or anyone else in over 15 years. I don’t know what to say. I make a good living. I provide well for my wife. But I don’t feel like I get much in return. At this point I’m looking at spending the rest of my life without sex, with no other options but masturbation or divorce. What am I supposed to do? And I haven’t even gotten to the saddest part of the whole story yet.

We have a daughter, who I dearly love. She is almost 30, and has two children. She did recently get divorced. I know for a fact that lack of physical intimacy was one of the biggest reasons for their divorce. There were no affairs. But like many young husbands, hers wasn’t getting enough, and didn’t know what to do about it, and eventually the wheels came off. So what now?

She’s now seeing another young man about the same age, but he’s never been married. They are getting serious, but what am I supposed to think of all this? I can already see the writing on the wall. I love my daughter dearly, but it is a virtual certainty that if they get married this new husband will be disappointed and frustrated too. So, what’s going to happen then? It’s feeling like a vicious cycle that I don’t know what to do about, and that is very depressing, and makes me very sad.

But thanks for letting me vent. Hopefully, someone else can learn something useful from any of this, or at least be more empathetic and understanding.

And, thanks again for leading the charge in the discussion."

LDS Watchman
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7390
Contact:

Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:53 pm Obviously, at this point we need a referee, so I'm going to step into the fray, and offer something else to chew on.

Ever since I started this thread I've been getting more PMs than ever, mostly thanking me and/or wanting to talk about this subject matter, etc. With authorization, I am going to share one. Although I am going to do it verbatim, in quotes, I am not using the quote feature, so you don't have to scroll. I do think this is interesting, and I encourage others to share their stories. I will be glad to help facilitate that if I can.

"First of all Mr. MacLeod I want to thank you so much for having the courage to start this thread and address the issues that you are addressing. Although I have just been lurking, I have been following it from the beginning, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I opened an account so that I could reach out to you with a private message, and ask you to share it anonymously, because I am not comfortable doing it myself.

A lot of the most recent discussion in your thread reflects the sad story of my life. But there are some unique aspects that might be helpful to others, so I am going to share the story so that hopefully someone else might be able to learn something from it. So, here goes.

I have been married to one woman for over 30 years. Like so many young couples, we were married in the temple and started off very cluelessly, but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it didn’t take us all that long to discover that we had very different sex drives. I don’t think my was abnormally strong, but I am a man, and definitely had some drive, while hers seemed to be almost non-existent. It was quite disappointing and fairly frustrating almost from the beginning. I’m sure I didn’t have a clue how to help, but nothing I did seemed to help, so it was mostly just very frustrating for me. It wasn’t that many years before she basically said “look, your male sex drive is not my problem, so you deal with it.” So I dealt with it the best I knew how, through masturbation. But that left me riddled with guilt because I had grown up in an era where there was no doubt in my mind that aside from murder, essentially the two worst sins in the world were masturbation and smoking a cigarette.

Eventually, I started my career and did very well financially, but that didn’t change anything. I provided very well, but that didn’t change anything. Eventually we had a couple of children, but that didn’t change anything for the better. And once we were done having children, she had no use for sex whatsoever. And unfortunately, this had all kinds of consequences. We quit having any physical contact whatsoever. No hugs. No kisses. No cuddling or pecks on the cheek. And one of the biggest reasons for that was that I was so starved, so hungry for physical affection that if she ever even touched me it would ignite this hope in me that it might possibly lead to something more, but it never did, and I was disappointed so many times, that eventually just completely gave up, and completely ruled out any physical contact as a means of helping to manage my own expectations. We tried couples therapy. It made little difference, but she did start taking anti-depressant medications, which she has now been taking for about 20 years.
Although I was often tempted to turn to substance abuse, I never have. The only way I was able to deal with my “male sex drive” was through masturbation. But amazingly enough, I have also steered mostly clear of pornography. I already felt guilty enough.

I don’t know if most women can fully understand how vulnerable this whole scenario can make a man. But let me attest to that vulnerability. Eventually, I had an affair with a female co-worker that I had become good friends with. It was more than just a physical thing. We had a genuine emotional bond.

But, eventually I broke it off, and came clean with my wife, in order to try to “save” our family for our kids’ sake. My wife had started divorce proceedings, but ultimately chose not to follow through with the divorce. I don’t know why, but she did tell me that If I ever pulled a stunt like that again she would not only take me for everything I had, but she would also essentially cut off my testicles. I ended up being disfellowshipped from the Church. And I specifically remember at the time that the primary reason they didn’t excommunicate me was because of how that would effect my eligibility for possible future Church callings. But virtually nothing changed in our relationship, and I continued to masturbate as a coping mechanism. At one point, while I was still disfellowshipped, I had something of a relapse, and reconnected with my former co-worker. We didn’t have intercourse, but we did mess around a little bit. After that I was more riddled with guilt than ever, and was convinced that I would and should be excommunicated. But I never dared mention it to my wife, and I actually started thinking that excommunication might be my best way out of this whole mess. Based on my subsequent “stunt” and resulting excommunication, my wife would divorce me, and I would just try to figure out where to go from there.

But, just when I was feeling the very most guilt about the whole thing, my stake president called me in and said it was time to re-instate my membership because there was a calling in the ward that they needed me for. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it, so I just went along with it. But nothing really changed in our relationship, and certainly not with respect to any physical intimacy. All I could do was attempt cope with it through masturbation.

Eventually, we got a new stake president who was actually a good friend of mine, and a man who I had a lot of respect for. At some point, my previous relapse and ongoing masturbation had caused me to feel so much guilt that I decided to make an appointment to go in to talk to him about it, again fully expecting that I would probably be excommunicated based on my subsequent transgressions. I confessed everything to the stake president, and was absolutely floored when he simply thanked me for voluntarily confessing my sins, and told me that he had been meaning to call me in, because he wanted to issue a calling to become a ward clerk. I couldn’t believe it. What had just happened? And why? What was going on? I mean I’ve heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this made no sense whatsoever. But I accepted the call, and served as ward clerk.

Since then I have had a variety of responsible Church callings. Through all of this, and for the next 20 years, my only means of dealing with my “male sex drive” has been masturbation. Although I have had multiple subsequent opportunities to have affairs, I never have. Although, for a very long time, I felt very guilty about my masturbation, and confessed it to several other bishops, they always just said thanks, and took no further action. I have always been very candid about it in my temple recommend interviews, and no one has ever denied me a temple recommend. Ultimately, I have just come to accept it to be the lesser of two evils in my very unsatisfying marriage relationship.

In a nutshell, at this point, I have been married for over 30 years. I am the sole breadwinner in our family. I haven’t had sex with my wife or anyone else in over 15 years. I don’t know what to say. I make a good living. I provide well for my wife. But I don’t feel like I get much in return. At this point I’m looking at spending the rest of my life without sex, with no other options but masturbation or divorce. What am I supposed to do? And I haven’t even gotten to the saddest part of the whole story yet.

We have a daughter, who I dearly love. She is almost 30, and has two children. She did recently get divorced. I know for a fact that lack of physical intimacy was one of the biggest reasons for their divorce. There were no affairs. But like many young husbands, hers wasn’t getting enough, and didn’t know what to do about it, and eventually the wheels came off. So what now?

She’s now seeing another young man about the same age, but he’s never been married. They are getting serious, but what am I supposed to think of all this? I can already see the writing on the wall. I love my daughter dearly, but it is a virtual certainty that if they get married this new husband will be disappointed and frustrated too. So, what’s going to happen then? It’s feeling like a vicious cycle that I don’t know what to do about, and that is very depressing, and makes me very sad.

But thanks for letting me vent. Hopefully, someone else can learn something useful from any of this, or at least be more empathetic and understanding.

And, thanks again for leading the charge in the discussion."
Well at least we're back on topic now.

I think this sad tale is unfortunately not uncommon and I can totally see where polygamy could help this situation. If the husband has other wives who are interested in sex, then this would satisfy his sex drive and bring him the fulfillment he yearns for. It might also cause his first wife to become interested in sex again, because she doesn't want to be left out and realizes she's missing something, which could very well in turn lead to her having a more fulfilled life as well.

User avatar
Sarah
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 6708

Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Sarah »

Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:53 pm Obviously, at this point we need a referee, so I'm going to step into the fray, and offer something else to chew on.

Ever since I started this thread I've been getting more PMs than ever, mostly thanking me and/or wanting to talk about this subject matter, etc. With authorization, I am going to share one. Although I am going to do it verbatim, in quotes, I am not using the quote feature, so you don't have to scroll. I do think this is interesting, and I encourage others to share their stories. I will be glad to help facilitate that if I can.

"First of all Mr. MacLeod I want to thank you so much for having the courage to start this thread and address the issues that you are addressing. Although I have just been lurking, I have been following it from the beginning, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I opened an account so that I could reach out to you with a private message, and ask you to share it anonymously, because I am not comfortable doing it myself.

A lot of the most recent discussion in your thread reflects the sad story of my life. But there are some unique aspects that might be helpful to others, so I am going to share the story so that hopefully someone else might be able to learn something from it. So, here goes.

I have been married to one woman for over 30 years. Like so many young couples, we were married in the temple and started off very cluelessly, but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it didn’t take us all that long to discover that we had very different sex drives. I don’t think my was abnormally strong, but I am a man, and definitely had some drive, while hers seemed to be almost non-existent. It was quite disappointing and fairly frustrating almost from the beginning. I’m sure I didn’t have a clue how to help, but nothing I did seemed to help, so it was mostly just very frustrating for me. It wasn’t that many years before she basically said “look, your male sex drive is not my problem, so you deal with it.” So I dealt with it the best I knew how, through masturbation. But that left me riddled with guilt because I had grown up in an era where there was no doubt in my mind that aside from murder, essentially the two worst sins in the world were masturbation and smoking a cigarette.

Eventually, I started my career and did very well financially, but that didn’t change anything. I provided very well, but that didn’t change anything. Eventually we had a couple of children, but that didn’t change anything for the better. And once we were done having children, she had no use for sex whatsoever. And unfortunately, this had all kinds of consequences. We quit having any physical contact whatsoever. No hugs. No kisses. No cuddling or pecks on the cheek. And one of the biggest reasons for that was that I was so starved, so hungry for physical affection that if she ever even touched me it would ignite this hope in me that it might possibly lead to something more, but it never did, and I was disappointed so many times, that eventually just completely gave up, and completely ruled out any physical contact as a means of helping to manage my own expectations. We tried couples therapy. It made little difference, but she did start taking anti-depressant medications, which she has now been taking for about 20 years.
Although I was often tempted to turn to substance abuse, I never have. The only way I was able to deal with my “male sex drive” was through masturbation. But amazingly enough, I have also steered mostly clear of pornography. I already felt guilty enough.

I don’t know if most women can fully understand how vulnerable this whole scenario can make a man. But let me attest to that vulnerability. Eventually, I had an affair with a female co-worker that I had become good friends with. It was more than just a physical thing. We had a genuine emotional bond.

But, eventually I broke it off, and came clean with my wife, in order to try to “save” our family for our kids’ sake. My wife had started divorce proceedings, but ultimately chose not to follow through with the divorce. I don’t know why, but she did tell me that If I ever pulled a stunt like that again she would not only take me for everything I had, but she would also essentially cut off my testicles. I ended up being disfellowshipped from the Church. And I specifically remember at the time that the primary reason they didn’t excommunicate me was because of how that would effect my eligibility for possible future Church callings. But virtually nothing changed in our relationship, and I continued to masturbate as a coping mechanism. At one point, while I was still disfellowshipped, I had something of a relapse, and reconnected with my former co-worker. We didn’t have intercourse, but we did mess around a little bit. After that I was more riddled with guilt than ever, and was convinced that I would and should be excommunicated. But I never dared mention it to my wife, and I actually started thinking that excommunication might be my best way out of this whole mess. Based on my subsequent “stunt” and resulting excommunication, my wife would divorce me, and I would just try to figure out where to go from there.

But, just when I was feeling the very most guilt about the whole thing, my stake president called me in and said it was time to re-instate my membership because there was a calling in the ward that they needed me for. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it, so I just went along with it. But nothing really changed in our relationship, and certainly not with respect to any physical intimacy. All I could do was attempt cope with it through masturbation.

Eventually, we got a new stake president who was actually a good friend of mine, and a man who I had a lot of respect for. At some point, my previous relapse and ongoing masturbation had caused me to feel so much guilt that I decided to make an appointment to go in to talk to him about it, again fully expecting that I would probably be excommunicated based on my subsequent transgressions. I confessed everything to the stake president, and was absolutely floored when he simply thanked me for voluntarily confessing my sins, and told me that he had been meaning to call me in, because he wanted to issue a calling to become a ward clerk. I couldn’t believe it. What had just happened? And why? What was going on? I mean I’ve heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this made no sense whatsoever. But I accepted the call, and served as ward clerk.

Since then I have had a variety of responsible Church callings. Through all of this, and for the next 20 years, my only means of dealing with my “male sex drive” has been masturbation. Although I have had multiple subsequent opportunities to have affairs, I never have. Although, for a very long time, I felt very guilty about my masturbation, and confessed it to several other bishops, they always just said thanks, and took no further action. I have always been very candid about it in my temple recommend interviews, and no one has ever denied me a temple recommend. Ultimately, I have just come to accept it to be the lesser of two evils in my very unsatisfying marriage relationship.

In a nutshell, at this point, I have been married for over 30 years. I am the sole breadwinner in our family. I haven’t had sex with my wife or anyone else in over 15 years. I don’t know what to say. I make a good living. I provide well for my wife. But I don’t feel like I get much in return. At this point I’m looking at spending the rest of my life without sex, with no other options but masturbation or divorce. What am I supposed to do? And I haven’t even gotten to the saddest part of the whole story yet.

We have a daughter, who I dearly love. She is almost 30, and has two children. She did recently get divorced. I know for a fact that lack of physical intimacy was one of the biggest reasons for their divorce. There were no affairs. But like many young husbands, hers wasn’t getting enough, and didn’t know what to do about it, and eventually the wheels came off. So what now?

She’s now seeing another young man about the same age, but he’s never been married. They are getting serious, but what am I supposed to think of all this? I can already see the writing on the wall. I love my daughter dearly, but it is a virtual certainty that if they get married this new husband will be disappointed and frustrated too. So, what’s going to happen then? It’s feeling like a vicious cycle that I don’t know what to do about, and that is very depressing, and makes me very sad.

But thanks for letting me vent. Hopefully, someone else can learn something useful from any of this, or at least be more empathetic and understanding.

And, thanks again for leading the charge in the discussion."
I'm glad this guy spoke up and shared his story, as it shows that this is a problem for a lot of people. I hope he feels comfortable jumping more into the discussion. I feel sorry for the guy that he's had to go through this. But I would also feel sorry for a wife who decided to tolerate sex her whole life because I know how awful that feels. In the ideal world it doesn't have to be one or the other that must suffer and sacrifice, but often that's the way it ends up that one ends up making the greater sacrifice because the other won't change.

One issue that this man brought up was that they weren't sharing any physical intimacy, like hugs and kisses. And the reason I'm assuming his wife didn't want this is because his wife felt that all hugs and kisses were demands from the husband for sex. I know because I used to feel this way. Gifts of physical affection aren't viewed as gifts of love anymore, because they are now given with strings attached, when before they were married there were no strings attached to kissing and hugging or cuddling. Now these things are seen as a demand for sex. So why does she feel this way? Well, at some point in the past when she wasn't interested in sex after he kissed her, he probably acted disappointed and stopped kissing. So what message does that send to the wife when he's disappointed at her lack of interest? The message to her is, I'm only kissing you so that you'll have sex with me, and I'm acting disappointed and not kissing you anymore because I feel like I deserve more for kissing and "loving" you. So now we have a wife that now doesn't want kissing, because kissing is a demand for something else. Well, you can't have any hope of getting a wife excited enough to enjoy sex or more touching if she can't enjoy kissing and cuddling. But all she's getting after kissing her husband, is one sided "sex" where he gets his release, and she's left all tense and unsatisfied. So she learns that this "sex" thing is about him feeling great and wonderful when she is not. And so why should he feel great at her expense? It's easier to just avoid kissing in the first place to avoid getting his hopes up.

A husband needs to learn to reassure his wife that he is going to put her first in the physical affection and sex department, because she has the weaker sex drive and needs more help. He needs to kiss and hug her all the time and reassure her that the kissing isn't a request for sex, that it is okay for her to say no to anything she wants to say no to. It was fine during dating to kiss only, but now her husband is sending the message it's not fine now, which shows he is thinking of only himself. True gifts don't have strings attached. And that's the only way a husband can earn his wife's trust, is if he's willing to give without getting what he wants in return. If he keeps up with the kissing and physical affection with reassurances, it's much more likely his wife will warm up to him at some point, and want to do more, because of that earned trust that he has built up that he's not going to force her, shame her or guilt trip her into satisfying his sexual needs.

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Sarah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Sarah »

Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 10:41 pm
Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:53 pm Obviously, at this point we need a referee, so I'm going to step into the fray, and offer something else to chew on.

Ever since I started this thread I've been getting more PMs than ever, mostly thanking me and/or wanting to talk about this subject matter, etc. With authorization, I am going to share one. Although I am going to do it verbatim, in quotes, I am not using the quote feature, so you don't have to scroll. I do think this is interesting, and I encourage others to share their stories. I will be glad to help facilitate that if I can.

"First of all Mr. MacLeod I want to thank you so much for having the courage to start this thread and address the issues that you are addressing. Although I have just been lurking, I have been following it from the beginning, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I opened an account so that I could reach out to you with a private message, and ask you to share it anonymously, because I am not comfortable doing it myself.

A lot of the most recent discussion in your thread reflects the sad story of my life. But there are some unique aspects that might be helpful to others, so I am going to share the story so that hopefully someone else might be able to learn something from it. So, here goes.

I have been married to one woman for over 30 years. Like so many young couples, we were married in the temple and started off very cluelessly, but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it didn’t take us all that long to discover that we had very different sex drives. I don’t think my was abnormally strong, but I am a man, and definitely had some drive, while hers seemed to be almost non-existent. It was quite disappointing and fairly frustrating almost from the beginning. I’m sure I didn’t have a clue how to help, but nothing I did seemed to help, so it was mostly just very frustrating for me. It wasn’t that many years before she basically said “look, your male sex drive is not my problem, so you deal with it.” So I dealt with it the best I knew how, through masturbation. But that left me riddled with guilt because I had grown up in an era where there was no doubt in my mind that aside from murder, essentially the two worst sins in the world were masturbation and smoking a cigarette.

Eventually, I started my career and did very well financially, but that didn’t change anything. I provided very well, but that didn’t change anything. Eventually we had a couple of children, but that didn’t change anything for the better. And once we were done having children, she had no use for sex whatsoever. And unfortunately, this had all kinds of consequences. We quit having any physical contact whatsoever. No hugs. No kisses. No cuddling or pecks on the cheek. And one of the biggest reasons for that was that I was so starved, so hungry for physical affection that if she ever even touched me it would ignite this hope in me that it might possibly lead to something more, but it never did, and I was disappointed so many times, that eventually just completely gave up, and completely ruled out any physical contact as a means of helping to manage my own expectations. We tried couples therapy. It made little difference, but she did start taking anti-depressant medications, which she has now been taking for about 20 years.
Although I was often tempted to turn to substance abuse, I never have. The only way I was able to deal with my “male sex drive” was through masturbation. But amazingly enough, I have also steered mostly clear of pornography. I already felt guilty enough.

I don’t know if most women can fully understand how vulnerable this whole scenario can make a man. But let me attest to that vulnerability. Eventually, I had an affair with a female co-worker that I had become good friends with. It was more than just a physical thing. We had a genuine emotional bond.

But, eventually I broke it off, and came clean with my wife, in order to try to “save” our family for our kids’ sake. My wife had started divorce proceedings, but ultimately chose not to follow through with the divorce. I don’t know why, but she did tell me that If I ever pulled a stunt like that again she would not only take me for everything I had, but she would also essentially cut off my testicles. I ended up being disfellowshipped from the Church. And I specifically remember at the time that the primary reason they didn’t excommunicate me was because of how that would effect my eligibility for possible future Church callings. But virtually nothing changed in our relationship, and I continued to masturbate as a coping mechanism. At one point, while I was still disfellowshipped, I had something of a relapse, and reconnected with my former co-worker. We didn’t have intercourse, but we did mess around a little bit. After that I was more riddled with guilt than ever, and was convinced that I would and should be excommunicated. But I never dared mention it to my wife, and I actually started thinking that excommunication might be my best way out of this whole mess. Based on my subsequent “stunt” and resulting excommunication, my wife would divorce me, and I would just try to figure out where to go from there.

But, just when I was feeling the very most guilt about the whole thing, my stake president called me in and said it was time to re-instate my membership because there was a calling in the ward that they needed me for. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it, so I just went along with it. But nothing really changed in our relationship, and certainly not with respect to any physical intimacy. All I could do was attempt cope with it through masturbation.

Eventually, we got a new stake president who was actually a good friend of mine, and a man who I had a lot of respect for. At some point, my previous relapse and ongoing masturbation had caused me to feel so much guilt that I decided to make an appointment to go in to talk to him about it, again fully expecting that I would probably be excommunicated based on my subsequent transgressions. I confessed everything to the stake president, and was absolutely floored when he simply thanked me for voluntarily confessing my sins, and told me that he had been meaning to call me in, because he wanted to issue a calling to become a ward clerk. I couldn’t believe it. What had just happened? And why? What was going on? I mean I’ve heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this made no sense whatsoever. But I accepted the call, and served as ward clerk.

Since then I have had a variety of responsible Church callings. Through all of this, and for the next 20 years, my only means of dealing with my “male sex drive” has been masturbation. Although I have had multiple subsequent opportunities to have affairs, I never have. Although, for a very long time, I felt very guilty about my masturbation, and confessed it to several other bishops, they always just said thanks, and took no further action. I have always been very candid about it in my temple recommend interviews, and no one has ever denied me a temple recommend. Ultimately, I have just come to accept it to be the lesser of two evils in my very unsatisfying marriage relationship.

In a nutshell, at this point, I have been married for over 30 years. I am the sole breadwinner in our family. I haven’t had sex with my wife or anyone else in over 15 years. I don’t know what to say. I make a good living. I provide well for my wife. But I don’t feel like I get much in return. At this point I’m looking at spending the rest of my life without sex, with no other options but masturbation or divorce. What am I supposed to do? And I haven’t even gotten to the saddest part of the whole story yet.

We have a daughter, who I dearly love. She is almost 30, and has two children. She did recently get divorced. I know for a fact that lack of physical intimacy was one of the biggest reasons for their divorce. There were no affairs. But like many young husbands, hers wasn’t getting enough, and didn’t know what to do about it, and eventually the wheels came off. So what now?

She’s now seeing another young man about the same age, but he’s never been married. They are getting serious, but what am I supposed to think of all this? I can already see the writing on the wall. I love my daughter dearly, but it is a virtual certainty that if they get married this new husband will be disappointed and frustrated too. So, what’s going to happen then? It’s feeling like a vicious cycle that I don’t know what to do about, and that is very depressing, and makes me very sad.

But thanks for letting me vent. Hopefully, someone else can learn something useful from any of this, or at least be more empathetic and understanding.

And, thanks again for leading the charge in the discussion."
Well at least we're back on topic now.

I think this sad tale is unfortunately not uncommon and I can totally see where polygamy could help this situation. If the husband has other wives who are interested in sex, then this would satisfy his sex drive and bring him the fulfillment he yearns for. It might also cause his first wife to become interested in sex again, because she doesn't want to be left out and realizes she's missing something, which could very well in turn lead to her having a more fulfilled life as well.
The problem with this so-called "solution" is that it only benefits the husband. He has no need to work out his sex problems with his first wife if he can get his needs or wants met somewhere else. The first wife also has needs, so he needs to figure out how to fulfill her needs before going off to satisfy his own and ignoring her fear of sex with him.

LDS Watchman
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

Sarah wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:23 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 10:41 pm
Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:53 pm Obviously, at this point we need a referee, so I'm going to step into the fray, and offer something else to chew on.

Ever since I started this thread I've been getting more PMs than ever, mostly thanking me and/or wanting to talk about this subject matter, etc. With authorization, I am going to share one. Although I am going to do it verbatim, in quotes, I am not using the quote feature, so you don't have to scroll. I do think this is interesting, and I encourage others to share their stories. I will be glad to help facilitate that if I can.

"First of all Mr. MacLeod I want to thank you so much for having the courage to start this thread and address the issues that you are addressing. Although I have just been lurking, I have been following it from the beginning, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I opened an account so that I could reach out to you with a private message, and ask you to share it anonymously, because I am not comfortable doing it myself.

A lot of the most recent discussion in your thread reflects the sad story of my life. But there are some unique aspects that might be helpful to others, so I am going to share the story so that hopefully someone else might be able to learn something from it. So, here goes.

I have been married to one woman for over 30 years. Like so many young couples, we were married in the temple and started off very cluelessly, but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it didn’t take us all that long to discover that we had very different sex drives. I don’t think my was abnormally strong, but I am a man, and definitely had some drive, while hers seemed to be almost non-existent. It was quite disappointing and fairly frustrating almost from the beginning. I’m sure I didn’t have a clue how to help, but nothing I did seemed to help, so it was mostly just very frustrating for me. It wasn’t that many years before she basically said “look, your male sex drive is not my problem, so you deal with it.” So I dealt with it the best I knew how, through masturbation. But that left me riddled with guilt because I had grown up in an era where there was no doubt in my mind that aside from murder, essentially the two worst sins in the world were masturbation and smoking a cigarette.

Eventually, I started my career and did very well financially, but that didn’t change anything. I provided very well, but that didn’t change anything. Eventually we had a couple of children, but that didn’t change anything for the better. And once we were done having children, she had no use for sex whatsoever. And unfortunately, this had all kinds of consequences. We quit having any physical contact whatsoever. No hugs. No kisses. No cuddling or pecks on the cheek. And one of the biggest reasons for that was that I was so starved, so hungry for physical affection that if she ever even touched me it would ignite this hope in me that it might possibly lead to something more, but it never did, and I was disappointed so many times, that eventually just completely gave up, and completely ruled out any physical contact as a means of helping to manage my own expectations. We tried couples therapy. It made little difference, but she did start taking anti-depressant medications, which she has now been taking for about 20 years.
Although I was often tempted to turn to substance abuse, I never have. The only way I was able to deal with my “male sex drive” was through masturbation. But amazingly enough, I have also steered mostly clear of pornography. I already felt guilty enough.

I don’t know if most women can fully understand how vulnerable this whole scenario can make a man. But let me attest to that vulnerability. Eventually, I had an affair with a female co-worker that I had become good friends with. It was more than just a physical thing. We had a genuine emotional bond.

But, eventually I broke it off, and came clean with my wife, in order to try to “save” our family for our kids’ sake. My wife had started divorce proceedings, but ultimately chose not to follow through with the divorce. I don’t know why, but she did tell me that If I ever pulled a stunt like that again she would not only take me for everything I had, but she would also essentially cut off my testicles. I ended up being disfellowshipped from the Church. And I specifically remember at the time that the primary reason they didn’t excommunicate me was because of how that would effect my eligibility for possible future Church callings. But virtually nothing changed in our relationship, and I continued to masturbate as a coping mechanism. At one point, while I was still disfellowshipped, I had something of a relapse, and reconnected with my former co-worker. We didn’t have intercourse, but we did mess around a little bit. After that I was more riddled with guilt than ever, and was convinced that I would and should be excommunicated. But I never dared mention it to my wife, and I actually started thinking that excommunication might be my best way out of this whole mess. Based on my subsequent “stunt” and resulting excommunication, my wife would divorce me, and I would just try to figure out where to go from there.

But, just when I was feeling the very most guilt about the whole thing, my stake president called me in and said it was time to re-instate my membership because there was a calling in the ward that they needed me for. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it, so I just went along with it. But nothing really changed in our relationship, and certainly not with respect to any physical intimacy. All I could do was attempt cope with it through masturbation.

Eventually, we got a new stake president who was actually a good friend of mine, and a man who I had a lot of respect for. At some point, my previous relapse and ongoing masturbation had caused me to feel so much guilt that I decided to make an appointment to go in to talk to him about it, again fully expecting that I would probably be excommunicated based on my subsequent transgressions. I confessed everything to the stake president, and was absolutely floored when he simply thanked me for voluntarily confessing my sins, and told me that he had been meaning to call me in, because he wanted to issue a calling to become a ward clerk. I couldn’t believe it. What had just happened? And why? What was going on? I mean I’ve heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this made no sense whatsoever. But I accepted the call, and served as ward clerk.

Since then I have had a variety of responsible Church callings. Through all of this, and for the next 20 years, my only means of dealing with my “male sex drive” has been masturbation. Although I have had multiple subsequent opportunities to have affairs, I never have. Although, for a very long time, I felt very guilty about my masturbation, and confessed it to several other bishops, they always just said thanks, and took no further action. I have always been very candid about it in my temple recommend interviews, and no one has ever denied me a temple recommend. Ultimately, I have just come to accept it to be the lesser of two evils in my very unsatisfying marriage relationship.

In a nutshell, at this point, I have been married for over 30 years. I am the sole breadwinner in our family. I haven’t had sex with my wife or anyone else in over 15 years. I don’t know what to say. I make a good living. I provide well for my wife. But I don’t feel like I get much in return. At this point I’m looking at spending the rest of my life without sex, with no other options but masturbation or divorce. What am I supposed to do? And I haven’t even gotten to the saddest part of the whole story yet.

We have a daughter, who I dearly love. She is almost 30, and has two children. She did recently get divorced. I know for a fact that lack of physical intimacy was one of the biggest reasons for their divorce. There were no affairs. But like many young husbands, hers wasn’t getting enough, and didn’t know what to do about it, and eventually the wheels came off. So what now?

She’s now seeing another young man about the same age, but he’s never been married. They are getting serious, but what am I supposed to think of all this? I can already see the writing on the wall. I love my daughter dearly, but it is a virtual certainty that if they get married this new husband will be disappointed and frustrated too. So, what’s going to happen then? It’s feeling like a vicious cycle that I don’t know what to do about, and that is very depressing, and makes me very sad.

But thanks for letting me vent. Hopefully, someone else can learn something useful from any of this, or at least be more empathetic and understanding.

And, thanks again for leading the charge in the discussion."
Well at least we're back on topic now.

I think this sad tale is unfortunately not uncommon and I can totally see where polygamy could help this situation. If the husband has other wives who are interested in sex, then this would satisfy his sex drive and bring him the fulfillment he yearns for. It might also cause his first wife to become interested in sex again, because she doesn't want to be left out and realizes she's missing something, which could very well in turn lead to her having a more fulfilled life as well.
The problem with this so-called "solution" is that it only benefits the husband. He has no need to work out his sex problems with his first wife if he can get his needs or wants met somewhere else. The first wife also has needs, so he needs to figure out how to fulfill her needs before going off to satisfy his own and ignoring her fear of sex with him.
No, I don't think this is true. As I stated, I think there are potential benefits for his first wife, too.

Her disinterest in sex may not having anything to do with "fear," either. And there may be nothing he can do about his wife's lack of interest in sex. If his wife refuses to have sex with him, in spite of his best efforts to work things out with her, then both are left with a marriage that lacks complete fulfillment. Polygamy could very well be a solution to this problem.

The real issue then is whether or not God approves of it. Unless he does, it's not a valid solution per Jacob 2.

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ransomme
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by ransomme »

Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 8th, 2022, 11:01 am
EvanLM wrote: September 8th, 2022, 10:54 am and there are women who are changing genders, lesbian, interested in bestiality, interested in threesomes, interested in polyandry, and raising children in all of these situations and LGBTQ and isn't there about 80 gendersnow? so . . .what's your point?

really stupid thread in this modern world
Fair enough. What isn’t stupid in this modern world? Why don’t you bring us that list.
I think that you are missing the point. In the modern world people can and do express their idols, lusts, perversions, fetishes, and do so openly with little to no repercussion.

What's more just because more and more people want something doesn't mean that it's good. Obviously people need God's laws because they generally don't govern themselves very well. They desire all sorts of things that are not good for themselves. There is a rise in people who think that they are a sex that they are not, there are people who like to be put in bondage (and worse), people who desire minors sexually, and so on.

So who cares what people say that they want in a world that is ripening in iniquity.

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Mangus MacLeod
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Posts: 193

Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Mangus MacLeod »

It’s so easy to identify and talk about all the problems. But what are the solutions? Like I’ve said before, there are a lot of big “Why” questions in this whole equation. Why did God design and create men and women the way He did?

Thinking about this whole dilemma I have sometimes wondered why God didn’t design and create men and women so that they would only experience sexual climax as a result of a chemical reaction when their respective “seed” mixed during intercourse. Why does it all have to be so complicated? And seriously, why are men designed so that their reproductive lifespan is often twice as long as a woman’s? Why?

Sarah, I really appreciate you offering a female perspective, but I’m just going to say it, and with all due respect, I think you are actually pretty clueless about men. I realize that most men are completely clueless about women. I get that. And I realize you seem to think that you have the female side of the equation completely dialed in, and maybe you do, but by your repeated and now very consistent message, I can see that you have no better grasp of the male side of the equation than most other women. Sorry, but that’s the way I see it.

And Atticus, I’m glad to hear that you are married, and so sexually satisfied in your marriage. That is a good place to be, and I am happy for you. But, your dogma doesn’t hold water. The Church leadership’s positions on sex have changed consistently over the course of the past 100+ years, with little evidence that God has had anything to do with any of it.

For years masturbation was treated as a mortal sin. That is the era I grew up in too. But do you know that the Church takes virtually no position on masturbation today? Do you know that? And the Church no longer tries to micro-manage married couples’ sexual relationships. Do you know that?

Maybe one of the reasons is that, like when the Church was pushed hard about its original position(s) on Blacks and the priesthood, the Church ultimately acknowledged (or at least claimed) that there was no revelatory basis for its previous position(s) and policy, the reality is, there is no revelatory basis for many of the Church’s positions on sex, and never has been. Those positions have been based entirely on evolving personal opinions of Church leaders. Frankly, you’re not going to find much that the Savior has ever said on this subject. You understand that, right? Despite your dogma, which seems to be completely out of touch with reality, as they say in Texas, your dog won’t hunt, and you can’t find anything solid to support it. I realize that must be a disappointment, but it is a reality. And disappointment seems to be a common theme in this thread.

After 150+ years of revelation, men and women in the Church today still don’t understand each other very well and they each have many unmet physical and emotional needs. The Church has often tried to control and micro-manage much of this, but it does not seem to have helped.

Honestly, despite the fact that Sex is the undeniable glue that helps bond and hold marriages and families together, the Church and many of its members and leaders still act as clueless about all that as ever. If they weren’t, Church membership would not have such a high incidence of porn use, anti-depressant use, and divorce. You can have as many proclamations of theoretical positions as you want, but if the glue fails, the proclamations and theories won’t hold it all together. Without any glue, marriages fall apart. Families fall apart. That is a reality.

But if there has been one very consistent position for the past 100 years now, it has been the strong, deep-seated bias against plural marriage.

Does any of this make any actual sense?
Last edited by Mangus MacLeod on September 23rd, 2022, 6:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Sarah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Sarah »

Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:35 pm
Sarah wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:23 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 10:41 pm
Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 9:53 pm Obviously, at this point we need a referee, so I'm going to step into the fray, and offer something else to chew on.

Ever since I started this thread I've been getting more PMs than ever, mostly thanking me and/or wanting to talk about this subject matter, etc. With authorization, I am going to share one. Although I am going to do it verbatim, in quotes, I am not using the quote feature, so you don't have to scroll. I do think this is interesting, and I encourage others to share their stories. I will be glad to help facilitate that if I can.

"First of all Mr. MacLeod I want to thank you so much for having the courage to start this thread and address the issues that you are addressing. Although I have just been lurking, I have been following it from the beginning, and finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I opened an account so that I could reach out to you with a private message, and ask you to share it anonymously, because I am not comfortable doing it myself.

A lot of the most recent discussion in your thread reflects the sad story of my life. But there are some unique aspects that might be helpful to others, so I am going to share the story so that hopefully someone else might be able to learn something from it. So, here goes.

I have been married to one woman for over 30 years. Like so many young couples, we were married in the temple and started off very cluelessly, but hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it didn’t take us all that long to discover that we had very different sex drives. I don’t think my was abnormally strong, but I am a man, and definitely had some drive, while hers seemed to be almost non-existent. It was quite disappointing and fairly frustrating almost from the beginning. I’m sure I didn’t have a clue how to help, but nothing I did seemed to help, so it was mostly just very frustrating for me. It wasn’t that many years before she basically said “look, your male sex drive is not my problem, so you deal with it.” So I dealt with it the best I knew how, through masturbation. But that left me riddled with guilt because I had grown up in an era where there was no doubt in my mind that aside from murder, essentially the two worst sins in the world were masturbation and smoking a cigarette.

Eventually, I started my career and did very well financially, but that didn’t change anything. I provided very well, but that didn’t change anything. Eventually we had a couple of children, but that didn’t change anything for the better. And once we were done having children, she had no use for sex whatsoever. And unfortunately, this had all kinds of consequences. We quit having any physical contact whatsoever. No hugs. No kisses. No cuddling or pecks on the cheek. And one of the biggest reasons for that was that I was so starved, so hungry for physical affection that if she ever even touched me it would ignite this hope in me that it might possibly lead to something more, but it never did, and I was disappointed so many times, that eventually just completely gave up, and completely ruled out any physical contact as a means of helping to manage my own expectations. We tried couples therapy. It made little difference, but she did start taking anti-depressant medications, which she has now been taking for about 20 years.
Although I was often tempted to turn to substance abuse, I never have. The only way I was able to deal with my “male sex drive” was through masturbation. But amazingly enough, I have also steered mostly clear of pornography. I already felt guilty enough.

I don’t know if most women can fully understand how vulnerable this whole scenario can make a man. But let me attest to that vulnerability. Eventually, I had an affair with a female co-worker that I had become good friends with. It was more than just a physical thing. We had a genuine emotional bond.

But, eventually I broke it off, and came clean with my wife, in order to try to “save” our family for our kids’ sake. My wife had started divorce proceedings, but ultimately chose not to follow through with the divorce. I don’t know why, but she did tell me that If I ever pulled a stunt like that again she would not only take me for everything I had, but she would also essentially cut off my testicles. I ended up being disfellowshipped from the Church. And I specifically remember at the time that the primary reason they didn’t excommunicate me was because of how that would effect my eligibility for possible future Church callings. But virtually nothing changed in our relationship, and I continued to masturbate as a coping mechanism. At one point, while I was still disfellowshipped, I had something of a relapse, and reconnected with my former co-worker. We didn’t have intercourse, but we did mess around a little bit. After that I was more riddled with guilt than ever, and was convinced that I would and should be excommunicated. But I never dared mention it to my wife, and I actually started thinking that excommunication might be my best way out of this whole mess. Based on my subsequent “stunt” and resulting excommunication, my wife would divorce me, and I would just try to figure out where to go from there.

But, just when I was feeling the very most guilt about the whole thing, my stake president called me in and said it was time to re-instate my membership because there was a calling in the ward that they needed me for. I tried to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it, so I just went along with it. But nothing really changed in our relationship, and certainly not with respect to any physical intimacy. All I could do was attempt cope with it through masturbation.

Eventually, we got a new stake president who was actually a good friend of mine, and a man who I had a lot of respect for. At some point, my previous relapse and ongoing masturbation had caused me to feel so much guilt that I decided to make an appointment to go in to talk to him about it, again fully expecting that I would probably be excommunicated based on my subsequent transgressions. I confessed everything to the stake president, and was absolutely floored when he simply thanked me for voluntarily confessing my sins, and told me that he had been meaning to call me in, because he wanted to issue a calling to become a ward clerk. I couldn’t believe it. What had just happened? And why? What was going on? I mean I’ve heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this made no sense whatsoever. But I accepted the call, and served as ward clerk.

Since then I have had a variety of responsible Church callings. Through all of this, and for the next 20 years, my only means of dealing with my “male sex drive” has been masturbation. Although I have had multiple subsequent opportunities to have affairs, I never have. Although, for a very long time, I felt very guilty about my masturbation, and confessed it to several other bishops, they always just said thanks, and took no further action. I have always been very candid about it in my temple recommend interviews, and no one has ever denied me a temple recommend. Ultimately, I have just come to accept it to be the lesser of two evils in my very unsatisfying marriage relationship.

In a nutshell, at this point, I have been married for over 30 years. I am the sole breadwinner in our family. I haven’t had sex with my wife or anyone else in over 15 years. I don’t know what to say. I make a good living. I provide well for my wife. But I don’t feel like I get much in return. At this point I’m looking at spending the rest of my life without sex, with no other options but masturbation or divorce. What am I supposed to do? And I haven’t even gotten to the saddest part of the whole story yet.

We have a daughter, who I dearly love. She is almost 30, and has two children. She did recently get divorced. I know for a fact that lack of physical intimacy was one of the biggest reasons for their divorce. There were no affairs. But like many young husbands, hers wasn’t getting enough, and didn’t know what to do about it, and eventually the wheels came off. So what now?

She’s now seeing another young man about the same age, but he’s never been married. They are getting serious, but what am I supposed to think of all this? I can already see the writing on the wall. I love my daughter dearly, but it is a virtual certainty that if they get married this new husband will be disappointed and frustrated too. So, what’s going to happen then? It’s feeling like a vicious cycle that I don’t know what to do about, and that is very depressing, and makes me very sad.

But thanks for letting me vent. Hopefully, someone else can learn something useful from any of this, or at least be more empathetic and understanding.

And, thanks again for leading the charge in the discussion."
Well at least we're back on topic now.

I think this sad tale is unfortunately not uncommon and I can totally see where polygamy could help this situation. If the husband has other wives who are interested in sex, then this would satisfy his sex drive and bring him the fulfillment he yearns for. It might also cause his first wife to become interested in sex again, because she doesn't want to be left out and realizes she's missing something, which could very well in turn lead to her having a more fulfilled life as well.
The problem with this so-called "solution" is that it only benefits the husband. He has no need to work out his sex problems with his first wife if he can get his needs or wants met somewhere else. The first wife also has needs, so he needs to figure out how to fulfill her needs before going off to satisfy his own and ignoring her fear of sex with him.
No, I don't think this is true. As I stated, I think there are potential benefits for his first wife, too.

Her disinterest in sex may not having anything to do with "fear," either. And there may be nothing he can do about his wife's lack of interest in sex. If his wife refuses to have sex with him, in spite of his best efforts to work things out with her, then both are left with a marriage that lacks complete fulfillment. Polygamy could very well be a solution to this problem.

The real issue then is whether or not God approves of it. Unless he does, it's not a valid solution per Jacob 2.
I think if he has a chance to work out his sex problem with another woman, she should be given the chance to work out her problem with another man. If she can't learn to trust her husband, then perhaps it will be the same with other men as well, and if that's the case then yes, she might have a pride problem if she's determined for eternity to not have sex with a man. But you have to give her a chance to learn to trust and love the experience with a different man if you can go to a different wife. Otherwise you are only thinking of yourself and giving yourself a gift.

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Mangus MacLeod
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Mangus MacLeod »

It’s like spitting in the wind. Do you understand that?

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Sarah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:42 am It’s so easy to identify and talk about all the problems. But what are the solutions? Like I’ve said before, there are a lot of big “Why” questions in this whole equation. Why did God design and create men and women the way He did?

Thinking about this whole dilemma I have sometimes wondered why God didn’t design and create men and women so that they would only experience sexual climax as a result of a chemical reaction when their respective “seed” mixed during intercourse. Why does it all have to be so complicated? And seriously, why are men designed so that their reproductive lifespan is often twice as long as a woman’s? Why?

Sarah, I really appreciate you offering a female perspective, but I’m just going to say it, and with all due respect, I think you are actually pretty clueless about men. I realize that most men are completely clueless about women. I get that. And I realize you seem to think that you have the female side of the equation completely dialed in, and maybe you do, but by your repeated and now very consistent message, I can see that you have no better grasp of the male side of the equation than most other women. Sorry, but that’s the way I see it.

And Atticus, I’m glad to hear that you are married, and so sexually satisfied in your marriage. That is a good place to be, and I am happy for you. But, your dogma doesn’t hold water. The Church leadership’s positions on sex have changed consistently over the course of the past 100+ years, with little evidence that God has had anything to do with any of it.

For years masturbation was treated as a mortal sin. That is the era I grew up in too. But do you know that the Church takes virtually no position on masturbation today? Do you know that? And the Church no longer tries to micro-manage married couples’ sexual relationships. Do you know that?

Maybe one of the reasons is that, like when the Church was pushed hard about its original position(s) on Blacks and the priesthood, the Church ultimately acknowledged (or at least claimed) that there was no revelatory basis for its previous position(s) and policy, the reality is, there is no revelatory basis for many of the Church’s positions on sex, and never has been. Those positions have been based entirely on evolving personal opinions of Church leaders. Frankly, you’re not going to find much that the Savior has ever said on this subject. You understand that, right? Despite your dogma, which seems to be completely out of touch with reality, as they say in Texas, your dog won’t hunt, and you can’t find anything solid to support it. I realize that must be a disappointment, but it is a reality. And disappointment seems to be a common theme in this thread.

After 150+ years of revelation, men and women in the Church today still don’t understand each other very well and they each have many unmet physical and emotional needs. The Church has often tried to control and micro-manage much of this, but it does not seem to have helped.

Honestly, despite the fact that Sex is the undeniable glue that helps bond and hold marriages and families together, the Church and many of its members and leaders still act as clueless about all that as ever. If they weren’t, Church membership would not have such a high incidence of porn use, anti-depressant use, and divorce. You can have as many proclamations of theoretical positions as you want, but if the glue fails, the proclamations and theories won’t hold it all together. Without any glue, marriages fall apart. Families fall apart. That is a reality.

But if there has been one very consistent position for the past 100 years now, it has been the strong, deep-seated bias against plural marriage.

Does any of this make any actual sense?
If I'm clueless then please, enlighten me. I don't claim to know how a man feels other than what my husband has told me.

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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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All I see in this conversation is how men are the victims of women. I don't see acknowledgement of how wives are the victims of men.

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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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Most people have no real interest in actually understanding , especially if that means having their paradigms challenged. They just want to be stroked. They want to have their personal paradigms validated. I’m sorry that I’m not providing the stroking that you and others are looking for. But, please feel free to keep saying the same thing(s) over and over again.

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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:53 am
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:35 pm
Sarah wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:23 pm
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 10:41 pm

Well at least we're back on topic now.

I think this sad tale is unfortunately not uncommon and I can totally see where polygamy could help this situation. If the husband has other wives who are interested in sex, then this would satisfy his sex drive and bring him the fulfillment he yearns for. It might also cause his first wife to become interested in sex again, because she doesn't want to be left out and realizes she's missing something, which could very well in turn lead to her having a more fulfilled life as well.
The problem with this so-called "solution" is that it only benefits the husband. He has no need to work out his sex problems with his first wife if he can get his needs or wants met somewhere else. The first wife also has needs, so he needs to figure out how to fulfill her needs before going off to satisfy his own and ignoring her fear of sex with him.
No, I don't think this is true. As I stated, I think there are potential benefits for his first wife, too.

Her disinterest in sex may not having anything to do with "fear," either. And there may be nothing he can do about his wife's lack of interest in sex. If his wife refuses to have sex with him, in spite of his best efforts to work things out with her, then both are left with a marriage that lacks complete fulfillment. Polygamy could very well be a solution to this problem.

The real issue then is whether or not God approves of it. Unless he does, it's not a valid solution per Jacob 2.
I think if he has a chance to work out his sex problem with another woman, she should be given the chance to work out her problem with another man. If she can't learn to trust her husband, then perhaps it will be the same with other men as well, and if that's the case then yes, she might have a pride problem if she's determined for eternity to not have sex with a man. But you have to give her a chance to learn to trust and love the experience with a different man if you can go to a different wife. Otherwise you are only thinking of yourself and giving yourself a gift.
You might recall that while the Church was practicing polygamy women who were unhappy with this arrangement were granted a divorce and allowed to marry a husband of their choosing.

If the wife simply refuses to have sex with her husband (for whatever reason) and would rather have sex with another man, she is free to divorce him and find a new man. But sleeping around with other men while remaining married to her husband would be adultery.

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Sarah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 7:28 am
Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:53 am
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:35 pm
Sarah wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:23 pm

The problem with this so-called "solution" is that it only benefits the husband. He has no need to work out his sex problems with his first wife if he can get his needs or wants met somewhere else. The first wife also has needs, so he needs to figure out how to fulfill her needs before going off to satisfy his own and ignoring her fear of sex with him.
No, I don't think this is true. As I stated, I think there are potential benefits for his first wife, too.

Her disinterest in sex may not having anything to do with "fear," either. And there may be nothing he can do about his wife's lack of interest in sex. If his wife refuses to have sex with him, in spite of his best efforts to work things out with her, then both are left with a marriage that lacks complete fulfillment. Polygamy could very well be a solution to this problem.

The real issue then is whether or not God approves of it. Unless he does, it's not a valid solution per Jacob 2.
I think if he has a chance to work out his sex problem with another woman, she should be given the chance to work out her problem with another man. If she can't learn to trust her husband, then perhaps it will be the same with other men as well, and if that's the case then yes, she might have a pride problem if she's determined for eternity to not have sex with a man. But you have to give her a chance to learn to trust and love the experience with a different man if you can go to a different wife. Otherwise you are only thinking of yourself and giving yourself a gift.
You might recall that while the Church was practicing polygamy women who were unhappy with this arrangement were granted a divorce and allowed to marry a husband of their choosing.

If the wife simply refuses to have sex with her husband (for whatever reason) and would rather have sex with another man, she is free to divorce him and find a new man. But sleeping around with other men while remaining married to her husband would be adultery.
Yes, I recall that they allowed that and but that's not ideal. The wife is forced to make a separation from the father of her children, and the father feels off the hook taking care of any of his children's physical needs. It would be like telling your child, "fine, you don't like hugging me? You can go find different parents." You are taking advantage of the child's weakness and dependence in order to force the the child to give you physical affection. And the same applies to your wife but with sex.
Last edited by Sarah on September 23rd, 2022, 8:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

Mangus MacLeod wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:42 am
And Atticus, I’m glad to hear that you are married, and so sexually satisfied in your marriage. That is a good place to be, and I am happy for you. But, your dogma doesn’t hold water. The Church leadership’s positions on sex have changed consistently over the course of the past 100+ years, with little evidence that God has had anything to do with any of it.

For years masturbation was treated as a mortal sin. That is the era I grew up in too. But do you know that the Church takes virtually no position on masturbation today? Do you know that? And the Church no longer tries to micro-manage married couples’ sexual relationships. Do you know that?

Maybe one of the reasons is that, like when the Church was pushed hard about its original position(s) on Blacks and the priesthood, the Church ultimately acknowledged (or at least claimed) that there was no revelatory basis for its previous position(s) and policy, the reality is, there is no revelatory basis for many of the Church’s positions on sex, and never has been. Those positions have been based entirely on evolving personal opinions of Church leaders. Frankly, you’re not going to find much that the Savior has ever said on this subject. You understand that, right? Despite your dogma, which seems to be completely out of touch with reality, as they say in Texas, your dog won’t hunt, and you can’t find anything solid to support it. I realize that must be a disappointment, but it is a reality. And disappointment seems to be a common theme in this thread.

After 150+ years of revelation, men and women in the Church today still don’t understand each other very well and they each have many unmet physical and emotional needs. The Church has often tried to control and micro-manage much of this, but it does not seem to have helped.

Honestly, despite the fact that Sex is the undeniable glue that helps bond and hold marriages and families together, the Church and many of its members and leaders still act as clueless about all that as ever. If they weren’t, Church membership would not have such a high incidence of porn use, anti-depressant use, and divorce. You can have as many proclamations of theoretical positions as you want, but if the glue fails, the proclamations and theories won’t hold it all together. Without any glue, marriages fall apart. Families fall apart. That is a reality.

But if there has been one very consistent position for the past 100 years now, it has been the strong, deep-seated bias against plural marriage.

Does any of this make any actual sense?
Well, I think for starters if your going to insist that my belief that all sex outside of marriage, including masturbation, is sinful is a "dogma that doesn't hold water," you'll have to provide some evidence from the scriptures or teachings of Latter-day prophets to counter what I said. A simple "they aren't as outspoken about masturbation then they were when I was a kid" isn't going to cut it. Please provide any evidence that sex outside of marriage, including masturbation, has EVER been considered perfect acceptable and not sinful.

My observation about our situation today is that the church simply isn't very tough on sin in general. But that doesn't mean sin is no longer sin.

As for blacks and the priesthood, that's a whole seperate issue. The original ban is very well supported in the scriptures and teachings of Joseph Smith.

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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

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Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 8:04 am
Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 7:28 am
Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:53 am
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:35 pm

No, I don't think this is true. As I stated, I think there are potential benefits for his first wife, too.

Her disinterest in sex may not having anything to do with "fear," either. And there may be nothing he can do about his wife's lack of interest in sex. If his wife refuses to have sex with him, in spite of his best efforts to work things out with her, then both are left with a marriage that lacks complete fulfillment. Polygamy could very well be a solution to this problem.

The real issue then is whether or not God approves of it. Unless he does, it's not a valid solution per Jacob 2.
I think if he has a chance to work out his sex problem with another woman, she should be given the chance to work out her problem with another man. If she can't learn to trust her husband, then perhaps it will be the same with other men as well, and if that's the case then yes, she might have a pride problem if she's determined for eternity to not have sex with a man. But you have to give her a chance to learn to trust and love the experience with a different man if you can go to a different wife. Otherwise you are only thinking of yourself and giving yourself a gift.
You might recall that while the Church was practicing polygamy women who were unhappy with this arrangement were granted a divorce and allowed to marry a husband of their choosing.

If the wife simply refuses to have sex with her husband (for whatever reason) and would rather have sex with another man, she is free to divorce him and find a new man. But sleeping around with other men while remaining married to her husband would be adultery.
Yes, I recall that they allowed that and but that's not ideal. The wife is forced to make a separation from the father of her children, and the father feels off the hook taking care of any of his children's physical needs. It would be like telling your child, "fine, you don't like hugging me? You can go find different parents." You are taking advantage of the child's weakness and dependence in order to force the the child to give you physical affection. And the same applies to you wife but with sex.
The solution to the problem is really quite simple. If the wife wants sex, she should have it with her husband. If she is unwilling to do that and still wants sex, then she needs to find a new husband.

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Sarah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Sarah »

Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 7:28 am
Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:53 am
Atticus wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:35 pm
Sarah wrote: September 22nd, 2022, 11:23 pm

The problem with this so-called "solution" is that it only benefits the husband. He has no need to work out his sex problems with his first wife if he can get his needs or wants met somewhere else. The first wife also has needs, so he needs to figure out how to fulfill her needs before going off to satisfy his own and ignoring her fear of sex with him.
No, I don't think this is true. As I stated, I think there are potential benefits for his first wife, too.

Her disinterest in sex may not having anything to do with "fear," either. And there may be nothing he can do about his wife's lack of interest in sex. If his wife refuses to have sex with him, in spite of his best efforts to work things out with her, then both are left with a marriage that lacks complete fulfillment. Polygamy could very well be a solution to this problem.

The real issue then is whether or not God approves of it. Unless he does, it's not a valid solution per Jacob 2.
I think if he has a chance to work out his sex problem with another woman, she should be given the chance to work out her problem with another man. If she can't learn to trust her husband, then perhaps it will be the same with other men as well, and if that's the case then yes, she might have a pride problem if she's determined for eternity to not have sex with a man. But you have to give her a chance to learn to trust and love the experience with a different man if you can go to a different wife. Otherwise you are only thinking of yourself and giving yourself a gift.
You might recall that while the Church was practicing polygamy women who were unhappy with this arrangement were granted a divorce and allowed to marry a husband of their choosing.

If the wife simply refuses to have sex with her husband (for whatever reason) and would rather have sex with another man, she is free to divorce him and find a new man. But sleeping around with other men while remaining married to her husband would be adultery.
Also, sleeping around with other women is usually called adultery. The only reason you are okay with it is because God allowed it. You should also consider that God may allow you according to his law to give your wife another husband and you go into an economic united order by covenant with the other husband to work together to take care of your wives, and share your wives and substance with each other. Mangus keeps asking the question of why God created the imbalance of sexuality between men and women, and the answer is to give men the opportunity to learn true unconditional love to someone who was weaker than himself. The imbalance and privilege of plural wives is exactly the same. God gave men the opportunity to have a privilege and strength as their wives gave to them and sacrificed for them, but their opportunity was to learn to give to their wives and bring forth Zion by living the principles of stewardship and consecration, establishing the Order of Enoch, where all were one, united in a covenant family relationship. But because they didn't learn their lesson of charity and giving to their wives, the Lord threatened them with destruction unless they stopped the practice.

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Sarah
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by Sarah »

Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 8:06 am
Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 8:04 am
Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 7:28 am
Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 6:53 am

I think if he has a chance to work out his sex problem with another woman, she should be given the chance to work out her problem with another man. If she can't learn to trust her husband, then perhaps it will be the same with other men as well, and if that's the case then yes, she might have a pride problem if she's determined for eternity to not have sex with a man. But you have to give her a chance to learn to trust and love the experience with a different man if you can go to a different wife. Otherwise you are only thinking of yourself and giving yourself a gift.
You might recall that while the Church was practicing polygamy women who were unhappy with this arrangement were granted a divorce and allowed to marry a husband of their choosing.

If the wife simply refuses to have sex with her husband (for whatever reason) and would rather have sex with another man, she is free to divorce him and find a new man. But sleeping around with other men while remaining married to her husband would be adultery.
Yes, I recall that they allowed that and but that's not ideal. The wife is forced to make a separation from the father of her children, and the father feels off the hook taking care of any of his children's physical needs. It would be like telling your child, "fine, you don't like hugging me? You can go find different parents." You are taking advantage of the child's weakness and dependence in order to force the the child to give you physical affection. And the same applies to you wife but with sex.
The solution to the problem is really quite simple. If the wife wants sex, she should have it with her husband. If she is unwilling to do that and still wants sex, then she needs to find a new husband.
How can she have "sex" with her husband if he's not giving it to her? "Sex" is not just him satisfying his sexual needs. He needs to prove to her that he can satisfy her. He needs to earn her trust to allow him to try to give her a good gift. If he can't earn her trust, then perhaps the problem is with him.

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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by LDS Watchman »

Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 8:18 am
Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 8:06 am
Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 8:04 am
Atticus wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 7:28 am

You might recall that while the Church was practicing polygamy women who were unhappy with this arrangement were granted a divorce and allowed to marry a husband of their choosing.

If the wife simply refuses to have sex with her husband (for whatever reason) and would rather have sex with another man, she is free to divorce him and find a new man. But sleeping around with other men while remaining married to her husband would be adultery.
Yes, I recall that they allowed that and but that's not ideal. The wife is forced to make a separation from the father of her children, and the father feels off the hook taking care of any of his children's physical needs. It would be like telling your child, "fine, you don't like hugging me? You can go find different parents." You are taking advantage of the child's weakness and dependence in order to force the the child to give you physical affection. And the same applies to you wife but with sex.
The solution to the problem is really quite simple. If the wife wants sex, she should have it with her husband. If she is unwilling to do that and still wants sex, then she needs to find a new husband.
How can she have "sex" with her husband if he's not giving it to her? "Sex" is not just him satisfying his sexual needs. He needs to prove to her that he can satisfy her. He needs to earn her trust to allow him to try to give her a good gift. If he can't earn her trust, then perhaps the problem is with him.
And if the problem isn't with him, then what?

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FrankOne
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Re: Women and Plural Marriage -- the Great Re-Awakening?

Post by FrankOne »

Sarah wrote: September 23rd, 2022, 7:12 am All I see in this conversation is how men are the victims of women. I don't see acknowledgement of how wives are the victims of men.
consider the possibility that what you are seeing is an image of what you are projecting. When you see what you are projecting, it is reversed.

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