My Temple Story - Spiritual Polygamy and Polyandry

It’s amazing to me how many people, both Mormons and Ex-Mormons don’t know that the LDS church still practices a kind of “spiritual” polygamy and polyandry. Recently I read a blog post where an LDS woman was trying to dispel some myths about Mormons, and one of those myths was that we still practice polygamy. (As a side note, it’s actually pretty common for people of other faiths to believe that Mormons still practice polygamy in a literal sense.) In the comments of that blog post someone mentioned that we still practice a kind of spiritual polygamy by allowing men to be sealed to more than one woman. The author of this article told the commentator that claim was false, not knowing the dealings of her own religion.

I was sealed to my first husband in the temple when I was 18 years old. Having started college at 16, after my sophomore year in high school, I had a false sense of maturity. Academic achievement does not equal social maturity in case anyone is wondering. I also made this life altering decision to be married for “eternity” a few months after placing my first born child with a family for adoption. Though I don’t ever regret my decision to place him in a loving two parent family, my emotional state after having given up my child was not one where I should have been making decisions like getting married.

After about the first year of our marriage I realized what a terrible and unhealthy relationship I was in. I won’t delve into the details of that ordeal in this post, but we were divorced after a little over three years of marriage. Our divorce was a legal proceeding, but our “sealing” was still in tact. Supposedly this was to ensure I could still benefit from the blessings of a temple marriage. That’s how it was explained to me anyway. Regardless, I wasn’t very happy knowing that I was essentially still tied to someone like him… for eternity! Maybe part of me was willing to accept that the sealing was still in effect because it meant that the son I had while married to him was still able to gain blessings from being born into the covenant. What amazes me, knowing what I know now, is that these same eternal blessings were essentially what Joseph Smith used as bait to entice young teenagers and married women into marrying him.

My ex-husband started his wife hunt pretty shortly after our divorce was final. He met someone online and decided to propose marriage at his second in-person meet-up with her. They were married civilly but they wanted to be sealed in the temple. To do that, they needed a sealing clearance, which is basically authorization from the first presidency for my husband to be sealed to a second woman, kind of like how the church leadership authorized men to practice literal polygamy back in the day.

Part of this clearance involved having his bishop asking me to write a letter to the first presidency talking about my experience with the divorce and how I felt about him being sealed to his new wife. I was frank in my letter that I was glad he and I had divorced for many reasons, but that I was trying to be forgiving and I was genuinely happy for he and his new wife. She had been a single mom before meeting my ex, and since she was able to get her son’s biological father to relinquish his rights, my ex adopted him and he was sealed to them both. This “eternal” family was getting rather large with my ex-husband sealed to me, his new wife, our son, and her son.

My ex wanted me to relinquish my rights to our son as well, hoping I’d be interested in essentially removing myself from our son’s life as I did when I placed my first born for adoption. I’m not making this up… That was the kind of person he was. My son, though, whether or not our sealing was in effect or not, could not be sealed to anyone else because he had already been born in the covenant. Regardless, my ex wanted me to disappear so he didn’t have to deal with me.

Before I go on to explain my second marriage, let me also explain something else that still blows my mind. After my ex and I divorced, I had an out of wedlock relationship and had another child (are you judging me yet?) I was never excommunicated, only dis-fellow-shipped for a while, so my sealing to my ex was still in effect. I briefly contemplated placing my daughter for adoption with the same family that I placed my first born with, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go through that again and I was also considering marrying her father, which luckily never happened (won’t go into that right now either.) After I made my decision to keep my daughter, my dad who was a bishop at the time, said after discussing with the stake president and consulting the handbook that my daughter wouldn’t have been able to be sealed to anyone else had she been placed with an LDS family for adoption. Even though my ex husband was not her biological father, she was sealed to him and myself and considered born in the covenant. So not only was I eternally tied to my ex, so were both my children, his new wife, and her son. Is your head hurting yet?

Several years later I met the man that I now call husband. He and I wanted to be married in the temple, but to do that I had to get a temple cancellation. A woman is not allowed to be sealed to two men, even though a man can be sealed to two women. The process of a temple cancellation could take weeks, months, or years, but my dad assured me that it would probably go more quickly because I was requesting to have a sealing cancellation in order to be sealed again. Apparently requesting a cancellation without the prospect of shortly being sealed to someone else is not encouraged, and I’ve even heard of requests taking upwards of a year or denied altogether.

I worked with my bishop at the time to prepare all the paperwork for the sealing cancellation. Part of this process involved me writing a letter to the first presidency of the church explaining all of the sins I had committed since being sealed to my first husband whether or not those sins had been properly handled by the proper priesthood channels. This list for me was not a short one. Having to recount all of my transgressions that I thought I had atoned for was not an easy task. It was incredibly painful, and though I knew I had done what I was supposed to in confessing and atoning for those sins, I felt fresh guilt all over again by having to put them all in writing.

My bishop also needed to get a letter from my ex husband, one which I probably wouldn’t ever lay eyes on. His letter had to be like the one I wrote for his sealing clearance, just expressing his thoughts on the cancellation and our failed relationship. Weeks went by and no letter from my ex was received. We couldn’t make any plans as to when we could be married in the temple until after my sealing cancellation went through. The temple won’t even schedule a date for you until that paperwork is in hand. So although we were engaged, we couldn’t set a date to be married, and by stalling to write the letter for my sealing cancellation, my ex husband was delaying my marriage. You can imagine that I wasn’t very happy that he wasn’t providing this letter.

On a whim, my husband and I decided to be married civilly over the Christmas holiday when we both had time off work, and would make plans to be sealed in the temple a year later (the amount of time you had to wait after being married civilly in the United States, according to church policy at the time). We eloped to a little log cabin chapel and paid a preacher $50 to marry us. It was simple, sweet, and beautiful. Getting married civilly meant we had to wait at least a year to be sealed, but we could finish the paperwork for the sealing cancellation regardless. I asked my old bishop if he had received a letter from my ex husband for the sealing cancellation and he said that no, he hadn’t. He also confessed that he had lost my letter describing all my sins that was supposed to go to the first presidency. So somewhere, floating around, is a letter that I wrote talking about all the things I have done wrong in my life. Makes me feel all sorts of good inside.

As a side note, my version of sin, encompassed a great deal of behaviors when I was Mormon. While I realize I’ve done some pretty idiotic things in my life (yes, I realize that unprotected sex means you could get pregnant), being free from the Mormon version of what is right and wrong actually makes me want to be more moral, loving, and smart about my choices, and has helped me to let go of the guilt and shame I was hanging on to over choices I had made in my past.

People talk about spiritual polygamy when the church allows men to be sealed to more than one wife, but I was also essentially being allowed to practice spiritual polyandry. I married another man civilly while I was still sealed to my ex. This happens all the time whether a woman is divorced or loses her husband, and remarries. If I had died before being sealed to my second husband, would I have had to spend eternity with my ex? The thought makes me shudder. Church members (and myself at the time) tend to ignore the logistics of this implication and just merely state that it will all work out in the eternities.

We started the sealing cancellation process over again with my new bishop. I went through the painful process of writing that letter with all my sins. This time, my bishop sent a certified letter to my ex with a request for a letter that he needed to write for my sealing cancellation. My ex husband never wrote the letter. So after a couple months, my bishop just sent the certified receipt to Salt Lake proving that we at least made an attempt to get a letter from my ex. Waiting for his letter delayed the process but, after almost 2 years of being married to my second husband, we finally had the sealing cancellation paperwork in-hand and were able to be sealed in the temple.

My son that I had with my ex husband won’t be able to be sealed to anyone else. My daughter, since she was technically “born in the covenant” was in the same boat. My husband and I also had concerns that if we had a child together before the sealing cancellation with my ex-husband went through that our child would not be sealed to us, but to myself and my ex-husband. Because of this reason, we also decided not to try having a child right away, and to start after we were sealed to each other in the temple. My second marriage and plans to have children were very literally affected by this process.

As an interesting side note, the ability to even go to the temple to be sealed to your family depends on your “worthiness”. When you want to go to the temple to be baptized by proxy for a dead ancestor, to receive your endowments and anointings in order to make it to the highest level of heaven, or to be eternally sealed to your family, you have to be interviewed by two leaders of the Mormon church. One of those leaders is the Bishop, who is the leader over your regional ward or congregation. The other is the Stake President, who is the leader over several wards or congregations. One of the questions that you must answer yes to in order to be given a temple recommend (a little card they scan at the temple to allow you to enter) is whether or not you pay a full tithe. A full tithe in the LDS church is 10% of your increase or income. If you cannot pay 10% for whatever reason (say, to pay your mortgage or feed your children), you can’t say that you have paid a full tithe, and this could prevent you from doing any of these things in the temple, including being sealed to your family for eternity. Paying tithing in the Mormon church is about as voluntary as paying taxes. If you don’t pay taxes, you can go to jail. If you don’t pay tithing, it could prevent you from being with your family in heaven.

Now that I have left the church I’m amazed at how many excuses I made in my mind to justify going through this complicated and unjustly emotional process. I love my family, my husband, and my children, and I am so glad that regardless of whether there is life after this or not, I don’t need to be concerned with whether or not the logistics of it all will allow me to be with my husband and children in eternity. I still hope that will be the case, but if there is a God, and he is loving, he won’t tear my family apart.

It’s sad, but letting people know how temple sealings work may be considered “anti-Mormon” to some people in the LDS church, just like exposing members to the church’s history and early doctrines. A church that discourages analysis of its inner workings isn’t a church I want to belong to.