Infants on Thrones

Episode 17a: Confessions of a Mormon Swinger (Part 1)

Glenn: I want to start off today by telling two quick stories. I heard both of these in Japan back in the early '90s when I was there as a missionary. So, here you go.

Story number one. Two American missionaries are riding in an elevator with a super cute Japanese girl. They keep talking to themselves about how hot she is all the way up in the elevator—in English, of course. And one of them says, "Man, if I wasn't a missionary, I would totally ask her out." And this girl finally turns to him and answers in perfect English, "And if you weren't a missionary, I might actually go out with you."

Story number two. A missionary is riding on his bike. He falls. He breaks both of his wrists in this bicycle accident and has to spend a few days in a local Japanese hospital. As he's laying in his bed, this super cute Japanese nurse comes in to give him a sponge bath. As she's sponging him here and there, he starts to get a little aroused. She looks down at him, she smiles, reaches across the table, picks up this metal spoon, and thunk—hammers it right down on the top of his arousal. And sorry, elder, no soup for you.

Now, I'm quite certain that neither of these two stories ever actually happened, but that didn't really matter to me when I was a missionary. I just loved hearing them, and I loved telling them. Why? Probably because I was 19 years old and I wasn't allowed to be attracted to super cute Japanese girls. But of course, I was. And these stories gave me a way to vicariously express my natural curiosity.

So, fast-forward 20 years later now. I've heard a lot of stories about Mormon swingers, about wife swapping, you know, mainly among ex-Mormon groups. And whenever I'd hear these stories, I'd just have to ask myself: are these stories real? Or is this just another example of people vicariously expressing and exploring their own inner curiosities?

Well, I was discussing this with a friend of mine a few months ago, and he confided in me that he knew for certain that at least some of these stories were true because he had personally tapped into this community and it was something that he and his wife had experienced. So, he agreed to come on the podcast to discuss his experience, to explain why he did what he did, how it affected his marriage, and what he's learned from it, as long as I agree to protect his identity. So, what you're going to hear today is his story, followed by some panel discussion as we try to figure out what it all means. I'm Glenn Ostlund, and today on Infants on Thrones, you'll be hearing the confessions of a Mormon swinger.

Theme / Intro: This is Infants on Thrones, the philosophies of men mingled with humor. We are the core.

Guest: Yeah. So, you know, obviously I don't want to say too much about where I was raised, but it's safe to say I was in the Mormon corridor; there were a lot of members of the church around, and I had a pretty typical upbringing in the church.

Glenn: So like a lot of family members in the church, going back multiple generations, that sort of thing?

Guest: Well, no, not really. My family joined the church when I was 9 years old.

Glenn: Oh, okay.

Guest: And I did have some siblings. I don't want to say too much about that, but you know, I had experienced some of life not being Mormon. But for the most part, you know, I went through Primary, Teachers, Priests, Deacons, that whole thing, right? So: mission, married in the temple. It was pretty typical of what most members go through.

Glenn: Okay. Well, so you say you were married in the temple.

Guest: Yeah.

Glenn: So I assume when you got married then—I don't know, maybe it's not safe to assume, but were you a virgin when you got married, you and your wife together?

Guest: Yeah, we were. You know, I mean, we had pushed the borders, I guess you could say, a little bit. We didn't do anything really bad; it wasn't like we felt the need that we had to confess anything either. But yeah, for the most part we were virgins when we got married and didn't really know what the heck we were doing.

Glenn: Yeah. Right, okay. So tell me, how do you go from being married in the temple to becoming a swinger? What's the story? How did that happen?

Guest: Yeah. Well, I guess it really starts with my wife and I leaving the church. And you know, I don't need to go into all the details of that. She was actually the one that left first, which is kind of interesting. And then I followed shortly after. That's a story in and of itself. But you know, I started taking inventory of my life. We'd been married for about 15 years, but we got married really young, and I felt that the church had really inhibited my growth and development, especially about sex. I didn't have the kind of sexual experience that normal people do. And so I started having this thought that I wanted to have sex and I wanted to experience that with other women.

Because, you know, you leave the church and a whole new world opens up to you. And with my belief system, I didn't really think that there was any heaven or hell to live for anymore; it's just like this life is it. And so, it made me want to experience as much as I could now. Even though we had a great marriage, it wasn't about that. I love my wife. We have a fantastic marriage, but I just wanted to have experiences that I didn't have before because I was a faithful member of the church.

Glenn: But, okay. Didn't it seem a little risky to you, though? You know, this thought of having sex with other women? Because what if you experience something that you like better than what you have, and it puts this great marriage of yours at risk?

Guest: Well, yeah, of course I had that concern. I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize my marriage, which is why I decided that if I did actually act on anything—these desires that I had—it would be with complete honesty and fairness, that it would be something that we would do together as a couple, not just something that I would do on my own in private or in secret.

Glenn: Yeah. Well, I got to tell you, to me that kind of doubles the risk, because then not only would I be worried about me finding somebody that I might like better than my wife, but I'd be really worried that my wife might find somebody that she liked better than me. So that wasn't a concern for you as you were going into this?

Guest: Well, yeah, of course it was a concern. But it's something that we talked about together, and so we set up some rules that we hoped would kind of keep us together. And you know, it's got to be said: if you're going to go into an open marriage like this, you've got to have a strong relationship already, because if you don't and you think that an open marriage is going to fix a bad marriage, you're setting yourself up for failure. So I had enough confidence in the love that I had for my wife and the love that she had for me. I had enough confidence in our ability to be honest and open with each other, that it was worth the risk. Yeah, it was there, but it was worth that risk, and it was something that we tried to manage.

Now, I don't want to give too much away, but I'll say that things didn't go perfectly, and there were things like jealousy that I really didn't expect to feel as much as I did, but I don't want to jump too far ahead right now with that.

Glenn: Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, I imagine jealousy would kind of sink me, among other things in this. But let's talk about that transition then, because you said you had been having these feelings when you left the church and you hadn't shared them with your wife, but at some point you must have shared them with your wife if you both went into this together. So how did that happen?

Guest: Well, a friend of ours recommended an evolutionary psychology book called Sex at Dawn. And the hypothesis of the book is that our pre-agriculture ancestors were more like today's bonobos, a form of chimpanzee who practice egalitarian sex in their society. So the idea is that 10,000 years ago there was this shift where our ancestors became sedentary, we developed agriculture, and before that time we had been much more egalitarian in the way that we deal with sex. Women had as much power as men. But as they became sedentary, we started focusing on possessions, and so women lost their standing and were relegated to possessions as well. So that fundamentally changed our sexual behavior and moved us more towards monogamy where we are today. But the hardwiring in our brains for sexual novelty remains as it was, with the past 10,000 years of cultural conditioning.

So really, what my wife and I came away from this with was the way that our sexuality is hardwired into our nature, where there is a proclivity to go outside of a monogamous relationship and have multiple sexual partners. That's just evolutionarily how we've evolved. That's what we took from it. And so one of the points that was made in the book is that today, the way that the value system is, marriages will end if there's a single indiscretion. That's it; the trust is gone; it's over. But if you look at this evolutionarily and you say: does that really make a lot of sense, that we are wired to act a certain way, and so if we happen to do it and mess up, is that really worth destroying an entire relationship over? And so that's where my wife and I came away from this feeling that if either one of us ever did stray in our marriage, we would be able to handle it and forgive each other because we understood more that it was part of our nature.

Glenn: Okay. So what was your next step after the book?

Guest: Well, one of the points of the book was that sexual novelty is a real drive in humans. And so if things get a little routine sexually, then the relationship could be in danger. And so we started talking about different ways that we could introduce this sexual novelty into our relationship. And of course, I had had these thoughts for a while, so this was really the time that I shared that with her.

Glenn: I cannot imagine that that went over well at all.

Guest: Well, you know, I really don't remember to be honest what that initial discussion was like, but I do remember that we went on a trip right after this. And you know, I should preface this by saying that this whole story is a classic example of "be careful what you wish for." Because as soon as my wife started having these thoughts—she hadn't had these thoughts that I had upon leaving the church—as soon as she started having these thoughts, I started recognizing some things in myself. I mentioned earlier the jealousy.

So, you know, we had these discussions and then we went on this trip. We were at a party with some friends, and she was talking with a guy who was a friend of ours, and she knew that he liked her, and he just flirted with her. And for the first time, she felt like it was okay for her to flirt back, and it was just a new experience and a new dynamic. And we came back from that trip, and she said, "You know, I know you've been talking about an open marriage; I'm ready to do that now," because she really got turned on by that flirting. And I was really surprised by my reaction to it. Here I had been hoping for this—this is something that I had wanted for a long time—and now she's saying, "Okay, I'm ready to do it," but really, it just freaked me out.

Glenn: Yeah. In what way? How did it freak you out?

Guest: Well, for the first time, I felt really vulnerable. I'd been thinking for so long about what I wanted out of an open marriage—I just wanted to have sex with other women. And now I was thinking, "Oh my gosh, my wife is thinking the same thing: she wants to have sex with other men." I don't know if I can handle this.

But it was really interesting to see how that vulnerability really changed our relationship almost immediately. She told me that she was ready, but I got cold feet. And so we didn't do anything to act on it for maybe two or three weeks. And during that two or three weeks, we were like love-starved teenagers. I couldn't get enough of her. I would come home early from work just to be with her. If I was sitting down watching TV and she told me that she was going to the grocery store, I'd get up and say, "Well, let me come with you." We just started hanging out more. Our sex improved four-fold. We started having four times the amount of sex that we had before, and it was new and exciting.

She could tell a difference in me, that it awakened in me this desire that I had for her—not to say that I didn't have that before, but we'd been married a long time and complacency had unfortunately settled in. It never quite got to the point where we were like roommates living together, but it was moving towards that. And so this new prospect in our marriage, this idea that maybe she would be with another guy, it terrified me. It made me feel totally vulnerable, but at the same time it really energized my desire to be with her.

Glenn: Okay. So you said it was about two or three weeks then before you really acted on the open marriage. How did that start? And why, if you had quadrupled your sex and things were great in your marriage, why would you want to do that?

Guest: Well, like I said, I felt that the church had kind of robbed me of some experience that I was owed. This was something that is part of nature, and it's part of my nature for sure. It's something that I'd wanted for a long time, and now we were getting close to it. My wife was saying, "This is something that you can do; you have my permission, my blessing," and I didn't feel like it was something that would be wrong. We could do it together.

But even more than that, and this was something that was a little surprising even to me: I had these very confusing feelings, because on the one hand, I was pretty jealous when I would see my wife flirting with another guy—and there were times I actually saw it happen, or if she was just talking to me afterwards and telling me what happened, I would feel the jealousy. But I also felt arousal—physical arousal at this that I didn't quite understand. But it was real, and it was exciting and exhilarating, and it would always lead to really great sex between me and my wife. So there was this new element to our relationship that hadn't been there before that I didn't really expect, and it was confusing, but there it was.

Glenn: Okay, well, that explains why you kept going on with it then. So you mentioned before that you set up some rules. Talk a little bit about what those were.

Guest: Okay. So we had some ground rules. We agreed that—well, for me, one of the things at the beginning, I really didn't want it to be anything other than sex. When you talk to people who have experience swinging, they talk about two different types: there's a polyamorous relationship, which includes feelings, where you actually develop feelings for the other people. But then there's just swinging, where it's treated more like an activity like racquetball. And that was what I was interested in. I didn't want any relationships to come out of this; I just wanted the act of sex, and I wanted to experience that in new ways with new women.

My wife at first asked about texting, which to me seemed like it was getting more about relationships and that polyamorous side, and I didn't want to do that. But we called a friend of mine who we trusted—he wasn't a swinger, but he actually sided with my wife and said this is all part of the foreplay, it's part of the sexual act. And so, reluctantly, I went along with it.

We had some other rules as well. For example, if a woman goes to a bar and meets a guy and goes home and has sex with him, that's kind of a dangerous thing to do. So we agreed that if that happened, they would take separate cars and she would text me when she was going and when she was done, and the address of the place, so I would know if I needed to go and help her out if she needed that.

We also agreed that our texts and our emails would be open to each other; we would have access to be able to look at what we were doing and not keep secrets from each other. We also agreed that we would take turns—that there would be equality in when we had sex. So if I had sex with somebody, then I wouldn't have sex again until she had had sex with somebody. And we could approve it at any time.

And then the most important rule was that if either one of us decided at any point that we didn't want to do this anymore, that that was it; we were done. We could pull the plug at any moment.

So those were the basic rules that we came up with. And from there, we decided to do a trial run. We went out to a bar, and she has a very attractive friend who helped her chances—not that she needs it, my wife's a very attractive woman and in good shape. One of the pieces of advice that I had going into this from a couple of friends was that as soon as we start down this path, we're going to see that it's much easier for a woman to find someone to have sex with than it is for a man. And that's exactly what we found.

The first night we went out as a trial run to different bars. I went to one, and my wife went to another one with this friend of hers, and within an hour she had met somebody. So she flirted with him, they made out a little bit, got a little physical. It didn't end in sex, because we had agreed that this first time out we wouldn't have sex, but she got a number, and it was really easy. Whereas on my side, this was a completely new experience for me: I'd never tried to hit on a girl at a bar. I didn't know what to do; I didn't know what to say. And so I just struck out right and left, and it was really discouraging for me, actually, since I was the one who had really initiated this—that I was the one getting shot down and my wife was having all the luck.

Glenn: Yeah. So it's not like you just buy a girl a drink; that's what always happens in the movies.

Guest: Oh no, I bought drinks! I bought a couple of drinks for a couple of women, but a lot of it was me trying to work up the courage to even have the nerve to hit on a woman. It was just really stressful for me, but it was fun for my wife, because all she had to do was sit there in her tube top and miniskirt and her boots and wait. I think she met this guy in the first 10 minutes.

Glenn: So she didn't end up having sex with this guy then?

Guest: Well, not the first night, but she got his number. And so then it was a discussion between the two of us: what are we going to do about it? She kept telling me, "We don't have to do this," because she could see that it was really hard on me. I was getting jealous, and I didn't expect that I would be so jealous, and she could see that. But I kept saying to her, "No, no, definitely you're going to do it; we're already down this path, it was something I really wanted to do." And so—this is kind of funny—I actually texted the guy on my wife's behalf and set up the date with him.

Glenn: Wait, you did it? Did he know it was you, or he thought that you were your wife?

Guest: Well, no, he thought that I was my wife. That would be kind of weird if he knew that it was me that was setting it up.

Glenn: Well, it's a little weird anyway, but yeah, go ahead.

Guest: Well, okay, and I got to say that Friday was one of the most difficult days of my life. I was at work, and I knew what was going to be happening that night. I got home, and I saw my wife all dressed up, ready to go out with this guy, and I knew what was going to happen. And so she went out, and I just went to a bar with a friend, not to try and pick up on anybody—I just needed to be with people and talk. And then I went home and crashed. I went to sleep, and she got home a little after 1:00 in the morning. She had been texting throughout the night, so it wasn't like she just left and then five hours later I see her. But she woke me up, and she told me that it had been a terrible experience for her. And to be honest, I was kind of glad about that.

Glenn: What was so bad about it for her? Did she feel guilty, like she was cheating on you or something?

Guest: No, she didn't feel guilty, because obviously I knew about it and it was something that we were doing together. She had fun on the date getting to know him; she enjoyed that part. It was just that when it came time to have sex, that part was awful for her. That first experience was really hard.

Glenn: Okay, so she had her experience. I guess you guys were taking turns, so that meant that it was your turn now. How'd you pull that off?

Guest: Oh, well, yeah, no kidding. It's harder for a guy, and I found that very quickly. I didn't want to lie. And so I'd meet someone, and I had a couple of different women who seemed interested and ready to go, but when they asked me, I would be honest and say, "Yes, I'm married, but we're in an open marriage." And they just turned around and walked the other way. Whereas with my wife, when she would say that to a guy, he'd be like, "Oh, cool." It's a different standard. Most women aren't looking to have sex with a guy that they meet in the bar right that night.

And with my social circles, I've had opportunities with co-workers where I knew that I could have sex with a co-worker, but that's too risky for my career. So it's kind of between that and going to a bar. I'll tell you one story: I walked in, and this really beautiful, tall blonde came up to me and she just hit on me instantly. I was like, "All right, this is great." But we started talking, and maybe 10 minutes in, I started realizing that her politics were very different from mine: she's a conservative Republican who hated Barack Obama. And it just got to a point where I said, "All right, you can go; I can't do it."

Glenn: Yeah, I think there was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm like that, where Larry David met a woman and couldn't pull the trigger because of her politics—she liked George Bush.

Guest: Yeah, I saw that one, too. It was a lot like that, except we were just at the bar. So this next part, I'm not really proud of, but I turned to prostitution as a way to find someone, because I was so eager to have this experience and I just couldn't find anyone.

Glenn: Wait, so prostitution—like somebody on the street or online, or how did you do this?

Guest: Yeah, I'm not really going to say, but it was just a quick 20-minute encounter. I wouldn't allow myself to actually have intercourse with the prostitute, but I took oral sex and manual release, and I was okay with that. And I did that two times.

Glenn: What, in a row? I thought you guys were taking turns!

Guest: Well, there's a big difference between what my wife experienced and what I experienced. You go out on a date with somebody, you're talking, you're connecting on an emotional level, on an intellectual level, and then later on a sexual level. She was out for five hours and had made that connection. Whereas I was with somebody that I had to pay for sex. It's very different than somebody that actually wants to have sex with you. There wasn't any intimacy, caressing, kissing, making out, nothing like that. It was just the act and the orgasm. Not to say that it wasn't exciting, because it was illegal and you never know if they're going to rob you or if their pimp is standing behind the door. But I went away from that feeling very frustrated and very empty.

Glenn: Like any self-loathing or anything like that?

Guest: Yeah, maybe a little self-loathing. It's just very different than when somebody actually wants to be with you.

Glenn: Yeah, I can imagine that would almost defeat the point in some ways. So I assume at some point you found some other couples that you did this with? You didn't just stick to the bar scene and prostitutes?

Guest: No, not at all. Before we get there, one thing I do want to clarify: I went to prostitution pretty quickly after my wife's first experience, partly because it was so hard for me to find somebody, but also because I knew that we were taking turns and I didn't want her to have to wait months and months while it took me to find someone to be with. So I kind of did that for her as well as for me.

Glenn: But I thought she had a pretty lousy experience with it the first time.

Guest: Well, overall she had fun, and she was still anxious to try it again.

Glenn: Okay, so take us to the couples. How did you get involved with actual couple swapping?

Guest: We've been around some ex-Mormon groups and some other ex-Mormon couples. And one of the things that I did was go online and do as much research as I could. There's not really a lot of good research out there on open marriages and swinging because it's such a taboo part of our culture. But we were at a party, and we were talking with another couple, and it just became kind of obvious that they had an open marriage as well.

Glenn: So hang on, are there like secret passwords or a secret handshake or anything? How do you even engage in that type of a conversation to find out?

Guest: In my case, it just started talking with the other guy and saying, "Have you ever thought about doing anything like this?" Or saying, "Your wife's really hot," and then he says, "Yeah, your wife's hot, too; have you ever thought about these kinds of things?" "Oh yeah, I've thought about it." And it just kind of elevates from there.

It's hard to find a couple where all four of you are attracted to each other. It's no fun if only one of you in the couple is really eager to do this, and it wasn't something that I was going to subject my wife to if she didn't want to do it. This other couple, they were both attractive, and my wife and I are both attractive. We're both pretty equal in that sense and both taking care of ourselves physically, and that's really what we're looking for in another couple as well.

It's also pretty intimidating, because we really hadn't had any experience with this, and you don't want to go into a situation where you're totally outgunned or the expectations and experience level are so much higher than what you're comfortable with. This was another couple that was about the same level that we were. And so we got together with them, and we did it once, and it wasn't great. I don't want to say too much about it because I know they listen to these podcasts, but we were friends with them before this experience, we're still friends with them now, but it was just kind of awkward.

Glenn: Can you give me—what was it that made it awkward? You change the dynamic of the relationship from just being friends and you add this sexual component to it. What is it about that that makes it awkward for you?

Guest: Well, people have different expectations of what they want out of the relationship, and some people can get more excited than others and want to continue it, and other people don't really want to continue it. And so having to essentially break up the sexual part of the relationship and still remain friends is a challenge in any relationship, and when you've got four people involved, it's even more so.

Glenn: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So you're still friends with this couple.

Guest: Yeah, we're still friends, but this isn't something that we would repeat with them. There's another couple that we met a while after this. It was a similar experience—the feeling-out process at the beginning to see what their level of interest was. It turned out that they had an open marriage, too. And this time we went at it a little differently because we had that first experience under our belts, and with this couple, it turned out great.

We've currently put the open marriage on hold for reasons that I'll explain, but if we ever do open it up again, I can totally see us hooking up with this other couple because it was just a really nice experience. We went to their house, and there was some awkward conversation, but the husband finally said, "All right, it's time to either shit or get off the pot." And that broke the ice! Then we flipped a coin to see which couple got the bedroom and which one stayed out in the family room. We went in, had sex with each other's spouse, came out, and the four of us sat on the couch and watched a movie. We were each holding each other's spouses: I was holding his wife, and he was holding my wife, and it was really natural. Feelings of jealousy weren't there; it was just really easy and really nice.

Glenn: But you guys are on hold right now? The experiment has come to an end?

Guest: For now, at least. This next part is a little difficult to talk about. I probably should have said this at the beginning, but I don't want anyone to think that I'm promoting open marriage or swinging as an experience that everybody has to have, or that my experience is the only experience. These were lessons that were learned from it, and that's just what I want to share.

My wife started going out to the bars again with her friend, because the part of the open marriage that had the most appeal to her was the flirtation, the buildup, and actually texting the guys and sexting with them. She and her friend went out of town, and while they were gone, I told my wife that if she wanted to have sex she could, but it wasn't something that we were really all that eager to do at that point. She went to a bar while she was out of town and met a guy within the first hour. My wife is not in her 20s, but she would typically be hit on by guys in their 20s because she's got a great body and looks really young. This was a younger guy that she met, and they really hit it off. She didn't have sex with him; they just made out a little bit.

When she got back and I picked her up from the airport, I asked her if she met somebody, and she said yeah, but she was a little aloof about it. I asked if they had become Facebook friends, and she said no. I asked if she got the guy's phone number, and she said no. But actually, he was texting her right as I was asking these questions, and I just didn't know. For whatever reason, she felt like she had to hide this from me—maybe it was because of what she had seen of my jealousy in the past—but she kept this relationship with this guy a secret for at least a few weeks. And I could tell that something was different; I could tell that something was wrong just in the way that we were interacting.

I'm not really proud of this, but we had made the rule ahead of time that we would have access to each other's texts and emails, and so I started snooping around a little bit because I could sense that there was something wrong. She was careful to delete the texts that she had with this guy, but the Facebook messages with her friend I read, and she talked about this guy and said that she had really strong feelings for him and could really see herself falling for him. When I read that, my heart just stopped. It was just horrible; it was awful.

And so I confronted her with this. I didn't do it in the most kind way: I was pretty angry, and so I took that out on her and tried to do it in a really hurtful, accusatory way as she was getting ready to go out of town again. As she left, she broke down; she felt sad. This wasn't something that she wanted. And so the long and the short of it is that because of that, we decided to just end the experiment with an open marriage right there. It was getting too out of hand, and we could see where our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses were with this.

Glenn: So that's why you're on a break right now? But other than that, you guys are doing well? It's still a strong marriage? You guys are wanting to work things out?

Guest: Oh yeah, absolutely! One of the pieces of advice that we had going into this was: you guys are going into uncharted territory, so expect mistakes to be made and just be forgiving of them when they happen. It really made us both more forgiving of each other and allowing. If I had been in a situation similar to hers, I probably would have done exactly the same thing, so I couldn't be too hard on her. Also, I was the one who really pushed for this in the first place, so I wouldn't feel right being too hard on her. I feel bad about how I acted in the heat of the moment when that jealousy was really on me.

I learned more about myself, I learned more about her, and I think the biggest takeaway for me is that without the experience, I would have always been wondering. I would much rather have done something and regretted it than to have not done it and always wonder about it, because I know it would just eat me up inside. So I'm glad I had the experience for that, and I really feel that our marriage is stronger. Our desire to stay together—we definitely recognize that we've got something really special, and we don't want to jeopardize that. We want to keep it special, and that's the openness, the communication, doing things together. It's all just been really good.

Glenn: Good. Well, I've got a question for you then. If we go back to the beginning of your story, this started with losing your faith in the Mormon church. Was polygamy a part of that—Joseph Smith's polygamy, polyandry, all that stuff?

Guest: Yeah. When I learned about what Joseph Smith was doing, especially the abuse of power around sexuality, that was a big problem for me.

Glenn: Okay. So then here's my question, because it seems a little ironic if that was something that was a problem for you with Joseph Smith. Why then would you go this route of having an open marriage and basically—I mean, it's kind of similar to what he was doing with polyandry?

Guest: Well, not exactly. Sure, there's the sex act that's similar, but the way that he went about it was not above board. He was sneaking around behind Emma's back. He was abusing power, being coercive. And it was really important for me from the beginning of this that this was something that I was doing equally with my wife. We set up these rules where she had equal veto power to me. So the way that Joseph Smith went about that, and also the way that the church today whitewashes and hides that history—it's that dishonesty on both parts: the dishonesty on the part of Joseph Smith and then the dishonesty on the part of the church today that I think is a huge difference there.

Glenn: Yeah, all right, fair enough. So I guess we've come to the end of your story then. Is there anything else that you want to add?

Guest: Well, as I look at my relationship today with my wife compared to maybe a year ago, I text her all the time. She's just my best friend, and I pay that attention to her in ways that I didn't before. I think it's because of this experience, and especially there was something that I learned about the way that she approaches relationships and what she gets out of a relationship compared to what I get out of a relationship. It helped me to understand her a little bit better and maybe change the way that I approach her.

I think about her situation: I think I took it for granted before that she's an intelligent, beautiful woman who doesn't work, she stays at home with children, and I think it's a fairly typical experience for women to miss the company of other adults, and especially the attention from men. And if I'm not giving that to her as her husband, where is she going to get it from? So I think that that's been a huge change in the way that I approach the relationship. And again, what we did isn't for everyone, and I don't even know if it's for us anymore, but it was something that I just had to get out of my system. Maybe we'll do it more, maybe we won't. But there you go.

Glenn: All right. Well, anyone for the closing prayer?

Guest: Wait a minute, what about the panel discussion?

Glenn: Well, we're going to release that as Part 2, so you'll just have to hold your horses!

Glenn (retroactive message): Welcome back to Infants on Thrones. I'm Glenn Ostlund. Just real quick, I started this podcast back in 2012 with several friends who were all in the process of leaving the Mormon church. Back then, I didn't fully understand the mental, emotional, and physiological impact of all this faith crisis stuff. But the more I learned about mental health and the human nervous system, the more I began to understand how deep it actually goes. And it made me want to do more than just podcast. I became a certified life coach in 2019 and a licensed therapist in 2025. I'm currently building my caseload and I'm accepting new clients. So if you or someone you know is seeking either coaching or therapy services, please reach out. I offer a free 15-minute consultation. I'll include a link to my Psychology Today profile on the website and in the show notes. So thanks again for listening, and now, here's your episode.