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Stages of accepting PM

Joleneakamama said:
Thanks! I'll take one. :)

It was the hardest thing I have been through, and it was her breaking things off, and the reasons why she did it that made it hard. Her getting to know the family was fine, her visiting was neat....it was all a learning experience, and a walk of faith all the way.
I must just be a little crazy, because it didn't put me off the idea at all.
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So it sounds like you're still open to this if and when the Lord were to lead your husband to seek another wife, correct? Guess I'm interested if there is anything you or he would do differently a 2nd time around. What do you feel like you learned from the very difficult dissolution of the 2nd wife leaving last time?
 
Cap said:
You forgot the big one,

Jeremiah 3:8
I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery.

Not really sure how the headship thing works for this one.
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Could it be that neither Israel nor Judah would accept the headship--Lordship--and thus the resulting scenario?
 
Cap said:
I think so. It's actually the story of the whole Bible and us all choosing to follow God instead of our own path.
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Your comment there is succictly stated in the positive, most preachers have traditionally stated it in the negative.....quit sinning and going your own way. Both are equally true....flip sides of the same choice, life and death, blessing and cursing.
People tend to think that the original sin was eating fruit, but it was actually disobedience, with Eve being deceived (ignorantly mistaken) and Adam modeling the knew better disobedience that is more like open willful rebellion.

Since then all people have had the same nature and choice our first parents faced. Some people have more opportunity and power to harm others by making bigger decisions that impact more people (unjust wars fomented and aquienced to by political figures for example) but we all either affirm the true King of the universe, and submitt to His order and design for creation, including families and society, or we defy it ignorantly, or to our greater shame knowingly.
The mystery of iniquity (lawlessness) is the arrogance of thinking we know best.
Its a good thing the author and finisher of our faith loves us!
 
Joleneakamama said:
Your comment there is succictly stated in the positive, most preachers have traditionally stated it in the negative.....quit sinning and going your own way. Both are equally true....flip sides of the same choice, life and death, blessing and cursing.
People tend to think that the original sin was eating fruit, but it was actually disobedience, with Eve being deceived (ignorantly mistaken) and Adam modeling the knew better disobedience that is more like open willful rebellion.

Since then all people have had the same nature and choice our first parents faced. Some people have more opportunity and power to harm others by making bigger decisions that impact more people (unjust wars fomented and aquienced to by political figures for example) but we all either affirm the true King of the universe, and submitt to His order and design for creation, including families and society, or we defy it ignorantly, or to our greater shame knowingly.
The mystery of iniquity (lawlessness) is the arrogance of thinking we know best.
Its a good thing the author and finisher of our faith loves us!
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I agree with you 100%. I think God loves us and wants the best for us and will do everything in His power to save us.
 
rejoicinghandmaid said:
So it sounds like you're still open to this if and when the Lord were to lead your husband to seek another wife, correct? Guess I'm interested if there is anything you or he would do differently a 2nd time around. What do you feel like you learned from the very difficult dissolution of the 2nd wife leaving last time?
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Yes, I/we are still open to the possibility.
It has always been an "If it is God's will" kind of thing for us....still is.
He would not get his heart involved without knowing the commitment was possible.... and maybe not before it was actually made.
I really have no regrets. As a wife there is only so much that is really up to me. Hubby and whoever he is getting to know make many of the decisions about how they proceed.
The lady I mentioned was not a wife, just a potential wife, and someone I cared about.
 
I agree with Jolene. When DH and potential break up, it is really devastating to all, especially the potential family, as you open your heart (especially DH) and share deep spiritual things that have happened in your life up to the present time. Maybe the potential wife thinks she can do it, and expresses so, but hits a point where she figures out its not going to work how she wants it to and she doesn't know how to leave because she doesn't want to deal with confrontations. She's torn between two worlds, one she's known (no matter how bad she portrays it) and became independent.... to an unknown and not quite socially accepted life style in a patriarchal family. I believe this is where our faith as a potential PM family grows more, so we can move forward. I know my faith and relationship with God and my trust in my husband has grown more than I could explain. So yes to Jolene, we know in our hearts and minds this is the special path God has chosen for us. We shall continue to be still and know God has a plan for us.
 
Joleneakamama said:
Yes, I/we are still open to the possibility.
It has always been an "If it is God's will" kind of thing for us....still is.
He would not get his heart involved without knowing the commitment was possible.... and maybe not before it was actually made.
I really have no regrets. As a wife there is only so much that is really up to me. Hubby and whoever he is getting to know make many of the decisions about how they proceed.
The lady I mentioned was not a wife, just a potential wife, and someone I cared about.
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Oh, I see. Somehow, I was under the impression the 2nd was already in a covenant, committed position in your family. There's still so much I'm learning so please forgive the misunderstanding.
 
BeingHeld said:
I agree with Jolene. When DH and potential break up, it is really devastating to all, especially the potential family, as you open your heart (especially DH) and share deep spiritual things that have happened in your life up to the present time. Maybe the potential wife thinks she can do it, and expresses so, but hits a point where she figures out its not going to work how she wants it to and she doesn't know how to leave because she doesn't want to deal with confrontations. She's torn between two worlds, one she's known (no matter how bad she portrays it) and became independent.... to an unknown and not quite socially accepted life style in a patriarchal family. I believe this is where our faith as a potential PM family grows more, so we can move forward. I know my faith and relationship with God and my trust in my husband has grown more than I could explain. So yes to Jolene, we know in our hearts and minds this is the special path God has chosen for us. We shall continue to be still and know God has a plan for us.
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Thanks, BeingHeld--your comments also add a dimension of understanding for me. I am fully accepting this path of PM and BF, but trying to wrap my brain around the how tos, the whats, the whens, the wheres, time frames it takes to establish a beginning friendship that may develop into, etc. still plague me with unaswered ?'s. Then when I consider that those with whom one interacts are people, also, just like me, with feelings, needs, hopes, dreams, goals, etc. I cringe at the thought of opening up to risk, unintended hurt, misunderstanding, moving forward with caution and maybe an end in sight and maybe not--it just seems overwhelming or insurmountable at times.
 
Im pretty late in responding here so I'll be brief. Yes, I totally agree, women tend to be the leading cause in PM not functioning. My mother claims this is why men should only have one wife because it doesn't work and the "ladies aren't happy". Given I dont agree with my mother on multiple levels, primarily the "happiness" comment. Where does God promise us to be happy and when was the the focus for following Christ??? Sarah wanted Abrham to marry her servant girl so he did, she then later was jealous and wanted her gone.... I honestly always struggled with this part of the bible, why did God who was against a wife separating from her husband become okay with it in this case because of Sarah's desire and jealously? Was it Abraham's doubt against God or punishment for listening to his wife? Seriously curious as to your all thoughts here.
 
Sean Miller said:
Im pretty late in responding here so I'll be brief. Yes, I totally agree, women tend to be the leading cause in PM not functioning. My mother claims this is why men should only have one wife because it doesn't work and the "ladies aren't happy". Given I dont agree with my mother on multiple levels, primarily the "happiness" comment. Where does God promise us to be happy and when was the the focus for following Christ??? Sarah wanted Abrham to marry her servant girl so he did, she then later was jealous and wanted her gone.... I honestly always struggled with this part of the bible, why did God who was against a wife separating from her husband become okay with it in this case because of Sarah's desire and jealously? Was it Abraham's doubt against God or punishment for listening to his wife? Seriously curious as to your all thoughts here.
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Sean, I'll take a stab at responding. Abraham DID doubt. He laughed first! Check it out--all you ever hear the men preaching about is how Sarah laughed in the tent and the angel says, "Yea, but thou didst laugh" when Sarah denies it. I was actually shocked when I finally got my brain wrapped around the fact that Abraham laughed first because I happened to be especially studying in that area of Scripture so I was reading more slowly than usual. Not even one time in all my years of church going have I ever heard a pastor bring that point to the forefront and present the truth of the matter. It's always Sarah that gets trashed.

BTW--Adam's heart was already turned away from God when the Fall happened. He stood right there and did nothing to warn or prevent or protect Eve from partaking of the fruit. When God came in the cool of the evening to fellowship as was His habit, He asked Eve what she had done. If you go into the Hebrew, she responds with "I was thoroughly deceived." She wasn't just deceived by the serpent with the "Hath God said", but Adam had also deceived her because apparently he didn't feel she needed to know all that God had told him. Then when God asked Adam for his part of the story, Adam sides with the serpent against God and points a finger at Eve and says, "the woman thou gavest me".

There's a lot of truth in the adage, "Everything rises and falls on leadership." The man and the woman has to each own their "stuff". Playing the blame game helps no one and really is a commentary on who someone is and who they aren't.

BTW--I don't agree with your mom's comment that "ladies aren't happy" in a BF setting. Anyone can look around this world today and see a whole passle of hurting, broken, unhappy women in a monogamous setting because they've been cheated on, beat on, lied on, verbally battered, treated like slaves physically and sexually, and are still trying to make it work because they made a vow to their man and to the Lord. Others have tossed in the towel long ago and are bouncing from pillar to post hoping to find someone who won't be like the last one.

Trying to get back to the crux of this thread's topic, "Stages of Accepting PM", something I'm also puzzling over is the amount of times on this forum I've seen truly broken hearts from both men and women who've lost out because the potential new wife just ups and leaves. It makes me wonder what was the level of commitment on the leadership end and how much did all of them look at the whole arrangement as an experiment to see if it would work. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be the guinea pig--man or woman.

"Yes, I totally agree, women tend to be the leading cause in PM not functioning." With whom are you agreeing?!?
 
rejoicinghandmaid said:
but Adam had also deceived her because apparently he didn't feel she needed to know all that God had told him. T
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I agree 100% with your post with the exception of that statement. She clearly had been told.

¶ And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
 
rejoicinghandmaid said:
There's a lot of truth in the adage, "Everything rises and falls on leadership." The man and the woman has to each own their "stuff". Playing the blame game helps no one and really is a commentary on who someone is and who they aren't.

Trying to get back to the crux of this thread's topic, "Stages of Accepting PM", something I'm also puzzling over is the amount of times on this forum I've seen truly broken hearts from both men and women who've lost out because the potential new wife just ups and leaves. It makes me wonder what was the level of commitment on the leadership end and how much did all of them look at the whole arrangement as an experiment to see if it would work. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be the guinea pig--man or woman.
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First, I agree that the weight of sin should not fall on Eve as it seems is so easily done when we try and understand what happened. However, if you take the idea that "Everything rises and falls on leadership." , then the ultimate responsibility for the sin that came into this world is God's, He created it. "The man and the woman has to each own their "stuff".", which means it takes two to tango.

In my opinion, relationships, monogamous or polygamous, rise and fall based on 'baggage'. How much baggage someone brings to a relationship. People starting out fresh, young, and have their whole life ahead of them tend to fair better, when outside forces do not try to affect the relationship singularly, a wife's parents, a husbands parents, separate friends, individual social engagements. When a young couple has to fight the world together to survive, they have the ability to build the bond that last forever.

As one goes through life they accumulate baggage. And that baggage weighs heavy on NEW relationships. Yes, the ultimate responsibility falls on the leadership, but there are some factors that can not be known until all the cards are placed on the table and that may take time. Each time I see that a PM relationship fails it has to do with someone joining a relationship and at some point decides they want to return to the life they left, and then those influences overcome the journey of the family. If someone says they are willing to commit to the family but overtime they change their mind due to baggage they don't want to leave behind, then that is hard to blame the leadership.

If a man has a direction for the family he is trying to lead, the weight of the baggage of another is something that is not truly taken into consideration and it is also something that is hard to determine until things are started. And that to me, is where things start to fall apart. Everyone wants to live in a storybook relationship and have their whole life follow them into it, but the reality is once one starts a relationship its a new path and something's have to left behind. That's the 'stuff' we each have to own. And the older we get the harder it is to leave the baggage behind, for some.

How can the leadership know what another is truly capable of doing when if comes to commitment? I don't think women who decide they want to be in PM relationship after they have accumulated 'baggage', truly count the cost until its too late.

(Please understand that 'baggage' is just a term and I realize it is LIFE to some.)
 
rejoicinghandmaid said:
It makes me wonder what was the level of commitment on the leadership end and how much did all of them look at the whole arrangement as an experiment to see if it would work. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be the guinea pig--man or woman.
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I can tell you of a situation in which all were seemingly very committed, but it turned out that the new woman entered the relationship “knowing” that males always fail that it would probably be just a matter of time before his true colors would show up. She found a way to twist things to her satisfaction and “prove” her theory correct.
The husband and wife were her guinea pigs.
 
steve said:
I agree 100% with your post with the exception of that statement. She clearly had been told.

¶ And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
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I would go even further - I think Adam told her MORE than God had said. Because she then told the serpent "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

Where did that phrase about touching it come from? God never said that.

I think Adam thought "I really better make sure she never comes close to eating this, so I'll tell her not to even touch it". Fair enough. But he said that God had said not to touch it - adding to the words of God. Then, when she did touch it, and nothing happened (obviously, because that wasn't forbidden), she would have concluded that God must be wrong. And that would have emboldened her to eat also.

This highlights why we must be very careful to take the words of God as they are, and not add to them. We can add our own advice around it, but must always be clear where God's word stops and our own advice starts. That distinction stops us from slipping into religiousity, following the advice and culture of man, rather than obedience to God.
 
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steve said:
I agree 100% with your post with the exception of that statement. She clearly had been told.

¶ And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
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I like FollowingHim's comment on the "neither shall ye touch it" being something added to the words of God, which of course brought no negative effect when she did touch the fruit, which could possibly have led to not to trust the rest of what Adam had told her. I'd never really thought of that angle.

One of the things that's always intrigued me is that Adam was NOT deceived. He purposefully ate of the fruit offered to him by his Isha (for he had not named her yet). Scripture says Adam was created perfect. So my thinking follows this route--IF he was perfect as God is perfect and in His image, then he must have known that the "lest ye die" did not constitute physical death at that moment but a spiritual separation from the fellowship he had always known with YHWH. I really do think there was a missing something that the woman didn't have. That's why she says, "I've been THOROUGHLY deceived in the Hebrew, on top of the fact that she had truth, "Ye shall not eat of it" and a lie "neither shall ye touch it".

Another thought that I cannot answer is, why did Adam eat? If this woman whom God had given him was wrong, and he knew there would be forever consequences, did he not trust God enough that God could give him another helpmeet and let Isha suffer the consequences of her choice and not join her in the wrong? I've heard it preached that Adam chose to do wrong because he loved Isha. Frankly, I'm not sure I buy that because he blames her for his choice making and predicament--that's NOT love.
 
FollowingHim said:
I would go even further - I think Adam told her MORE than God had said. Because she then told the serpent "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

Where did that phrase about touching it come from? God never said that.

I think Adam thought "I really better make sure she never comes close to eating this, so I'll tell her not to even touch it". Fair enough. But he said that God had said not to touch it - adding to the words of God. Then, when she did touch it, and nothing happened (obviously, because that wasn't forbidden), she would have concluded that God must be wrong. And that would have emboldened her to eat also.

This highlights why we must be very careful to take the words of God as they are, and not add to them. We can add our own advice around it, but must always be clear where God's word stops and our own advice starts. That distinction stops us from slipping into religiousity, following the advice and culture of man, rather than obedience to God.
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Completely agree on the adding to God's words--that was actually part of the deception which led to the doubt of the truth.
 
steve said:
I can tell you of a situation in which all were seemingly very committed, but it turned out that the new woman entered the relationship “knowing” that males always fail that it would probably be just a matter of time before his true colors would show up. She found a way to twist things to her satisfaction and “prove” her theory correct.
The husband and wife were her guinea pigs.
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I'm truly sorry for that. That's why I made the comment in such a way that I realized the experiment could be seen from either side. We live in such a broken world. To enter into a relationship at any age takes risk. To enter into a relationship knowing you're probably going to end up hurting the very one(s) you say you love is self-serving and personally, unethical. You've got to care more about the other than you do yourself. If what one wants-- to see how it is in PM or to feel loved-- supercedes the feelings of others just because one wants, then IMO it would be better to stay single, learn to be content with that, and not hurt others in the process of trying to get what one wants.
 
One of them added the not touch it part.
We have no way of deciding which was to blame.
One of them was so strongly impacted by the threat of danger that they decided that it was best not to touch it.
Suggestion becomes memory, which becomes fact.
We don’t know from which one it stems, let’s stop with the blame game.
 
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