Marrying an Ex-Polygamist

hey everyone welcome back my name is sam and i'm melissa and we want to answer some more questions that you all have had about me growing up in the flds polygamist group yes and we've been getting a lot of questions actually towards me um which thank you i feel very flattered that anybody it's your it's your turn now to answer some questions yeah so we've been getting a lot of questions um kind of about some of my thoughts and feelings about sam growing up in polygamy and things like that so we thought we would answer those questions for you as best i can i'm used to asking questions not answering them so bear with me we'll try to swap swap rolls for this roll for a minute here and see how it goes yeah see if i can do this interviewing stuff so what was it like to him uh or what was your first thoughts because obviously you grew up in a place in saint george utah that was close to where the polygamous group was where i grew up yes so you had heard and seen and knew a little bit about those people so what was your first impression when you met me okay so i have two first impressions of sam and for the people that have seen our like how we re-met video i'll give a quick recap but my very first impression was when he showed up to my 18th birthday party and we decided we were gonna be lunch buddies and go to lunch together and we went on two lunch dates and um and that was that and that was that for for our first meeting but my first impressions then you had a big time hick accent like i'm talking really strong um he was super super nice like i stopped going to lunch with him because he was so sweet and would always pay but it made me feel like we were on dates and i wasn't interested in dating him but i was like but he was being a gentleman but i felt like guilty like us going to lunch and you continuing to pay for me so i was like oh you know and so we just kind of went our separate ways so first impressions were he was definitely a gentleman um was super sweet and always paid for me um he had a very strong hick accent and i don't remember a ton about our conversations in the beginning but i obviously knew you were from out there um but that wasn't odd because where i grew up we were 45 minutes outside of where he grew up and there were a lot of like we'd see polygamists at costco and at walmart like in our community all the time they didn't say much to us but there were also um some boys that i went to high school with that i think they were considered lost boys um that had been kicked out and so i had some of them in my high school again i wasn't like really close with it well i wasn't really close with any of them there was one that had um a family in my neighborhood had taken in and he was the closest i'd say i was too and um so i knew like a little bit more of his story that this family had taken in and super sweet guys they're super hard workers um but i didn't have like a really close relationship with anybody from out there mostly because they're kind of closed off to the rest of us and then the boys that have been kicked out you could tell we're like working through having let their community and finding new homes and finding people to take a minute so obviously your first impressions weren't that important because it's not like you were planning on dating or marrying me at that time so it was more of a just a general okay yeah he has an accent he's from out there whatever he's really nice but no thank you have a good life basically yeah at that point yeah no i remember that too so we yeah we briefly met we would i mean it was the couple very short went out to lunch and yeah and then we were we were neither of us were ready to date really seriously at that time anyway we were kind of doing our own things and all that but anyway yeah so uh now let's fast forward then because that was that so then when you we re-met yes so this was about five years later we re-met and uh so this was completely different then at this point because we were both a lot more serious looking for a relationship yeah so what were your thoughts at the end because this is where it gets important like were you nervous that at some point i might want to get another wife or or what were your thoughts at that point okay well uh first thing i have to say is we were at the age where i think we were like at the age where we would want something serious in the back of our heads but i wasn't looking for anything serious and neither were you at the exact time so we always kind of laugh about that a little bit but like when you stop looking for the right one that's when they'll just kind of like fall on your lap or in this case when i saw him i'd like barely even recognize him yeah i had given up completely on finding the right girl literally i just just the week before i had i had told myself okay you know what i'm not even going to try i'm just going to go to school i'm done even trying to go on dates and all this stuff because i i wasn't i wasn't finding anyone that worked well with me and it just it just wasn't working out so i gave up and then she came along yeah and i just moved back to my hometown and i was convinced that i had dated everyone or their cousin before in my small hometown and so i was giving up on love completely i'm like there's no way i'm gonna find anybody like if i move back and i chose to do that anyway um so that i think ad adds a fun element to the fact that we weren't really like searching when i saw him i barely recognized him and awkwardly like tapped him on the shoulder and was like is your name sam but he had grown up and he was a man now and he he didn't have an accent like even when we went on the first date i literally couldn't remember that he was from out there on our first date and i like felt like he had been but now he didn't have an accent at all excuse me he was going to college which before didn't seem like a path that he wanted to take and so i was a little bit like our first date i was confused um and the night after our first date i actually had a dream and the dream was our first lunch dates and it's what like sparked my memory of the fact that he was from out there and that that was like where he came from and stuff and so wow then it was until our next date a couple days later that i like just had to kind of come forward and ask him be like are you from out in colorado city like are you are you from that polygamist group do you remember me asking you that yes i do yeah you said i thought you were but maybe i'm wrong and uh yeah i mean it had been five years and a lot had changed so yeah but so so something you brought up uh the education so that was going to be one of my questions is that something that you were concerned or thought about because had you heard the people out there didn't really have an education yeah yeah so that was definitely so meeting him the first time i think to be honest that was something that you know i don't want to say i didn't want to date you but like in the sense of it's important that wasn't something yeah education was something that's super important to me and it didn't seem like it was something important to him at the time and it wasn't you're right yeah wasn't anything that i had i had no intention of going and getting a higher education of any kind at that point yeah i was just trying to find a job and survive yeah exactly so that was something that was a huge difference that when i re-met him i was like oh he's going to school it was all these different things that made me realize how i guess distance i felt you were from the way you grew up and so a lot of people ask me like oh okay were you worried about him like wanting to go back out there but i think i didn't really honestly i guess the short answer is no i was never worried about him wanting to go back out there i was never really worried about you wanting to have more wives or anything but i think it was because at this point i had like seen what a difference in path he was than when he first left and also like you were just so far separated from that whole community that it didn't seem like it wasn't really even in my mindset when we were dating it felt like i was dating somebody that would have been raised on the outside their whole life so here's a question that some have had yeah to continue on with this uh what about because for some people they really want their children to grow up with grandparents around and all that so was that a concern when we started dating that you knew that we weren't really going to be able to have that relationship with my parents no so i always joke with people that like um his family is complicated but mine is crazy and so i grew up having you know with two grandmas like a grandma and a step grandma and only one grandpa and my other grandpa i never met my mom's never met her dad so i had already grown up in like family dynamics that extended family and grandpas and grandpa's like it didn't have to look like this perfect family tree like my family tree isn't like this perfect tree and so in my mind the idea of like how many grandparents our kids had or if they had bonus grandparents um or anything like that didn't really ever right it wasn't related at that point to the the family that took me in when i moved out had become a family to me as well and and you know they still are my family yeah and they're the grandparents to our children so that's why i say like we have bonus grandparents like our kids know three sets of grandparents you know and unfortunately some biological family they only see pictures of um but they know that that's grandmother and grandfather you know that's their grandmother that's their grandfather and you know so they just to me they got extra and bonus and there's a lot of pieces and parts to it uh that makes it a little complicated but everyone has some complications in their family exactly in different ways but okay so you weren't really concerned about that necessarily interesting nope i wasn't so i would say too like the polygamy part because i got that question asked and my mom actually told me that she had people ask her like if she was worried about you wanting to have more wives or anything and i mean it's a valid concern that's the way i was raised yeah and again i was so we dated and got engaged and got married very quickly i was still like head over heels and still am in love that um i didn't even honestly those weren't even concerns like i felt like i knew his heart and that's what i was like excited and i knew your character so yeah and i knew what he wanted for the future and so i wasn't really concerned about the polygamy thing um my mom met sam like my parents met sam right away and neither of them were concerned about it either i don't think you ever asked me but i think i just told you i said just so you know like you're gonna be all i want and i think i remember just talking to you about that not because you were asking me but just because i wanted you to know because obviously i mean it's understandable that it could be a concern but but it never was and it's it's not i never i never ever had the intention of either going back uh or or getting at that point anyway when we met when we met or uh ever going back or getting remarried or getting married to more than one person i just never never came across my mind actually no no and he was always very much i mean we very committed to me so i never i never really had any of those worries so yeah i wish there was something more exciting to tell than that for you or i'm kind of glad there isn't but um some big drama or fights that no nothing like that it was straightforward it was pretty simple actually we just we just knew when we when we re-met and it was pretty quick yeah and i'd say too for like they were definitely cultural things that i continued to learn and things that even now sometimes they'll be like something funny like since we've had our babies we do um this little piggy went to market this little piggy went home like on baby's toes yeah like things like that like we do those differently and i'm like what you can't do it that way you know but i feel like those are cultural things that are going to happen in any marriage in any family and so most of the things that are like cultural like you grew up with and we always just joke that he just kind of grew up in the 1800s and so i just married a pioneer basically yeah no yeah it's a lot of things it's funny because i will joke with melissa's mom about things that i grew up and when she grew up we we had similar oh yeah like technology technology and the type of phones we used and the and the the color scheme in our homes and that kind of stuff was all it just it was just set back in the day yeah yeah but but they didn't have technology out there i grew up with nice vehicles and that type of thing but yeah for for whatever reason some of the things took longer to catch up though yeah so but like i said i feel like a lot of those things are just funny things that you'd have with combining lives with anybody so no but overall i didn't have any concerns as far as that went it was more curiosity oh and i will say that one thing that helped is sam's always been super open and honest about where he came from and i think that really helped a ton when we were dating because if i ever had a question even like i said it was only our second date when i was like now you're from out there right and he was like oh yeah and started talking about it so i felt like because i never had to um like censor myself like i could ask him any questions i wanted whenever i wanted about anything out there i think that opened up like a whole level of comfort you know normally if i was worried you're going to want extra wives you would have been secretive about it you know what i mean like or you i don't know yeah i'm so you know comfortable and open about everything i'm not ashamed of where i grew up i mean it's it's just that it's it's life you know and so i'm i'm very open about it obviously that's why we're here talking about it so yes i can see that would have been a big concern for you if i would have acted uncomfortable about certain things or not wanted to talk about certain things yeah that way you were you wouldn't be sure what i felt about it so but since you were always i think that's the main thing is he's just been always super open and super transparent with me about everything and including how it feels about those things and so that made it so that i always had clarity yeah of what you were thinking and feeling so yeah that's a little bit about that i guess getting married to someone who had grown up in a polygamous family so hey at least we have interesting stories to tell now right exactly but if you want to hear more about sam growing up in polygamy or if you guys have more questions even directed towards me or um this was fun to switch it around a little bit yeah it was kind of fun getting to talk so anyway if you guys have any more questions please leave them in the comments like and subscribe and we'll talk to y'all soon we'll talk to you soon

Channel: Growing Up in Polygamy

Views: 51,297

Keywords: polygamy, polygamist, flds, lds, mormon, sister wives, growing up in polygamy, escaping polygamy, warren jeffs, hildale, colorado city

Id: 3Q8dKJZ1Erk

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021