On Friday night, I went to a friend’s house to watch “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

I hadn’t planned to engage with the show–I’m not offended by its existence, but I don’t watch much reality TV outside of cooking shows, I’m not on TikTok so I knew almost nothing about these women, and, well, I think so much about Mormon stuff in my “real” life that I’m not really looking for it in my entertainment. But my friend is deconstructing her faith as well, and she’d invited a few other women who’d moved fully out of the church in recent years. I figured, if nothing else, some goofy TV, some snacks, some hanging out with friends, I could be home by 10–why not?

As a bonus, I’ve had a bit of writer’s block and needed something to write about for today’s blog post. I thought this could be it. And it was–but not in the way I expected. What I found was a weird, uncomfortable camaraderie with these women with whom I have nothing in common. I laughed, sighed, definitely judged, while at the same time listening to my internal monologue whisper: But aren’t you pushing back against the same organization for telling you what to do and how to be? And isn’t it uncomfortable and aren’t you worried about people judging you?

Here are a few of my thoughts from the first two episodes:

• As one character consistently sought out her mother’s approval, I was shaking my head–this woman is an adult! She has kids of her own! Why is she almost asking permission from her mother, why is she justifying her choices, why is she confessing things like a teenager who just got caught? And why had I, just a couple of hours earlier, been wondering if what was keeping me in the church was the fear of telling my mother–of knowing she would be devastated and that I’d feel terrible for letting her down? Why did I constantly feel like I needed someone else to give me permission to make choices for my own life?

• As I watched them interact, these women in their 20s acting like a teenage clique, I commented on how immature they all seemed–like they were still teenagers instead of adults with businesses and children and mortgages. And I thought about how stunted I feel sometimes–that the Mormon rites of passage like marriage never came and how I sometimes feel unable to move forward. Maybe these women, who all got married and had children very young, never really got to grow up either–they didn’t go to college or travel or figure out who they were as individuals. A culture that lays out one path for everyone will do that, since that is never anyone’s actual path.

• Or maybe, as one woman in the room with me observed, this was the delayed rebellious phase of women who weren’t allowed to rebel as teenagers because they had to be perfect–because they lived in a culture and belonged to a religion that pathologized teenage rebellion. It felt a lot like the visceral anger I feel at the church now, the pushback anytime something new is said or done. The fact that “I want a tattoo” is no longer a fleeting thought but a concrete idea. The fact that I went from mostly wearing garments to never wearing them as soon as Kevin Hamilton singled out women in yoga pants for not wearing garments, just out of opposition to doing what I am told. Perhaps it was the result of trauma that is hard to acknowledge, to look in the face of, because then I will have to reject certain things and that comes at such a high cost. 

• I laughed in disbelief at a mother who called her daughter’s ex-friend to get in the middle of things. Boundaries, people! But the messages I took away from church weren’t about healthy boundaries, they were about railroading boundaries out of love. I think of the doors I knocked on my mission that had signs proclaiming this to be a happy Catholic household, but I knocked despite their clearly stated boundaries because we had the truth!–something I regret to this day. Because even if we had the truth, which I sincerely believed I did 15 years ago, it still was not OK to force it on people when they said no. Healthy boundaries are an act of self-love. 

• I asked, exasperated, “why?” when one woman said she wanted to be back in the church. I wasn’t even coming from a place of judgment, but of wondering why she wanted back into something that just moments before (in TV time, so, you know–a year) she saw the rules as something that were keeping her out. You’ll be happier, I wanted to yell at her; take it and run. But I can’t take that leap either–for years, I’ve gone back and forth, sure that this one thing would be what pushed me off the fence to stay or go. And it never is. I no longer have a shelf–I have an attic, and I’m waiting for that one thing that will be what makes the floor collapse on me and it never comes, and even though I watch the floor sag and know it can destroy me, I can’t find the courage to just go. It is hard to let go of the culture and religion I grew up with, it’s daunting to know that a choice will irrevocably change family relationships, it’s nearly impossible to look at my four decades of experiences in the church, both good and bad, and try to pick up apart what I know, what I believe, what I can live with and what I must reject. How can I judge another woman who’s having a hard time cutting the same tie?

There was more–so much more. After two episodes, we got sidetracked talking about our own experiences in and out of the church, our struggles, who gave each of us permission to take control of our lives (Hint: It is you) and how hard it is to deconstruct–how it feels like you’re going against everything you know, everything that has grounded you. 

I’m not going to tell you to watch or not watch “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” I don’t know if I’ll finish the series. It did make me think more deeply about issues that I’ve been skirting in my mind, intentionally or unintentionally. It elicited some uncomfortable truths within me that I’m not sure I can avoid any longer. I owe it to the teenage girl who never felt able to rebel to be a little rebellious now.

(Read more about polygamy and swinging on the blog, as well as what it means to be called a Mormon woman.)

Top photo: Salt Lake Temple at night, by Michael Hart on Unsplash