Limits to Love?

Over the last few days, I've had the chance to go back and watch the early episodes of Big Love in order to get me up to speed on the series. I've been away from my favorite polygamist family for awhile, so I had a chance to reconnect with some of my feelings about polygamy, marriage, and love in general.

I don't see really a whole lot wrong with polygamy as a theory. As I understand it, there are practices that often involve violence, the coercion of young girls, and sending young men out of the group due to their threat to the power of the elder (much like a pride of lions). It seems like, for the most part, the Hendrickson family united with consensus and works as well as any other monogamist family. If it works for them, why not? I see problems with the way it actually functions as opposed to the way it is supposed to function, so maybe I'm just being naive, but I think the definition of family is rigid anyways.

Alternative families are becoming more and more common, not to say that divorced/adopted/single parent/relatives-as-parents/ homosexual partnerships are like polygamy, but in my mind it's a loving, nurturing environment that's important. I'm from a fairly mainstream alternative family, but it's worked out for the most part. I alter my views at different points, but I kind of see my life as one guided by two father figures and I can only imagine that intensifies as remarriage occurs at a younger and younger age. They don't live together, but they both supposedly love me and support me and have both loved my mother at the same time.

Perhaps its the idea of multiple sexual partners that seems more forbidden to others. Personally, I don't think I could adjust to the whole sharing thing. I guess the show suggests that the sister-wives don't really ever get over their jealousy of one another and that it isn't that glamorous to try and keep up with the needs of three women. I'm interested to see what unfolds in the second season, although I'll have to wait until it gets to DVD to watch it.