Three might be a crowd for this throuple.
A Utah cowboy and his two wives have opened up about the joys and hurdles of having a plural marriage.
“Sometimes it felt like I was standing in the middle of a tornado and trying to reach my hands out and get things to stop spinning for just a moment,” polygamist patriarch Colton Winder told the Daily Mail.
While Colton, 34, who legally married wife Tami 12 years ago, his other relationship, with Sophie, is more of a “spiritual marriage,” he said.
“My plural marriage is not recognized legally. Tami is my legal wife, Sophie is more of a spiritual marriage,” he said. “In the state of Utah, until very recently, it was actually illegal to live the way we live. Now it’s not quite illegal but it’s still sort of frowned upon.”
When Colton and Tami wed in 2010, they “both believed in plural marriage,” so they tried to find another wife.
Sophie and Colton unofficially got married in 2017, and they combined their households under one roof after spending time separately to “ease into” polygamy. But having a plural marriage isn’t just about having multiple partners — for Colton, it’s about “faith.”
“Plural marriage for us is a little more specific than polygamy,” Colton said. “Plural marriage is polygamy lived with a very religious, spiritual purpose behind it. It’s more about our faith.”
But three hasn’t always been a magic number for this Mormon family, who appeared on TLC’s “Seeking Sister Wife.” Tami and Sophie fall victim to jealousy from time to time, they told Truly.
“The hardest part about it was realizing that Tami and I still didn’t know each other really well,” said Sophie, who expressed she “didn’t know what to expect” out of polygamy. “We didn’t understand each other’s personalities at that point. After moving in together, Tami and I finally got to know each other better and I finally got to know her personality better, rather than just being totally clueless.”
Growing pains caused rifts in the relationships of everyone involved, especially because personalities clashed at first.
“One thing that’s different about plural marriage is everybody comes with their own personality, and Tami and Sophie are very different from each other,” Colton explained. “There were hard times, between Tami and I, Sophie and I, and Tami and Sophie together.”
Sharing a husband also meant the wives would compare themselves to each other, resulting in insecurities.
“One of the other challenges I had was feeling like a [good] wife. You make a lot of comparisons,” Sophie revealed. “I kind of asked Colton, ‘Do you have certain expectations of me as a wife?’ I felt like I was falling short. But he said, ‘No. You’re perfect the way you are.’”
Despite Colton’s reassurance, the women still struggle with jealousy even now, especially on date nights.
“There’s definitely jealousies, as in any relationship. Like when Colton goes on a date with Sophie, I want to go on a date too,” Tami admitted. “But if I’m feeling jealous about something, then there’s a need that’s not getting met and I need to communicate that need. Then Colton and Sophie will do their best to alleviate that.”
They try to have date nights once or twice a month, when the throuple will venture on a three-way date or Colton will have a night out one-on-one.
While Tami and Sophie don’t have a physical relationship with each other, they each have physical relationships with Colton, forcing them to share him every other night.
“Colton doesn’t have his own room. He’ll sleep with me one night and then with Tami the next night,” Sophie explained. “One of the hard parts of plural marriage is having your husband gone every other night.”
“You don’t have help with getting up with the children in the middle of the night, but at the same time I know that if I really needed either of [them] I could come and get [them] and they’d help,” she continued.
But even with the trials and tribulations of their plural marriage, both Tami and Sophie see each other as “sisters.”
“I think I have a really good relationship with Sophie,” said Tami. “It’s taken a lot of work to get here but I think we worked really hard to try and understand each other and to really become sisters.”
The sister wives even co-parent their children together. In 2016, Tami gave birth to her daughter Sadie, while Sophie had her son Ephraim in 2020 and daughter Isabella in 2021. Currently, Tami is getting IVF treatments in an attempt to conceive another child.
“We’re co-parents in everything. We’re raising our children together,” said Tami.
Despite the challenges of cohabitation, co-parenting and juggling two wives, Colton’s journey with plural marriage allowed him room for “personal growth.”
“The things I enjoy the most from a plural marriage, aside from the religious aspects of it: It’s a really great opportunity for personal growth, because I’ve had to learn to live with two different personalities,” he said.
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