It is amazing how parallel your story with mine. Similar discussions with my wife, similar response, similar pain, I will look forward to hearing for updates on the progress. May God continue to supply you with wisdom.
What has been great strength to me through this ordeal is my acceptance/willingness to lose marriage where I am not a patriarch. And my 2nd source of strength is realization on importance on trusting God and being loyal to Him above anything else.
Now the just shall live by faith;
but if anyone draws back,
My soul shall have no pleasure in him.” (Hebrew 10:38).
I do not know where my marriage will end up but relationship we have now is more satisfying
than when I let my wife's emotions overrule the Holy Scriptures. My wife still does not accept polygyny, we still do not have children. But I welcome this adventure. I hope you could say same thing. Blessings to you and welcome to biblical families.
Thank you for relating to me. However I hope your story stops being parallel with mine, as I have some updates below:
Update - Oct 24, 2025, 20:30
My wife just complained about her seasonal depression and whether I would allow her to take antidepressants if she wants to, so I said that wanting to is not a good enough reason. And she said I generally don't think seeing a psychologist is a good idea, so she couldn't get prescribed it. So I said that other options are worth exploring, such as a walk in the sun, and she said I know she is not very capable of doing things alone due to her upbringing, and I decided to blurt out that it seems that she needs a 2nd wife more than I do. Now she's sad/mad and went to her room.
(This would later lead to a weekend-long fight where I emphasized that our marriage was built with my polygynous mindset, which gave me hope when things got too bad. In the end I calmed things down by suggesting that if we want to redo the marriage foundation as monogamous, we’d have to start again, and she felt a bit happier but we couldn’t discuss it due to time constraints. However, when we finally discussed it, things escalated to the tipping point in the update below.)
Update - Oct 31, 2025, 20:15
So it's happening. After a lot of thought, counsel, and prayer, I decided that for the next serious conversation brought up by my wife, I should convey that God is the one who permits polygyny, and I will follow God above all else, and He governs our marriage this way and there's no other way, because it'd mean that all the Old Testament people are unrighteous or that God is bipolar. That means we cannot redo the foundation like in my suggestion (which I didn’t intend to be taken seriously).
So last night, this difficult conversation happened. (I tried to ask questions more, but it had limited benefit.) It was already on her mind the whole day and she was down. Nevertheless, we had had sex in the afternoon (this will be important later). During the difficult conversation, I said the above. Immediately, her spirit changed and she said that she "cannot have sex" with me anymore, so I said, "I'm not worried about me. I can go without sex for a while, but the marriage without sex is like a ticking time bomb."
I really felt heavy that night, so I resolved to fast by eating nothing but bread, and we didn't sleep together, which was rare. She slept all night until afternoon, and when she woke up, it was unbelievable: I went into our bedroom to get something, and she immediately demanded a key to OUR bedroom! I tried to be nice and understanding, playing it off, explaining that the locking doesn't work due to a manufacturing error, but then she kept interrupting me and demanding it rudely.
Nevertheless, I kept on going into the room to get a few things and every time I went out, she kept slamming the door on me and being very rude and in the end cursed me to hell.
Before she cursed me, we had sat down for a short talk during which she said that I liked to make up my own rules for the Bible, and she asked me if drinking is a sin, and then I said that I believed it's a sin based on the amount and the occasion, and then she used it as an example of how I like to make my own rules, as she argued there were some verses that said drinking is obviously a sin. So I said I didn't struggle with drinking, so I hadn't studied that much, and it was my opinion, but I did study a lot about polygyny and had strong convictions. (That God gave all men the option, not that I am called to it.)
And then she also argued that there's a New Testament verse saying we are supposed to follow the government and kings, as they don't allow polygyny. So I asked, what if the government didn't allow you to worship God? And she couldn't answer, of course; her Bible knowledge was still weak; she only had a few months of reading in the past 2 years.
She then started getting violent. She didn't hit me, but I asked for my sim card back (that is in her phone), because it's mine and from the country where I'm from, which is tied as the security SMS receiver of some online accounts. She refused to give it to me, and I tried to use my hand to reach and grab and exercise authority. But she was like kind of fighting me. I didn't want to use violence. I think sometimes it's deserved when personal belongings are involved, but it's not me. In the end I failed to reacquire my own SIM card but I’m willing to deal with the consequences.
She said that she was going to tell her mom about my polygyny convictions. I actually had warned her before, that if she tells her mom, it will jeopardize our "mission" (will explain later for those who didn't read the previous parts).
I was so frustrated because she wanted to lock me out of OUR bedroom and she showed it! It seems me using God's name really escalated it to the limits. This didn't happen before in our almost four years of marriage, not even during the worst fights. She never locked me out of our bedroom. You know, I didn't mind not having sex for a while, but being locked out of my own bedroom without sufficient explanation was like the limit for how I now allow myself to be treated. My confidence as a leader has been growing more and more in the past month or two, so I couldn't let this happen to myself.
Usually I would wait a bit before making any big decisions, but somehow this time I just took a leap and left with but a few belongings. Now I am on the "run" basically, getting away from her for a few days for the first time. This has never happened before, so it will definitely rock the boat, as her father is quite controlling of his family's whereabouts. I'm not leaving her definitely as of yet. I just want to see what happens when I rock the boat and do something she and her family would disapprove of. Most probably, the marriage is doomed, but I will keep my optimism. I will turn off my phone for a few days, having informed my own friends and family.
This situation is really bad for me because when I get my payments, I spend most of it on my marriage. However, it seems whenever we go through a very difficult moment, I always find myself broke, and now literally I have to either fast or ask a friend for some help moneywise. I'm really not used to this as I used to run a digital agency and I had three full-time employees.
I will be turning off my phone for three days, so God help me. I just prayed, God, if this is wrong, stop me, punish me, or let me know in some way! But so far I am okay, I've been cycling for a while and everything is fine: No accidents, no tyre punctures, no signs, no message from my wife. I think this time I really felt some peace to leave it suddenly like this, because whenever something happened that was deserving of me leaving, I always waited.
I always waited and things would get better and then get worse, which sucks because it's like tearing the house down after building it. But this time I think it has reached the limit, like my tolerance has been too good; I always had been tolerating it for almost the entirety of our relationship. The only time we didn't have problems (and that's when I decided to be with her) was in the first few months of knowing her. Since then we've been having problems and I've been trying to solve them for close to four years now, but it seems that it's hit the limit now and the catalyst is polygyny. I feel that that’s why the polygyny option is important and changes things; it really makes it obvious who’s in charge. Not like a submission fantasy where the woman wants the man to lead but also the man to choose her preference: More common than I expected!
I really hope that I'm doing the right thing. I didn't block anybody. I will be away for days, getting myself to somewhere safe and then I will open up my phone again and then I will see what's up. I will see what's the damage caused and see if I can talk to anybody. I'll see if my wife said anything, if my father-in-law said anything, see if we should call, and see if anything can be done. Again, I've never done this before so it will really rock the boat. I'm going to see what happens and probably there's no turning back because everyone could know about my polygyny views. My wife is set on telling her mom already, so I am sure more people will find out.
I will now explain again what my mission was: I said to her that telling her mom will jeopardize the "mission". The mission was actually, if we do separate, we would agree on a separation date so we could first move to the city so that she can achieve her independence, because that was one of my missions in marrying her, because I saw so much potential in her and in us, and I saw that she was in this oppressed familial environment, and I felt compassionate for her and also she was really amazing, intelligent, intellectual, and beautiful. So when I revealed my polygyny views on September 30, I said if we're gonna separate, at least let us complete the mission: To get her to the city further away from her parents, so that she can gain independence and her freedom. If she doesn't want to be with me, at least I would feel more satisfied if she gained the freedom that she dreamed of.
However, now it seems that she really wanted to tell her mom because she's like, her mom is the only person that cares for her. Essentially, I think she's picking her mom over me, in a serious way. By picking her mom she is also picking her family; she knows that her mom is stuck in her oppressive family. She has to weigh the pros and cons; the cost of things. She swore that her mom wouldn't tell anybody (implying I should still complete the mission). And she even mocked my warnings, calling them threats. Anyway, here is where I had a sudden realization that if we moved far away from her parents and from her family, it would be disastrous. So I decided with a heavy heart to give up the mission, as in the two years that we've been living together after the wedding, she had a lot of time to gain some friends, skills, and make some personal development in her life. However she has done very little personal development. The thing is she doesn't have any friends other than her family, and she doesn't like to work (in a breadwinning context): She couldn't work for more than four hours max per day. In fact, 2 hours is tiring for her already. So I don't think she can actually get a normal modern job anytime soon. I also see that even though her father is very hard to deal with and overbearing, sometimes oppressive, he actually cares about her and takes care of her, at least physically; perhaps not mentally or spiritually. But at least physically!
So our current house seven streets away is still the best environment for her. She cannot be independent and be somewhere far away from her family. The first person that she runs to is her mom, and not any of her friends, because she has no trusted friends. (If she did, I would let her tell, of course.) But I didn't let her tell her mom, because her mom is senior, like I respect her. It would not be easy to go against someone so senior and dear.
Anyway, I guess after being away for a few days, everyone will find out what's going on, including her father of course, and then he will find out about my polygyny views; I think everyone will find out from her family, so I think our marriage might be doomed.
I'm also not coming back to this situation. If there's a small little chance that she wants to try again, I'm asking her to come to me, instead of me to her (like I did that already; moved continents).
I did my best and I even did the monogamy-only thing, and actually in fact what was the catalyst of the polygyny reveal was that our monogamy hit rock bottom for the umpteenth time. So I not only took the lead 100% now, but I also was honest about polygyny. And that's where it got me now!
I really, really hope God is with me, because if I am mistaken, and if all the polygyny people are mistaken and it's not allowed in the New Covenant/Testament, then I am doomed. It's not good NOT to have God on your side. I am doing this because I really believe that over the years (and especially this year) God has been telling me very seriously: Be careful of saying that polygyny is a sin and be careful of not permitting it. I really hope that I heard correctly and that my whole life is not a lie; that my whole year is not a lie; that my marriage wasn't a lie; that polygyny isn't a lie. Because otherwise it would make what I'm doing worth nothing. I'm doing this for God for God's kingdom. Even if I remain single for life, I will know that I have served God.
I cannot thrive in that house with my wife; it's a battlefield and it's getting worse and worse and I don't want to kick her out. I just realized that God kicked Adam and Eve out; like God had standards; but I cannot kick her out, as it's her country anyway (If it's my country then maybe I can kick her out.) She has the upper hand here as I'm a foreigner, so like every situation and circumstance is geared against me.
Another point I would like to say is I feel this marriage has also been very trying on me that it sucked the energy, time, and effort out of me till I couldn't grow financially. I was happy being drained because I thought the sacrifice would be worth it (and I hope it still is!)
The last thing I will mention is the last time I had sex with her was yesterday afternoon, and I just checked the period app, and it says that she was most probably ovulating! So like there's a more than average chance that she might get pregnant! I'm feeling that, maybe, if she does get pregnant, God allowed this to happen. I won't be able to father the child at this point, so I would just let her have the child, if she doesn't reconcile with me in my way, which is submitted to God's way. She really has a dream to be a young mom, so maybe God wanted to give this to her; I don't know. Supported by a well-known polygynous Youtuber’s advice, I just decided to go with what I usually do: Give God the power to open/close the womb, so I would just have normal sex and let God decide; like I didn't even realize our last sex was during her ovulation so we'll see what happens. Another thing is I know that her family will take care of the baby well. Her mom has been actually asking for a grandchild like several times this year, since our anembryonic pregnancy went down a few months ago. Her mom has been expecting us to try again. And even though her father can be problematic, he still provides and he is not totally irresponsible, and I've seen his behaviour improve over the years actually. I guess his authoritarian ways work because, as you can see, my wife is very rebellious and the only way for some peace is to force obedience. It won't lead to deep satisfaction nor to a change of heart, but forcing obedience sometimes is the only way to sustain a household, if the child is really stubborn and violent. So maybe that's why he's the way he is, to deal with this rebellion.
Another final thought is that maybe this time she will actually read the Bible for real, to find answers. We have been doing Bible study almost every day for the past week, but unfortunately it has to stop. We were doing Matthew 12-13 and went through the book of Jonah as well. Anyway, it's not possible anymore as I have left and she has rejected my biblical authority, and now she claims her biblical authority. But at least she might read the whole thing for real this time.
