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| Something Carlstrom’s Pondering |
Provo, UT—Area man Clint Carlstrom has admitted that he is facing “some pretty grim realities” now that he has started to question his long-cherished belief in celestial polygamy.
“Sure, we don’t talk about it much at church,” explained brother Carlstrom, “but in the back of my mind (and sometimes not all that far back!) I have always pictured, you know, a nice variety of celestial wives I would spend the eternities with.” This long-held belief has been a comfort to Carlstrom through his 17 years of marriage, especially when his wife Jordan “hasn’t quite been, you know, enough.”
This all started to unravel for Carlstrom when he heard some people talking about how “celestial polygamy” might not actually be a valid, core Mormon belief. “Once I started to consider this,” said Carlstrom, “you know, that maybe this isn’t really a thing, then all of the sudden I had to deal with some pretty difficult realities.”
Among those “difficult realities” was the idea that, again in Carlstrom’s words, “I’d just have to actually make my current marriage work.” At first this thought seemed terrible, especially in light of all of the things he had let slide, trusting that other wives would eventually “fill in any remaining gaps in my marriage or life.”
But over time Carlstrom has found many, as he calls them, “silver linings” to the otherwise dark cloud of doubt about celestial polygamy. “You know,” he elaborated, “once I came to grips with the idea that this is it, then I got more serious about making a great friendship and partnership with Jordan.” Carlstrom stated that, “I started to ask serious questions about how realistic my expectations were for marriage and about how I could make this marriage complete and celestial for both of us.”
The most powerful part of the whole process for Carlstrom was considering “how I might have always been keeping part of myself back from Jordan, you know, with the idea that I could save some parts of me for those I would be married to later.” About these thoughts brother Carlstrom said, “that has really caused some profound soul-searching, to be honest.”
For her part, Jordan Carlstrom had never considered that her husband may have been holding back when it came to their marriage because of common Mormon notions of celestial polygamy. When asked to respond, she replied, “well, that certainly explains the withdrawal, the holding back, and the sense that our marriage was somehow haunted by things I could not see—it has been haunted by his imaginary future wives!”
When asked about her thoughts on celestial polygamy, Sister Carlstrom said, “well, if you think about the impact that a specific belief has, well then it’s pretty clear to me how messed up that crap is!”