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for a while. I wanted to see Janelle once more before we moved away, so I invited her to lunch with me. Technically, it’s inappropriate for a married man to have lunch alone with another woman. But Janelle and I were friends. There was no thought of courting, so lunch was purely platonic.
    But during that lunch, that same thought that I’d had a few months earlier in Janelle’s office crossed my mind—there was something between Janelle and me. I was a married man, so I had to be careful with my words. I tried to be as offhand as possible when I said to Janelle, “Maybe you and I should consider you and me.”
     
Janelle
    I completely rebuffed Kody’s suggestion. I was shocked, and laughed it off. After that, I didn’t even give it a second thought. But when I returned to the office that afternoon, my coworkers were suspicious. They wanted to know who the cute man was who’d taken me to lunch. I’ve heard that people in the office said I was glowing—but this seems a little exaggerated.
    A few months after Kody and Meri had moved to Montana, Kody told me they were going to be returning to his dad’s ranch in Wyoming for the weekend, so I decided to visit as well. When I called my mother and told her I was going to spend a few days with a polygamous family, she became alarmed. Unfortunately, many members of the LDS church harbor a deep mistrust of polygamy. Mormons are taught from a young age that fundamentalism is backward and sinful. I guess my mother was worried that I was going to be converted, swept away into some sort of cult and never heard from again.
    Although it was clear that my mom didn’t want me to go to Wyoming, she knew me well enough not to tell me not to do something. Had she tried to prevent me from visiting Kody and Meri, I would have left the moment I’d hung up the phone.
    Ever since my mother divorced my stepfather, she had developed an independent and free spirit. She follows her own path at her own speed. So when I told her I was going to visit Meri and Kody, she told me that she was coming along for the weekend. Part of her wanted to meet a polygamous family and see what they were like—and part of her wanted to protect me from them.
    Well, let’s just say that trip had an unexpected development. When Kody’s father, Winn, arrived and met my mother, they had an instant chemistry. Winn already had two wives, but he andmy mom began courting, and not long after our trip to Wyoming they were married.
    When I returned to Utah, I began to explore the polygamous faith. There was something in the doctrines that intrigued me. All the men whom I’d met in the faith had character. In addition to this, I discovered that the women were amazingly strong. It became immediately apparent to me that when you choose to follow a countercultural path, you have to learn to be independent. In other words, when you choose an alternative lifestyle—one that is denigrated by the public—it develops your character. You either wash out or you stand up. Once I came to this conclusion, I started to believe that there was something for me in fundamentalism.
    As I was investigating the faith, I started studying the doctrines and principles of Meri and Kody’s group, as well as talking to a lot of members of their church. I decided to pay another visit to Meri and Kody, who were now living in Montana. When I went up to Montana, I brought the man I was seeing at the time. Despite dating a member of the LDS faith—a conventional Mormon—I couldn’t suppress my interest in fundamentalism. During that visit to Montana, it progressed from a curiosity to a calling.
     
Kody
    When Janelle showed up in Montana, she had a guy in tow. I knew she was hoping that a real relationship would develop between them, but I guess I was starting to wish for the opposite to happen. It may be ungenerous to say, but I hoped their relationship would fizzle.
    When I saw Janelle and her boyfriend, I couldn’t stop wondering why she was