The Polygamist: It Was Never About Polygamy
By Dilys Sillah | dilyssillah.com
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I have to admit, I started watching The Polygamist for exactly the same reason many other people probably did. I thought it was going to be entertaining. A little dramatic, a little chaotic, and if I'm being completely honest, I was curious to see how on earth one man thought he could successfully juggle three wives without the whole thing collapsing around him.
It didn't take long before I realised I wasn't watching a story about polygamy. I was watching a story about human behaviour. That's what fascinated me.
People will no doubt have their own opinions about Jonasi Gomora. Some will call him a womaniser. Others will say he was arrogant, selfish or simply a man who thought he could have his cake and eat it. My conclusion was different.
I found myself watching a man who, in my opinion, behaved like a sex addict.
Now before anyone starts composing a strongly worded email, I'm not offering a clinical diagnosis. I'm sharing what I saw. I saw a man whose appetite consistently overruled his judgement. Every important relationship, every promise, every decision eventually bowed to one thing. His need for sexual gratification seemed stronger than his commitment to the people he claimed to love. For me, that changes the conversation completely.
The problem wasn't women. Women were simply where his lack of discipline showed itself.
That's an important distinction because we all have an appetite. Yours may not be sex. Mine may not be money. Someone else's may not be status. Every one of us has something that, if left unchecked, has the potential to become our master instead of our servant.
That's why I couldn't stop thinking about Jonasi long after I'd finished watching the series. It made me wonder how many successful people are quietly being governed by something they have convinced themselves they control.
One of the biggest misconceptions we have is believing that success and self-governance are the same thing. They aren't.
I've met people who can build businesses but not healthy relationships. People who can command a room but can't apologise. People who are financially disciplined but emotionally reckless. We often admire what people have achieved without asking what it has cost them to achieve it.
Jonasi looked like a man in control. He wasn't.
The interesting thing about a lack of self-discipline is that it rarely announces itself. It whispers. It tells us that one more time won't matter. One more secret won't make any difference. One more compromise is harmless. Character doesn't usually collapse because of one catastrophic decision. It erodes, quietly, almost unnoticed, until eventually the consequences become impossible to hide.
Watching Jonasi reminded me that unmanaged character is rather like a crack in a windscreen. At first it looks insignificant. You almost convince yourself it's nothing to worry about. Then one day you look again and realise the crack has travelled the entire length of the glass. It didn't happen that morning. It had been spreading all along. You just hadn't noticed.
The irony is that while everyone around Jonasi seemed captivated by his confidence, I found myself becoming increasingly interested in Joyce. Not because she was the wife. Because she was changing.
I think this is something many men miscalculate, misunderstand and misconstrue about women. I have lost count of the number of times I've heard a man say, “She just changed,” or, “She walked away out of nowhere.”
Did she? Or did you simply notice the ending without noticing the journey that led there? That's a very different question.
In my experience, a woman's decision to leave is very rarely sudden. What appears sudden is often the final visible step in a process that has been unfolding for months, sometimes years. Long before she leaves physically, she has usually been wrestling emotionally.
She has explained herself more times than she can remember. She has cried. She has pleaded. She has tried to reason. She has compromised. She has talked herself into believing that perhaps next week will be different, or next month, or after this holiday, or after this promotion, or after the children get older. She isn't trying to win an argument. She's trying to save something that matters to her.
That is why I often smile when people say, “She gave up.” More often than not, she ran out of places to put her hope.
There comes a point in some unhealthy relationships where every option slowly disappears. You have communicated until you no longer recognise your own voice. You have forgiven until forgiveness starts to feel like permission. You have compromised until there is so little of you left that you catch yourself wondering when exactly you disappeared from your own life. Eventually, only one option remains. Yourself.
I don't believe choosing yourself is usually a woman's first choice. I think it is very often her last remaining choice. There's a profound difference between those two things.
People sometimes describe choosing yourself as though it's an act of defiance. I don't think it always is. Sometimes it's simply an act of survival. Sometimes it's the moment you realise that if somebody has to start protecting you, it may have to be you.
That is what I saw beginning to happen in Joyce. She didn't become stronger overnight. She became clearer. Clarity changes everything.
There was one scene that stayed with me long after the credits rolled. Jonasi repeated the words, “Till death us do part.”
Most people will probably hear those words as part of the drama. I heard something else. I heard a sentence that no longer meant the same thing to the person listening.
It's funny how life does that. The words themselves don't change; our experience of them does. When you first hear those marriage vows, they speak of commitment, hope and a shared future. When trust has been broken repeatedly, when deception has become a way of life and when violence enters the relationship, those very same words can begin to sound completely different.
As I watched Joyce, I found myself thinking, I wonder if this is the moment she stopped trying to save him. Not because she no longer loved him. Because she could no longer lose herself. I could almost hear her silently replying, “As you wish.”
Again, before anyone misunderstands me, I'm not applauding everything Joyce did. That isn't my point. I'm far more interested in what changed inside her than I am in what happened afterwards.
There comes a point in some relationships where the question is no longer, “How do I get this person to change?” The question becomes, “Who am I becoming while I wait for them to?” They're very different questions. The first keeps your attention on the other person. The second finally brings your attention back to yourself.
That, for me, was Joyce's transition. She moved from disbelief to acceptance, and from acceptance to strategy.
People often assume strategy is cold. I don't think it is. Sometimes strategy is simply what happens when emotion has exhausted itself. When you've cried every tear you have, asked every question you can think of and held on for longer than you ever imagined, something inside you settles. Not because the pain disappears, but because clarity arrives.
That's the part many people miss. They notice that she's crying less, but they don't ask why. They notice she has stopped arguing, but they don't ask why. They notice she no longer waits up all night, but they don't ask why. They mistake her silence for indifference, when in reality it is often the sound of someone making peace with a decision they never wanted to make.
Then comes the inevitable question: “Why did you change?” The truthful answer is often, “I've been changing for a long time. You just weren't paying attention.”
I think that's one of the saddest realities in many unhealthy relationships. One person is measuring the relationship by today's conversation, while the other has been carrying the weight of a thousand conversations that led to this one. By the time the relationship ends, the ending itself is almost a formality. The emotional departure happened long before.
That was Joyce's story. While Jonasi was still trying to manage appearances, Joyce was trying to recover herself.
Perhaps that's why I found myself thinking that the greatest mistake Jonasi made wasn't underestimating Joyce. It was overestimating himself.
He believed he was always the smartest person in the room. He believed he could keep telling different stories to different people and never be caught. He believed he understood everyone around him. Ironically, he understood everyone except the one person he should have understood most. Himself.
That's what makes The Polygamist such an interesting series. It isn't really about multiple wives. It isn't even really about infidelity. It's about the consequences of living without self-governance.
We spend so much time talking about emotional intelligence as though it only relates to how we treat other people. Emotional intelligence also requires us to tell ourselves the truth. It requires us to recognise our own patterns, our own blind spots and the appetites that quietly compete for control of our lives.
That's why I don't believe Jonasi's downfall began when his secrets were exposed. I think it began much earlier, when he convinced himself that his appetites could be indulged without consequence.
Most of us won't have three wives. Most of us won't live a life that dramatic. All of us have something, however, that has the potential to become our weakness if we refuse to examine it honestly.
That's why this series stayed with me. Not because it was entertaining, although it certainly was. Not because it was dramatic, and it was. It stayed with me because, underneath the storyline, it asked a question that every one of us should probably ask ourselves from time to time.
What part of my life have I stopped governing?
Because the answer to that question may tell us far more about our future than our achievements ever will.
If you've watched The Polygamist, you may have come away talking about Jonasi, Joyce or the ending. I came away thinking about character. I came away thinking about the quiet decisions that shape us long before anyone else notices. I came away thinking about the danger of believing that because something hasn't caught up with us yet, it never will.
We often hear the saying, “Something must kill a man.” In Jonasi's case, it did.
If any part of Joyce's journey resonated with you, particularly her journey of choosing herself, you may find my e-books When Love Feels One-Sided and When Letting Go Means Choosing You helpful. They explore the emotional reality of reclaiming yourself when a relationship has taken more from you than it has given, and why choosing yourself is sometimes the bravest decision you will ever make.
Bon Appétit
About Dilys Sillah
Dilys Sillah is a human development practitioner, communication specialist, TEDx alumna, and the author of eight books. She is the creator of The Glass Framework™, a methodology for understanding and restoring human wholeness, and the founder of The Capacity to Heal™ and The Capacity to Love™ coaching programmes.