Cultivating a Relationship with your Co-wife
As I create this blog, I sit reflecting about the days when I couldn’t fathom having a “co-wife.” I unknowingly conditioned myself to be unwilling to accept the fact, that one day my husband may want to marry again. In believing that assumption, I set myself up to never need to communicate with another with another wife, nor facilitate or cultivate a relationship with one. To practice polygyny was a topic that I mentally filed under,” Do not disturb.” As an initial wife, the topic of polygyny was something that I wanted to live in ignorance about. If I was committed to ignoring this topic, it would somehow fade away and disappear. Well, that was a poor act of judgment on my part. I never realized that just because I had not evolved or educated myself more on the topic of polygyny, didn’t mean that my husband remained uneducated and unmarried.
In later years he did marry again, to my now co-wife, Coach Nyla. Of course, this was NOT what I had in mind but he, on the other hand, was now married. Our lives were now forever changed. I didn’t have the tools to understand….or so I thought. I was so busy placing myself in a mental prison; I didn’t realize that I was the ONLY one that could release me from it. I began to have an honest conversation with myself, as I began to dig deeper into my honesty, I began to understand that she was someone worth getting to know. Initial, I didn’t know how to begin to get to know her.
I asked myself a few question to begin with. Questions such as, “Fatimah, how you have gotten to know sisters in the past, what other hats does she wear in her life, what are her likes and dislikes, who are the other people in her life, hold a special place in her heart, what is her life story?” My final question was, “What commonalities can we bond over?” To my surprise, I found that we indeed had many. We both love learning, Islam, Mothering, singing, dancing, laughing, books, poetry, chic-flicks last but not least, we love the people in our family. In addition to that fact, we had the same goals for our family. I began to understand that cultivating a relationship with my co-wife was vital to the foundation of our family moving forward.
Over time we began to get to know each other with the exception of being married to the same man. We created healthy intentions to not make him the topic of our conversations each time we spoke. Our relationship began to blossom as we did our own individual work through personal growth and development. Before I knew it we talked more and more and that felt great! We did the work that it took to move forward, we both were in keeping the proper mindset. Our mindset on was one of positivity always and looking at the big picture. Our big picture is to expand our relationship goals as co-wives and blend that with love and support for our family as a whole. Working together as a team has served our family is so many wonderful ways. In cultivating our relationship, we have eliminated tension, awkwardness, hurt feelings, unanswered question and miscommunication, to name a few. The journey has not always been easy but with communication, consistency and lots of love and support, we are now enjoying this phase of our relationship. Co-wives working together doesn’t have to hurt, being a co-wife can uplift, build and secure the foundation of family and the expansion of LOVE.
-Coach Fatimah
