Marriage is a funny thing. So many of us don’t believe in it, not in the way we are supposed to—until death do us part, I’m never going to love another woman/man but you, I’m not even going to look at anyone else the way I do you, etc. etc. Those of us who see the multitude of fallacies that the institution of marriage is based on, or who view them as an ideal rather than an obtainable reality can easily be written off as cynics, killjoys even.

But perhaps we are just realists. The way I see it, some people live the fairy tale story, but most of us don’t.

The hard truth is, no one has yet been able to come up with a better system. And this one’s been going on for how many hundreds of years, so there must be something to it.

Nonmonogamy, or polyamory, a lifestyle I’ve written a little about, peppered with knowledge from afar, maintains its fringe status. And rightly so. Not many people can make this work either. I once wrote about—my mostly failed attempts at—nonmonogamy for the Modern Love column in The New York Times. I sort of outed myself, at least to family and friends who didn’t know this about me.

As a married woman, I was willing to take the social “risk” because I believe that the fallacies we hold about marriage often do more harm to married people (and to those who are doing everything they can to get married) than good. They set up grand expectations and make people feel ashamed or victimized when they can’t live up to them.

I do some work at an advice site and I can’t tell you how much stone-throwing happens over the subject of infidelity. “Once a cheater, always a cheater,” seems to be the maxim that everyone lives and throws by. I sometimes think that this kind of black-and-white thinking doesn’t allow for much room for error in relationships. I’m not advocating cheating (I’m a full-time supporter of transparency in relationships), I’m simply saying that we subordniate human nature for concepts that we desperately want to believe in. Consequently, they continue to disappoint us.

When I wrote my Modern Love piece, it was originally titled “How Big Is Your Love?” because I wanted to play off of the idea of my favorite Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated television show about a modern polygamist who lives in the suburbs with his three wives. The editors decided to take most of the references to the show out of the piece, mostly because they weren’t confident that people knew enough about the show.

That was then, and this is now, the eve of the much-anticipated third season.

I was struck by the ideal—even enamored I’ll admit—of love having room enough in it, or being big enough, to endure multiple partners. There is something almost noble about that, some way in which a principle might even transcend the difficult emotion of jealousy.

That is, if you can separate out all the sexism and moral outrage that surrounds polygamy. Of course, I am not part of the Church of Latter Day Saints, or worse, the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS)—you know, the ones who keep getting their ranches busted, and their multiple wives and dozens of children who all share the same father taken into police custody. Far from it I am. I am just an average gal who dreams about love being easier for all parties invovled.

(And what about the fact that a woman can’t have three husbands, when a husband can have three wives! But then wouldn’t three husbands mean the house would be three times as dirty? Okay, so maybe that is not such a good idea.)

This is precisely what hooked me on the show. I loved the voyeurism that comes along with it: watching four people and all of their children attempt to navigate the “lifestyle choice” that is polygamy. (Of course it is more than a lifestyle choice, but I choose to look at it this way. And I think it is an interesting point to contend with, especially when Mormons look upon the lifestyle choices of gay men and women as evil or wrong, and when more mainstream America see the polygamists as morally reprehensible as well.)

Full disclosure: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve joked with my husband, especially after we’ve enjoyed the first two seasons of the show together, about needing a “sister wife,” one who could help me clean the house and get the laundry done. Of course, then I’d have to share her with my husband, which I am probably not willing to do. I just want someone to share the chores with. The bed is already too crowded with our daughter hopping in in the wee hours of the morning.

For those of you who haven’t seen the show, here’s the deal:

A guy named Bill Henrickson, who has traded in his life growing up on an FLDS compound for a more contemporary life living The Principle (this is how contemporary Mormons refer to their faith and the laws that govern it, including polygamy) in the suburbs. In other words, he doesn’t want to live the fundamentalist way. He wants to run his own business—he owns a chain of Home Depot-type stores—and have his three wives and live the middle-class life filled with the requisite consumerism that everyone else is living in the suburbs of Utah.

Simple, right? Well, a few things are making this kind of difficult for poor old Bill.

1. The neighbors don’t know he is a polygamist (and it’s ILLEGAL).

2. The wives aren’t always entirely happy with each other (imagine that!).

3. His first wife, the most levelheaded of the three, is questioning the whole thing, and wondering if this is really what she wants after all.

4. His second wife is the daughter of the Patriarch, otherwise known as The Prophet, of the Juniper Creek compound on which Bill grew up and with which he wants very little do now (Nothing Good happens there). Her loyalties are not always clear. We often think she is going to run back to daddy. In fact, we are sometimes thrown clues that the relationship between Prophet Daddy and her are not entirely appropriate.

5. His third wife isn’t careful with her tongue, and has almost outed them all on many occasions in her attempts to make friends with the mainstream world.

6. His children are well, teenagers, and they want what all teenagers want, which isn’t what their God-fearing parents want.

These are just a fraction of Bill’s problems. Basically Big Love, like all the stellar HBO shows, is an extremely well-written soap opera with an amazing cast.

Harry Dean Stanton, who plays the Patriarch/Prophet to perfection, is one of the most interesting evil characters on television. There is something almost entirely believable about his love for his 13-year-old bride to-be. Bill Henrickson, played by Bill Paxton, is an everyman’s man, just like any nice Christian man you might meet in the suburbs, and his wives are an enthralling mix of personalities: the Queen Bee, the Busy Bee and the Stinger, all of whom both revere Bill and treat him more like a father than a husband (that shouldn't surprise you, though). When they do treat him like a husband, we get another glimpse of what the physical reality of having three wives or of sharing one man with two other women might actually look like.

This is all I’m going to say for installment one. I don't want to lose you. Now you know where I’m coming from. And I haven’t even told you about all of the drama at the compound. This is where it gets really good, really profound. More tomorrow.