My first foray into the world of Bravo-style reality television was last season’s Vanderpump Rules, which I began watching so that I’d understand the context around what was then the biggest scandal in television, Scandoval. Ultimately, the season was not that appealing for me: I felt like it was a group of unlikable people forced by the producers to spend time together in an effort to manufacture drama. Tom Sandoval, meanwhile, was not even a fun villain: He’s whiny and insufferable, and no matter how much pain he inflicts on others, insists on playing the victim. We get enough of that in the political world.
I don’t know what possessed me to start watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but I found it immediately compelling. I have never seen any episodes of The Real Housewives, but I imagine this is what it must be like, only the cast is much younger, a super conservative religion is involved, and it seems to combine wealth with low culture. The wives remind me a lot of the women I grew up with in the South who rebel against their religion but still allow it to control them: They have sex before marriage and then spend the rest of their lives paying for it by having children as teenagers and marrying young. There’s a lot of divorce involved.
What’s also interesting is the stakes involved: It’s not just wealthy women drinking and creating drama (about half of them don’t even drink). Their MomTok group is also their support system, a relief valve from their Mormon lives. A few of them are in happy marriages with secure men and have joined this Mormon MomTok as a means to “fight the Mormon patriarchy,” which is laudable. But the real stakes — as Emma wrote about — lie in the ability of this support group to provide a safe space for some of the women in the group who deal with controlling, abusive husbands (or boyfriends, in the case of Taylor), but who — in the case of Jennifer Affleck — feel compelled to stay with their husbands because of their religion. It’s like JD Vance is hovering over their shoulder, whispering, “For the good of the children, you have to stay with this gambling-addicted sociopath who feels like he’s one alcohol addiction away from a murder-suicide.”
The other tragedy in this season is Whitney, positioned essentially as the villain in the mom group. Whitney, like Tom Sandoval, has some narcissistic tendencies in that she wants to be the center of attention and lashes out when she’s not. She stirs up a lot of shit, but then falls back on her holier-than-thou attitude when she gets rejected. Indeed, after Taylor’s swinging scandal, Whitney thought she could become the nominal leader of their MomTok group, but could not get beyond Taylor, upon whom the rest of the cast seems to depend for clout, even if she’s not always their favorite person, either.
As the season progresses, Whitney’s attempts to take control of the group repeatedly backfire until she essentially alienates herself. She basically tells the group that she quits, but then feels hurt when they don’t chase her down and demand that she remain in the group. Whitney, in turn, insists that she’s leaving the group to focus on her family and soon thereafter announces that she’s pregnant with another child.
The tragedy here, however, is that — with the exception of Jen — Whitney needs the group more than anyone. While it is introduced in the opening episode, the series rarely goes back to the issues in her marriage, issues that would have ended almost any other marriage. Her husband, Conner, with whom she shares two children (with one on the way), not only had a secret porn addiction for the entirety of their marriage but was having virtual affairs with multiple women on Tinder.
Asked if he had slept with any of the numerous women with whom he exchanged naked photos, Conner said no, and Whitney took his word for it. The entire ordeal, however, seemed to be dismissed with Connor shedding a tear and declaring that he’s working on himself. It’s not clear what Connor does except, it seems, sponge off his wife’s TikTok fame and — now that she’s been exiled from MomTok — appear alongside Whitney in her TikToks.
In other words, Whitney has lost her support system and has been left to rely on her unreliable husband not just for companionship but for their way of life. MomTok provided her an outlet to express concerns about her marriage and, as we have seen with Taylor and Jenn, a safe space to resort to in times of need. Instead, Whitney seems further constrained by her religion, which she turns to in times of need, to stick it out with a man who clearly doesn’t respect their religion.
To his credit, Connor is not controlling, but based on the little footage we see of him in Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and on TikTok, he seems happy to amplify the MomTok discord. He clearly wants to be her +1. While Whitney had concerns about what the church might think about Connor once this Tinder scandal broke, my bigger concern is in the welfare of Whitney, who clearly masks her insecurities with self-righteousness. I hope that Connor changes his ways, as he promises to do in Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but Whitney also needs to reckon with the fact that there is no daylight between a physical affair and a years-long sexting relationship with other women.
Not for nothing, but if The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is any indication, there are an awful lot of fragile, insecure men in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.