Why I shouldn't read so much

I'm thinking about reading biographies of prominent LDS women....sort of like my "summer of medieval queens," but with Mormon pioneer women.

These women were, for lack of a more academic word, COOL. They did activist things, they wrote, they studied at universities in the East, they were midwives, they anointed and blessed other women (before such a practice became blasphemous and confined to the temple...WHY?! did we move away from that). I mean, seriously. They were cool.

I was looking for a good biography of Zina Huntington. (Well, her full name was Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young....do those last two names tell you something of how her life ran?) I came across her story when I worked in Special Collections at the BYU library....I organized and indexed her brother Oliver's papers, wherein he continually raved about her exceptional healing abilities and her status as the widow of one prophet and wife of another. Anyway. Joseph Smith asked her to become one of his plural wives. She said no and married Henry Jacobs, who had been courting her. Later, Joseph Smith told her he'd seen a vision of a destroying angel, and that polygamy was a divine principle, etc. She was sealed to him. After he died, she was sealed to Brigham Young (still married to Henry, by the way). Eventually Brigham Young told Henry that he needed to leave Zina alone and go get himself a new wife, that she was sealed to Joseph and, because he's Joseph's proxy, Zina and her children were his (Brigham's...even though they were biologically Henry's). Apparently polyandry didn't fly....just polygyny.

ANYWAY. Was investigating for a biography, stumbled on this quote:

“a successful polygamous wife must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy.”

This is coming from a woman who said she had a personal testimony of polygamy as an inspired principle. She actively chose her life. She believed it was right. And for all intents and purposes she seemed to thrive in it - did some really amazingly great leadership things. I guess it worked for her. But how SAD is that quote? It breaks my heart....to some extent for her, but really just for the idea.

This idea is why I'm not okay with polygamy. Is it really not okay to want to love and be loved??