When 45-year-old Zawiah Ismail’s husband doesn’t come home to her after work, she doesn’t stay up all night worrying that he’s out flirting with younger women. That’s because she knows he must have gone to his first or second wife’s bed instead.

“If he doesn’t come home, I just call up wife number one or number two and ask them, ‘Is he there with you? Is he there with you? Oh he is, OK!’,” she laughs as she shares a hearty meal with the two older women and their children.

Zawiah is the third wife of 59-year-old Mokhtar Samad, a successful businessman who married 54-year-old Latipah Shamsuddin in 1970, and tied the knot with Norasni, 50, in 1981.

He wed Zawiah two years later in 1983. Mokhtar takes turns spending the night with his three wives, who all live in their own comfortable homes located within walking distance of one another in a village outside the Malaysian capital.

“I try to do the best I can for them, I try to be fair. And they tell me they’re happy. But you’d have to ask them,” he says.

“How you solve any problems is important. You must get everyone involved. I always listen to all my wives’ opinions, and we have to try to come up with a solution together.”

The issue of polygamy is being hotly debated in mainly-Muslim Malaysia, after the government proposed legislation that would make it easier to enter into multiple marriages – a practice some women’s groups want banned.

Muslim men here are allowed up to four wives, but some activists say the practice is cruel and that it has been distorted from its original purpose during the days of the Prophet which was to protect widows and orphans.

Activists say the story of Mokhtar’s contented family is not the norm, and that sagas of abuse, abandonment and jealousy are far more common.

Mohamed Adam Zakri, 45, heartily agrees. He became the envy of his friends when he married a woman who caught his eye at their workplace, a major financial institution.

But he now says his decision cost all of them their happiness.

“She was very good at capturing my heart, she bought me breakfast every day even though she knew I was already married,” says Mohamed Adam who asked to go under a pseudonym to protect his identity.

“I finally had to confess to my first wife. One day I sat them down, one on the left and one on the right, as both of them asked to meet the other. But once they met, they didn’t even speak to each other. They just cried.”