Kody Brown disappointed two of his remaining wives in one fell swoop on the latest episode of Sister Wives.
In Sunday’s new hour, Meri opened up to Kody about her plans to move out her her Flagstaff, Arizona home and relocate her clothing business to the bed and breakfast she owns in Utah. The decision meant she would spend more time away from Kody and the rest of the family, though she still planned to downsize and keep a smaller residence near them in AZ.
Going into the conversation, she already felt that Kody — with whom she’s really only had a platonic relationship following a catfishing incident in 2015 — wouldn’t care about her move, believing he had already thrown in the towel on anything romantic ever happening between them. Both she and Robyn, however, wished he would fight to keep her around.
“If it was a slap in the face kind of realization for him, that would be really cool, but I don’t really have a whole lot of hope for that either,” said Meri before breaking the news to her husband.
“Cool, that’s good, right?” he said immediately. In a confessional, Robyn reacted with disappointment, saying she wished he would have given Meri “something to hang onto” with them in Arizona.
“I think the more time Meri spends at the B&B, for her, it’s sort of like her happy place. Sounds like a natural course of action,” he continued, before asking if he was “supposed to be reading between the lines” of her news. He wondered whether she wanted him to react by exclaiming, “No, no, stay here!”, adding that he didn’t want to act like they would be “getting back into this marriage full-fledged.”
“I think I’m seeing the writing on the wall, I’m literally waiting for her to catch up,” he concluded, believing she was on her way out the door — and out of their plural marriage — too, but just hadn’t realized it yet herself.
Seeing his reaction — or lack thereof — Robyn said it was “frustrating to watch,” while feeling like she had “no influence whatsoever” on what was happening with her family. “I feel like there’s so little left and I’m trying to show her that there’s still some hope and Kody is not helping me with that,” she continued, before adding, “some days it feels like a deal-breaker.”
After Meri made it clear that her move did not, for her at least, mean she was done with the family, Kody coldly admitting in a confessional that her decision “actually has no affect on me.” She then reiterated to Kody she had no plan to “leave you and move up there,” despite what he believe. “I don’t want you to think that I’m walking away, because, sorry, I still have hope, okay?” she added.
“I was really hoping he would care a little bit more … I wanted him to have an air of caring and that just was not there,” she confessed. “Conversations like this basically just tell me, ‘Go ahead, Meri, live your life on your own like you’ve been doing because nothing else is gonna change.”
Kody, meanwhile, felt like Robyn was pushing him toward “reconciliation” with Meri, saying their united front was “making me feel very uncomfortable.” He added, “I got one wife that I’ve got a great relationship with and I’m afraid if I abandon these women that she’ll lose respect for me.”
Admitting he has no idea what the hell Meri actually wants from him or their situation, he then asked her if she would want to move into an RV on their big Coyote Pass property. He also said he was considering building a barn-dominium — a barn condo — on the land, suggesting she could live in the loft. That, to Meri, was a slap in the face.
“So basically he just wants to put me out there with all the stuff he doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to deal with, doesn’t have room for. It’s just insulting,” she said in a confessional, before telling Kody she would much rather live in a smaller home of her own.
“He’s not concerned, at all, about anything about me. I wish he saw some value in me and he doesn’t,” she concluded at the end of the episode. “He wants to put me in the loft of his freaking barn-dominium, you know?”
Kody and Meri announced in a joint statement back in January that they had “permanently terminated” their “marriage relationship.” Considering this episode was filmed shortly after the holidays, their big decision must be coming soon on the show.
Kody first legally married Meri back in 1990 and welcomed Leo, their only child, together in 1995. Second wife Janelle joined the family in 1993, before Christine in 1994. Fourth wife Robyn then joined the family in 2010, before Kody divorced Meri so he could legally marry her instead.
He remained spiritually married to Meri, though their relationship became more platonic over time — especially after she, in 2015, admitted to entering a catfishing relationship with someone online she thought was a man but turned out to be a woman.
Their split came after Christine also left their plural marriage and amid his separation from Janelle.
