After receiving permission from her church to divorce Kody Brown, Meri Brown sits down with her ex-husband for a tense conversation on Season 19, Episode 6 of “Sister Wives.”
In TODAY.com’s exclusive first look at this moment, Kody Brown criticizes his ex-wife’s decision to make their divorce official when she did, saying, “I wish you would have made your choice sooner.”
“My choice was always to stay. If I wanted to leave earlier, I would have left earlier,” she answers.
In a confessional interview, Kody Brown discusses the tricky dynamics of plural marriage, seemingly explaining why he stayed in several unhappy marriages for so long.
The reality star was once married to four women: Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn Brown. He is now only married to Robyn Brown.
“Leadership will never allow you to marry again if you throw away women. Well, I was in terrible relationships, but I wasn’t willing to throw them away, I didn’t want to throw them away, I didn’t even know I was in a terrible relationship,” he says.
The father of 18 says it’s hard to know you’re in a “bad relationship,” and uses a colorful example to illustrate his point.
“You just think you’re in a normal relationship because all your friends have the same problem, until you’re in a normal relationship with deep emotional intimacy instead of what some people call ‘f and f’.” And the second word is fight. Or ‘f and f’, and the first word is fight. That doesn’t create intimacy.
Back in his conversation with Meri Brown, Kody Brown pushes some buttons with his next statement.
“You know what really sucks? It’s not the divorce that sucks. It’s marrying the wrong person because you don’t know,” he says.
After a deep sigh, Meri Brown says, “Wow, okay. Because you married me at six months, you married the wrong person, and you just didn’t know it.”
Kody Brown quickly clarifies what he meant, saying, “I’m not even saying that, Meri.”
“That’s what it sounds like,” she says.
Kody Brown reflects on the end of their marriage.
“We’re parting ways now. Does that mean it was the right person or was it just at the right time? I don’t know. I can’t philosophize this. We could philosophize it to death. All I know is that you and I have different time stamps when we were no longer happy,” he says.
Meri Brown gives her own opinion in a confessional, saying, “What sucks is marrying the wrong person and only having the decency to tell her 32 years later.”
On last week’s episode of “Sister Wives,” Meri Brown traveled to Utah to ask her church for a “release” that would allow her to divorce Kody Brown. Although the couple has not been legally married since 2014, they were still part of a spiritual marriage.
“In 2014, Kody and I legally divorced, and for me that whole process was purely for the fact that he was then able to legally marry Robyn (Brown) and then adopt her three older children,” she said in the episode. . “But our spiritual marriage, our spiritual ceiling was still intact. When we get married, it’s for eternity. That is the intention.”
Meri Brown called the process of obtaining release “heartbreaking” and said it was necessary to end the “limboway” she has been living in since she and Kody Brown decided to end their marriage for good.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
