‘Sister Wives’: Fellow Polygamist Joe Darger Once Said Divorce Was Only Permissible in ‘Egregious’ Situations
What went wrong for the Brown family? Fans of Sister Wives have plenty of theories about why Kody’s marriages to three of his four wives eventually failed, including his big ego, his relationship with his fourth wife, Robyn Brown, and Robyn’s own meddling and manipulation.
Whatever the source of the issues, Kody — once the poster child for polygamy – is now in a monogamous relationship with Robyn. Meanwhile, his three ex-wives have moved on. It’s a situation that would have been unthinkable not too long ago, considering that the Brown family’s religious community frowned on divorce.
A fellow polygamist weighed in on problems in the ‘Sister Wives’ family
The Browns were probably the best-known polygamist family in America. To many, the collapse of their family seems to be an indictment of plural marriage in general. But at least one fellow polygamist has said Kody is to blame for the end of his marriages, not polygamy itself.
Joe Darger and his wives Alina, Vicki, and Val were friends of the Browns and appeared in a few episodes of Sister Wives. They also had their own TLC special, My Three Wives. In 2022, the family shared their thoughts on the end of Kody’s relationships on a Twitter thread.
“Can’t watch it,” the Dargers said of the then-current season of Sister Wives, which followed Kody’s breakup with Christine Brown. “To [sic] hard to watch people you care about self destruct knowing that most of what is reality TV is not real.”
One person in the thread wondered if polygamy could ever work, considering that love was always “divided” for the wives and “multiplied” for the husband. The Dargers replied that it was the husband’s job to nurture love in the family.
“In Kody’s case, it seems he has let it become divided,” they wrote.
The Dargers called out Kody Brown’s ‘ego’
Kody’s own faults contributed to the end of his marriages, the Dargers implied.
“Polygamy is a magnifier,” they wrote. “If you have love and connection or any weakness, it is multiplied; and if you have ego, resentment, or weakness it is exposed. Far better to be grateful for what you have then [sic] to want more.”
For the Dargers, letting marital and family problems fester is a ticket to disaster and divorce. And divorce is a major failure.
“Divorce is a very serious matter in my view and only is permissible for the most egregious problems,” Joe wrote in his family’s 2011 book Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage.
For example, Joe’s third wife, Val, received a spiritual “release” from her first husband because his gambling addiction left him unable to provide for his plural family. In the book, Val noted that the leaders of the Apostolic United Brethren had a “disapproval of divorce except in the most extreme cases.” Years later, Kody’s wife Meri would be granted her own spiritual divorce when those leaders determined her husband effectively abandoned her. But that outcome might have been avoided if Kody addressed the problems in his marriages early on, the Dargers’ comments suggest.
“The need to get along and work through problems, to treat each other with respect and unconditional love, is critical,” Joe wrote in Love Times Three. “Because when one relationship is in trouble, the discord ripples throughout the family.”
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