‘Sister Wives’: Kody Brown Admits to Withholding Intimacy From Meri Brown, Says of Her Decision to Stay Married: ‘Everybody Makes Their Choices’
In the first installment of the Sister Wives: Tell-All, series star Kody Brown will admit withholding intimacy from his first wife, Meri Brown. The couple, who have been together for 31 years and have one child, have had relationship issues for over a decade. However, Kody admits to not feeling “safe” intimately with Meri in a one-on-one sitdown. He claimed that when it comes to Meri remaining a part of their polygamist clan despite a loveless marriage, “everybody makes their choices.”
The couple’s marriage wasn’t always rocky
The first couple in their family, Kody and Meri wed both legally and spiritually in April 1990.
Following their union, Kody spiritually married his second wife Janelle in January 1993.
Just one year later, Kody married his third wife, Christine, in March 1994.
In May 2010, he wed Robyn Brown in a spiritual ceremony.
Four years after he and Robyn wed, he and Meri divorced. He legally married Robyn to adopt her three children, David, Aurora, and Breanna, from her previous marriage to David Jessop.
Meri struggled with their family’s dynamic changes, and she found herself caught in a catfishing scandal.
In March 2015, Meri struck up an online affair with a man named Sam Cooper. She later realized Sam was not a real person. Instead, she had been talking to a woman named Jackie Overton.
In season 7, Kody insisted he did not believe that Meri’s relationship was emotional.
However, it appears he has since changed his tune.
During the ‘Sister Wives’ Tell-All, Kody Brown claims Meri ‘hurt’ him to the point where their relationship cannot be fixed
“And that wasn’t from the catfishing. It was just the catfish that woke me up out of the daze, I guess,” he said, reported People Magazine.
“There’s a point where intimacy is just damaged. It’s misleading to have intimacy in a relationship where there is no real safety. I’m not going there,” Kody continued.
Kody admitted to tell-all host Sukanya Krishnan that he did not “feel safe” with his first wife.
“No, and I never will again. I will be her friend and do what I can to protect her. I will build a house for her out on Coyote pass, but I’m never going to feel safe in an intimate place.”
When pushed by Krishnan to learn if he believes that Meri will be OK in the long run with a friendship with her husband and relationships with the extended family, Kody admitted he didn’t think so.
“I don’t think that’s enough for anybody, but everybody makes their choices,” the Brown family patriarch deduced.
The ‘Sister Wives’ Tell-All will be broken up into three parts
TLC will air the three remaining episodes of Sister Wives, the tell-all segments of the series, on three consecutive Sundays.
The first episode will feature the four Brown wives and Kody as they sit down individually with Krishnan to discuss their most contentious season.
Kody, Christine, and Meri answer burning questions about the current state of their relationships while Janelle and Robyn will discuss the challenges the family faced due to coronavirus (COVID-19).
There are three installments scheduled. The first will air on Jan. 30, followed by Feb. 6 and 13.
Sister Wives airs at 10 p.m. EST on TLC.
