Kody Brown Claims He Had ‘Special Requirements’ for Divorced ‘Sister Wives’ Stars

Kody Brown claims that he had “special requirements” for his Sister Wives spouses, amid multiple divorces. In a sneak peek of Sunday’s all-new episode, PEOPLE reveals that Kody is sharing some expectations he had for his wives, while noting that he knows he was having a tough time giving each of them enough of his attention. In the clip, Kody uses the term “sacred loneliness,” which he says is used to describe part of the experience for women in plural marriages due to their husbands not being “around as much.”

In response, Kody’s third wife, Christine, said with a laugh, “Sacred loneliness? Like you’re supposed to honor the fact that you’re lonely?” Kody’s second wife, Janelle, added,  “The idea is that you sacrifice some of your emotional needs because you want to live in a plural marriage… I’ve always thought it was so dumb. Sorry.” Meri, Kody’s first wife — whom he was previously legally married to — then chimed in, offering a reaction to Kody speaking about plural wives’ issues by saying, “It’s like, really, now you figured that out?” Kody’s fourth wife, Robyn, has a different perspective than her former sister wives, explaining, “Yeah, plural marriage can be lonely. In my head, it’s an opportunity for you to get a relationship with God.”

Meri, 52, and Kody, 54, were married in 1990, and then legally separated in 2014 but remained together. Janelle, 54, married Kody in 1993. They seemed to have separated in late 2020 and was confirmed in late 2022 that they are also no longer together. Christine, 51, became wife number three for Kody in 1994. Finally, Robyn, 44, married Kody in 2010. She is Kody’s only remaining wife.

In a confessional, Kody defends himself from criticism by saying, “I courted Meri and I courted Robyn, but Christine and Janelle both asked if they could be in the family. And with that ask, I had some special requirements that I wanted them to meet in order to come into the family and mainly that was there’ll be other wives, you’ve got to be committed to me.” However, Janelle, made it clear that she doesn’t believe she and Christine “deserve less” than Robyn, who was “invited.”

“It’s improper for a man to be out chasing wives,” she said. “It’s generally a woman [that] approaches the family and says, ‘Look, I feel like I had a spiritual revelation that maybe I belong in your family.’ He now keeps saying Christine and I asked to be in the family and Robyn was invited.”

“Somehow because Christine and I asked, we deserve less [and] we should be happy with what we got? It wasn’t like we were begging to be in the family,” she added. “We simply asked, there was a courtship and then we all got married.” Sister Wives airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET, on TLC.