‘Sister Wives’: Kody Brown Admits He Doesn’t Want to Be Married to First Wife Anymore

Kody Brown is questioning his relationship with first wife Meri Brown more than ever. In Sunday’s Sister Wives season finale, Kody and Meri got into a heated discussion with fellow wives Janelle Brown and Robyn Brown over their difficult relationship dynamics over the past year and a half, which Robyn said “shattered” her beliefs about what their family was.

Kody agreed he feels like the family has “failed” after wife Christine Brown announced last year that she was leaving him. “We’re still here and we don’t need to fail more,” Robyn told her husband. “We need to fix it. We need to fix what the problems are.” While Kody felt like not everyone left in the family wanted the family unit to be strong, Meri thought it was unfair of her husband to assume her motivations.

“It’s interesting hearing him talk about this and the parallels that is happening with him and Christine and me and him,” she said in a confessional. “It’s kind of disturbing because some of the things he’s frustrated about with Christine, he did to me. Oh, he wants to work on it with Christine but not me.” Meri also made it clear to Robyn that she wasn’t “tired of trying” for their family. 

“Robyn, I think that you and I have had enough conversations about this that you know exactly where I am and I am still here because I’m still trying,” she said. “Six years later, I’m still here. Ten years, 15 years, 20 years later, I’m still here. It’s what I want.” Despite Meri’s renewed pledge of loyalty to the family, Kody admitted in his own interview, “Ironically, Meri’s trying to support me and I don’t want to be in a relationship with her anymore.”

Meri and Kody first wed in 1990 before Kody added the three other wives into their family. In September 2014, he divorced Meri legally so that he could marry Robyn, and in the ups and downs of the years to come, Meri and Kody have come to a point in their marriage where their relationship is platonic. Kody’s relationship with Janelle has also changed recently, as Sunday’s sneak peek of next week’s One on One special confirmed that the two had separated after nearly 30 years of marriage. The Sister Wives One-on-One special will air in three parts on Sundays Dec. 18, Jan. 1 and Jan. 8 at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.