‘Sister Wives’: Kody Says He Was Only Intimate With Christine Out of ‘Duty’

Kody Brown is getting candid about his relationship with Christine Brown. The most recent season of the Brown family’s TLC reality series Sister Wives has documented the final days of Brown and Christine’s marriage and the continued fallout of their split, with a sneak peek clip of Sunday’s upcoming episode seeing Brown admit that he was only intimate with his ex-wife out of “duty” and an effort to make their relationship work.

After Christine announced in last week’s episode her decision to split from her husband after more than 25 years together, Sunday’s newest episode finds Brown struggling to come to terms with the news and attempting to figure out what exactly went wrong. In a clip for the episode shared with Entertainment Tonight, Christine tells her ex that she believes his “relationship is off with your kids because of COVID, not because of me,” after Brown questions whether she has been speaking with their children about their failed marriage. Brown hits back in a confessional by saying, “Bull, you’re telling them. It’s Christine telling them. She’s running to this person, to this person, to this person, to this person to complain about the relationship. She’s been playing games for years. I just call bulls-.”

Brown and Christine’s split, and the strong emotions that have followed, are taking a toll on the entire Brown family. In a group discussion with his wives, Brown admits, “I cannot figure out why I’m so angry.” Meanwhile, Janelle Brown has her own thoughts on Brown’s extreme emotions, telling him, “I’ve seen you grieving, Kody, in a way I’ve never seen you grieve before. You disguise it, but it’s grief.”  Later in a confessional, she admits, “I don’t know how to explain it. He’s just been off. He’s gone to a more angry place quicker than he ever did.”

As the clip continues, Brown begins to open up a bit more, telling his family that he thinks he holds so much anger because he feels “like an investor who poured everything he had into something and it just didn’t work.” He opens up about those feelings in a confessional, admitting that he feels upset because he put “so much effort” into his marriage.

“I was holding her hand. I was kissing her. I wasn’t in love,” he tells the cameras. “I was doing it as my duty as a husband. She’s not either. She quit loving me years ago. Now that we’re here, I’m just so upset because it’s not the breakup of two people. It’s the breakup of a family.”

Brown and Christine married in March 1994 and share children Aspyn, Mykelti, Paedon, Gwendlyn, Ysabel, and Truely. The former couple announced in November 2021 that after more than 25 years together, they were going their separate ways. New episodes of Sister Wives air on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.