‘Sister Wives’ Star Reveals She’s Already Replaced Kody Brown in Her Family

All is not well in the Brown household on Sister Wives, as the family unit gets more fragmented by the day. Kody Brown and his third wife, Christine, announced last year that they were splitting up, second wife Janelle is increasingly unsatisfied with their situation, and first wife Meri admitted that she and Kody no longer had an “intimate” marriage. However, they are still finding solace In each other.

According to Janelle, Christine has effectively taken Kody’s place in her children’s lives as a second parent. Janelle’s kids look to Christine as they do their own mother, and Christine’s kids do the same to Janelle. These two wives may be over Kody, but they have definitely found a different kind of partnership in each other.

After Brown and Christine split for good, Janelle began to wonder why she stayed as well. “I’ve had to really think. My children are almost grown and there’s not a huge necessity anymore to stay. It was a wonderful way to raise children,” she pondered during the current season. “With Kody and I right now, our relationship is pretty strained. And you know, it’s easy to walk away.”

In an Us Weekly interview last year, Brown explained that he would never initiate a split with any of his wives. “In plural marriage, I don’t feel like I’ve got the right to say, ‘This is over, this is ending,’” he said. “I have dominion over my own body and where I’m at, but I’m not in a place where, like, I can say, ‘Hey, I’m divorcing you.’ I can’t do that. However, any one of them, I feel like, can.” He added that he told them all that “they can leave” if and when they so choose. Kody has made pondered the idea of getting all-new wives except for his fourth wife Robyn, and it sounds like Janelle and Christine would be just fine without him.