A pair of Sister Wives cast members were in a reflective mood this past Sunday night.
On the latest episode of this TLC reality show, Meri Brown admitted that every new spouse who came into her household would take an emotional toll on her.
“I knew that I would have [an] emotion about it when somebody did finally come into the family. And I did,” Meri, recalled on air.
“I didn’t handle myself the best all the time.”
The 54-year old continued:
“I remember being very jealous. You know, people ask all the time, ‘Were you not jealous?’ Well, yes, I was. How can you not be jealous?”
This is a great question. It would inhuman not to be jealous. One can’t help but wonder why women are still looking to get into this kind of arrangement.
For the record, Meri married Kody Brown in 1990.
Three years later, the pair expanded their family with the addition of Janelle Brown, who spiritually wed Kody in 1993.
Christine Brown joined the polygamist brood in 1994… and Robyn Brown rounded out the family in 2010, eventually legally exchanging vows with Kody after he divorced Meri.
Each addition made it more and more challenging for Meri.
“I thought I was living polygamy wrong,” she said on the aforementioned episode, sadly adding:
“I thought I was a woman wrong, a wife wrong. I couldn’t even have a baby, for heaven’s sake, you know? So everything about me was wrong. It was hard.”
This is so very unfortunate to hear.
We really hope Meri now knows that nothing was ever wrong with her for feeling uncomfortable about sharing her husband with three other women.
Christine left Kody in November 2021. Janelle did the same a few months later. And then Meri and Kody announced their split in January 2023.
“Polygamy dilutes a marriage because you don’t have to spend the time that it takes to make your relationship better,” Christine explained during Sunday’s episode.
Looking back on their polygamist lifestyle and values, both Meri and Christine said on Sunday’s installment that the religion promotes unhappiness in the hopes of having a better afterlife.
“It’s an interesting idea in the church culture that we came from, that suffering was going to make you better,” Meri told viewers. “Because if you suffer, then you have it made.”
The thing is, that way of thinking doesn’t sit well with Meri.
“I don’t think that we need to endure the pain and the struggles and the challenges,” she now says. “I think what we need to do is figure out how to go through them.”
For his part, Christine’s husband, David Woolley, thinks polygamy is extremely abusive.
His wife finally agrees, stating the following as a reason why:
“If I’m having a bad time with Kody in a bad situation, I don’t want to see him being physically affectionate with other wives in front of me.”
What’s crazy (to most people) is that the church did preaches how being able to deal with a man’s ego and this sort of jealousy factor makes them “better” people, according to Christine.
“They teach you that it makes you better. You feel those feelings, you learn to deal with those feelings, and then you move on and you become a better person,” she expounded on air.
Christine, who previously opened up about her sex life with Kody, added of polygamy:
“The famous quote is, ‘Endure to the end.’
“Basically go ahead and have a miserable life because when you die, you earn the celestial kingdom, you earn all the way up and you get to live with God if you endure. That’s sad.”
We strongly agree.
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sunday nights at 10/9c.