Sister Wives’ Meri Brown understood that living in polygamy meant having to share her husband with other women — but she wasn’t ready for the emotional toll every new addition would bring.
“I knew that I would have [an] emotion about it when somebody did finally come into the family. And I did,” Meri, 54, recalled during the Sunday, November 9, episode of the TLC series. “I didn’t handle myself the best all the time.”
She 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?”
Meri was Kody Brown’s first wife, legally marrying him in 1990. Three years later, they expanded their family with the addition of Janelle Brown, who spiritually wed Kody, 56, in 1993. Christine Brown joined the polygamist brood in 1994, and Robyn Brown rounded out the family in 2010.
With every new wife came more emotions for Meri, who confessed, “I thought I was living polygamy wrong.”
She remembered thinking that because of the jealousy, she was “a human being [doing it] wrong.”
“I thought I was a woman wrong, a wife wrong. I couldn’t even have a baby, for heaven’s sake, you know?” Meri said. “So everything about me was wrong. It was hard.”
Throughout her marriage to Kody, Meri weathered many storms, including only being able to have one child, Leon, in July 1995.
After Meri legally divorced Kody in 2014 so he could marry Robyn, 47, and adopt her three children from another marriage, their relationship took a hit. Meri and Kody did overcome Meri’s catfishing scandal in 2015, but the plural family as a whole began to unravel a few years later.
“Polygamy dilutes a marriage because you don’t have to spend the time that it takes to make your relationship better,” Christine claimed during Sunday’s episode.
Christine, 53, announced her split from Kody in November 2021, and Janelle confirmed their separation in December 2022. Meri and Kody, meanwhile, released a joint statement in January 2023, revealing that the two had parted ways.
Looking back on their polygamist lifestyle and values, both Meri and Christine revealed on Sunday’s episode that the religion allegedly 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 the cameras. “Because if you suffer, then you have it made.”
However, 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 said. “I think what we need to do is figure out how to go through them.”
Christine had a similar outlook on the church’s practices after getting married to David Woolley in October 2023 and choosing to live monogamy.
After David, 61, told Christine that in his opinion polygamy creates “a lot of hate, a lot of jealousy, a lot of control,” mostly at the hands of the men, she confirmed that jealousy and competition among the women does happen.
“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,” Christine explained, calling it a “slap in the face.”
While Christine said she never felt like Kody “controlled” her, she told David that the church did preach that being able to deal with the man’s ego and the jealousy factor made them “better” people.
“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 recalled.
David argued, “No, they tell you to let go of those feelings,” to which Christine agreed.
“The famous quote is, ‘Endure to the end,’” Christine said. “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.”
Christine noted that for her, she just wanted to “enjoy to the end,” instead of suffering.
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
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