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Kody Brown’s nephew Ben Brown offered advice to his uncle’s three ex-wives, Meri Brown, Christine Brown and Janelle Brown, on how to navigate life after leaving polygamy, which he referred to as a “cult.”
“Go out and find yourself,” Ben explained on the Wednesday, October 30, episode of “The Sarah Fraser Show” podcast. “The world that they were in told them who they were and who they were supposed to be and they tried to do that for decades.”
“I think the most beautiful gift I found leaving the cult was myself, right?” he told host Sarah Fraser. “It was realizing like, ‘Oh, I’m not a, I’m not a bad person. I’m not an evil person.’ I just get to, I just get to experience and to explore what it is that I like and what I don’t like. And I get to, like, just discover myself.”
The aftermath of Kody’s respective splits from Meri, 53, Janelle, 55, and Christine, 52, are currently playing out on season 19 of Sister Wives. Christine was the first to announce she had ended her marriage to Kody in November 2021. Janelle followed suit one year later in December 2022, while Meri and Kody announced their own split in a joint statement in January 2023. The failed marriages left Robyn Brown as Kody’s last remaining wife.
Both Janelle and Meri are seemingly single after their spiritual divorces from the businessman, though Christine found love and married husband David Woolley in October 2023.
During the September 22 episode, Meri told Kody that she went to meet with their church leaders in Utah to request a “release,” which is considered a divorce in their religion. The father of 18 confessed that he “wasn’t in love” with his three exes during their marriages, but told the cameras that if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have ended his spiritual unions with them.
“When each of us four ladies married Kody, it was through our church. Obviously, we all can’t be legally married, but it was what we called a covenant,” Meri explained. “So, I feel like it’s best to terminate that because we’re not moving forward with any marriage, and I don’t want to be sealed to him for eternity if he doesn’t want me. You know, I’m at a place like, ‘Let’s just separate this completely.’”
The mom of one continued, “When I was asking Kody how he felt about moving forward with the release, he was kind of resistant to it. You know, he said he didn’t want to acknowledge the authority of the church leaders.”
Kody didn’t agree with Meri’s decision to go to the church, explaining that “the damage was done” and he didn’t want to be held “accountable to this church and all their BS.”
“So, I’m going to let Meri go and do her thing because if I’m angry at her, it becomes a fight,” he said in a confessional. “I need her just to go away because it took forever for her to finally realize it’s been done and over for years.”
As for Janelle, she said that she was looking into a release from him by the church, but the process is a long one. “Because we never were legally married, I can’t really say I’m divorced,” Janelle told People in a January interview. “I just say ‘I’m no longer with’ [him] when I explain it to outside people. I’m like, ‘I’m no longer with my partner.’”
Meanwhile, Christine didn’t ask for a release from the church, which angered Robyn, 46, at the time. “Christine just saying she’s divorced is sort of invalidating our beliefs,” Robyn said during a confessional in a 2022 episode of the TLC series. “We are spiritually married to Kody by our church. If we want a divorce then we have to go get their approval. Usually they require counseling, lots and lots of meetings and technically, from my understanding, until Christine is physical with another man she’s not divorced. But I don’t know.”
English (US) ·