Meri Brown, Sister Wives star and former wife of Kody Brown, has spoken out about leaving behind a life of polygamy. Meri was the oldest wife of Kody, and the latest to leave the family sect in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Meri legally married Kody in 1990, but Kody later requested a divorce in 2014 in order to legally marry Robyn. From then, the couple remained in a non-sexual, “spiritual” union that was not legally binding, due to restrictions on bigamy in their then-home city of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Needless to say, Meri has certainly been through a lot. After the departures of Christine and Janelle in 2021 and 2022, respectively, the 52-year-old announced in January 2023 that she and Kody had split up. That’s a lot of divorces to have in little over a year.
Now, Meri is speaking about why decided being a sister wife wasn’t for her anymore. Speaking to People, Brown explained that jealousy was a contributing factor in her separation from Kody.
Meri’s 2014 divorce from Kody, in addition to Robyn being introduced into the fold, were something she struggled with emotionally.“ Anytime that you expand your family, there’s going to be a shift,” she explained. “You’ve got just the logistical things, but then you’ve also got the emotional things.”
From what Meri says about Kody, her former husband was not emotionally equipped to support her with her conflicting feelings. “I’m human. I’m going to get jealous. He’s human. He is going to not know how to deal with a woman’s jealousy.”
Meri and Kody were married for almost 33 years, so what changed for the reality star? According to Meri, it was a realization that she was quashing down her feelings from a young age. When you’re 20, 21, 25, 30, whatever, when this is happening, you’re not grown up enough,” she stated. “You think you are, but you’re really not grown up enough sometimes. Or maybe it’s more not that you’re grown up enough, but more that you just don’t have the tools in your tool belt to know how to deal with some of these issues.”
Meri’s experience with her Mormon church growing up made her feel that jealousy was a feeling that had to be ignored and had to be overcome. Brown, who shares son Leon with Kody, felt that it was wrong of her to feel a desire to have her husband to herself.
“We’re taught in our church structure that jealousy is a thing that you just need to deal with and you just need to hide it, and you need to be a good person,” she explained. Worse, it made Meri feel bad about herself, adding that “before, it was like, ‘oh, it’s wrong. I’m a bad person.'”
At one point, Meri thought to herself, “What’s wrong with me for having these feelings?” she recalled. However, things have changed for Meri. “Now I understand that jealousy is okay. It actually can be used as a guide”, Brown said. This realization was a major breakthrough.
However, it seems that her ex-husband Kody did not share such a sentiment. “I remember Kody would ask me, ‘If you’re okay with them coming in [sic] the family, why are you jealous? Why are you having a hard time?’”
Although it is unclear if she responded directly to this critique from Kody, Meri has her own conclusions about jealousy. “Well, one, I’m human. Two, I didn’t understand that it’s okay to be jealous. I thought I was a bad person for having those emotions”.
It is unclear whether or not Meri still practices Mormonism, but it is clear she is critical of the church’s teachings, now that she’s come to accept her own feelings. Recently, she took to Instagram to talk about 2023 being her “year of change”.
There, Brown talked more in depth about accepting her old emotions, and that now is “A time to shed resentment, pain, hurt, even those same emotions of others that I’ve been carrying that are not mine to carry.” This could be directed at Kody, the church, or easily both of them.
Meri finished up by writing about becoming her “best and brightest self”, where she “can love fully, give insight where appropriate, inspire deeply, and have an impact on those around me”.