On the new tell-all special, a family secret is revealed, Kody explains why he ditched the Claddagh ring he got from his wives and Meri vows she will “no longer be silenced.”
Christine Brown is in hot water with Meri Brown after divulging a secret about the latter’s relationship with Kody Brown while filming the Sister Wives: One on One special.
On Sunday’s new hour — the second of four — much of the focus was on how Meri and Kody basically reached a breaking point on the most recent season of their TLC show.
Kody and Meri married in 1990 but divorced in 2014 so Kody could legally marry Robyn. While they remained spiritually married, they drifted apart in recent years — something made worse when, in 2015, Meri admitted to entering a catfishing relationship with someone she thought was a man but turned out to be a woman. Her marriage with Kody has been pretty platonic ever since, before he told her that anything romantic between them was “never going to happen.”
In the One on One special, Kody continued to say that while he will always love Meri, all he felt now we “emotions of friendship” with her … and that wouldn’t change. “She thinks I was madly head over heels over and and it was not that experience for me,” he added, saying that though there were “very romantic” periods, there was also “a lot of dysfunction” between them.
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Christine then revealed a pretty dysfunctional moment from the family’s past, something which Meri alluded to during the season but was never fully explained. ICYMI: At one point, Meri pointed out how Kody was no longer wearing his Claddagh ring and had replaced it with a new piece of jewelry.
When asked about the ring situation, Christine claimed Kody had actually melted down his first wedding ring with Meri, but kept the diamonds. When Meri asked him about it, said Christine, Kody told her he did it because “I didn’t want Mary to have control over me and power over me anymore.” After that, all four women decided to get him a Claddagh ring together, which he has also since abandoned.
After filming the One on One special, Meri was made aware that Christine spilled about Kody melting the ring … and she was livid.
“I am extremely frustrated right now, beyond. After we did the taping for the one-on-one interviews with [host Sukanya ‘Suki’ Krishnan], I found out that a story was brought up about me that is not a story that I have ever shared publicly,” Meri said from a confessional.
“That is my story to tell when, where and how I want to. And somebody else took it upon themselves to tell that story. And now I’m being forced to talk about it. I’m not happy about it. It was not Christine’s business to tell,” she continued. “She can laugh about it all she wants, but it was not her business to tell. If I wanted to have shared that story in the last 13 years in a public way, I would have done that. She doesn’t get to come on here and tell my story without me even knowing it and me finding out later that this is what happened and so now I feel like my hand is being forced and I have to tell my story.”
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She then told her side of the story, saying she believed the ring melting happened around the time Kody was first courting Robyn. At that time, she said, Kody had mentioned he didn’t want to wear the ring she gave him anymore, telling her “he did not want me to have claim on him” anymore.
“He didn’t think it was fair I had claim on him. His way of doing that was to melt down the wedding ring. That was a symbol, that was a sign of our marriage and our commitment and he melted it down,” she said, getting emotional. “Who’s to say he didn’t melt down our whole relationship in that moment. Symbolically, that’s what he did to me.”
She said she only found out he had melted it because she asked him if she could have the ring if he wasn’t going to wear it anymore. “It was a very, very painful situation,” she added, saying the incident happened seven years before her catfishing scandal.
“And I spent those seven years trying to be in this relationship with Kody that he did not want to be in with me,” Meri continued.
Robyn then claimed Kody had the ring melted down “way before” she entered the picture, before he chimed in and said he was “done” with the Claddagh ring because the relationships they signified are “over.” His new piece, he added, was to mark “a new beginning.”
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Toward the end of the hour, Meri also criticized Kody for saying during an episode from last season that he no longer considered them married — something he had apparently never said to her face and she only learned by watching the episode back. She felt Kody should have said that to her privately before making a public declaration, believing she was “owed” that much from him.
Added Janelle: “I guess because he told me so much, I figured he was telling her. If he wasn’t, then that’s a really unfair and uncool thing to do.”
The episode ended with Meri vowing that, going forward, her “voice will be heard” and she “will no longer be silenced.” A preview for next week, meanwhile, showed her referring to herself as a single woman — and adding she doesn’t consider the other women sister wives anymore because they no longer share a husband.
Kody and Meri announced in a joint statement back in January that they had “permanently terminated” their “marriage relationship.” The announcement would have come shortly after the pair finished filming this One on One special.
Sister Wives airs Sundays on TLC.
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