Honesty hour! Sister Wives star Meri Brown revealed she and husband Kody Brown haven’t been intimate in 10 years during the season 16 tell-all reunion on Sunday, January 30.
“She is still part of the family, but I’m not ever going to be in a conjugal relationship with her because I’m not going to go through that emotional torture ever again,” Kody, 53, shockingly told host Sukanya Krishnan, noting he was trying to “honest” without being “cruel.”
The family patriarch added that Meri, 51, is not a bad person, but they are a “bad match.”
The Lizzie’s Heritage Inn owner revealed it had been “maybe a decade” since the physical aspect of their relationship ended. “I would love it if he would hold my hand, but that’s just not where we are,” she said.
Kody doubled down on his stance, saying that he will “never” go back to having a physical relationship with Meri “again.”
“I will be her friend. I will do what I can to protect her. [I] will build a house for her out on Coyote Pass, but I’m never going to feel safe in an intimate place,” he said.
Meri is Kody’s first wife. They legally wed in 1990 and share one adult daughter, Mariah Brown. However, they divorced in 2014 so he could legally marry fourth wife Robyn Brown in order to adopt her children from a previous relationship. The My 4 Wives alum and Meri have remained spiritually married.
“If we were not in plural marriage or felt religiously bound to stay together, things would have been a lot different a long time ago,” Kody admitted during the season 16 reunion.
Kody and Meri’s relationship has been strained for years The reality TV dad said weathering their 2015 catfishing scandal “woke me up out of the daze,” which is why he no longer feels “safe” in his marriage.
During a December 2021 episode of Sister Wives, Kody told Meri that they were simply “friends” and didn’t seem to think things would change.
“Kody and I — we had a conversation recently, that kind of came down to, ‘We’re friends.’ Which I guess is a good thing. I guess I just have hope for more than that,” Meri said at the time. “Kody has said some things to me more recently that leads me to believe that there’s no repairing our relationship.”
The TLC star added, “If I quit and I walk away, then it’s not going to get better. I’m not going anywhere.”
Although Meri admitted during season 16 that she has “considered” divorcing Kody, she assured at the reunion, “I don’t want to [leave].”