During Episode 4 of Season 18 of Sister Wives Kody Brown explained that while he “courted” both Meri and Robyn before he married them, Christine and Janelle were the ones who asked to be in the plural family. Because of this, he says these two now ex-wives had “special requirements” from him. In a social media post, Christine took a dig at Kody’s special requirements.
What are Kody’s special requirements?
The “special requirements” Kody says he had for Christine and Janelle were: 1. There will be other wives. 2. They have to be committed to Kody.
“It’s improper for a man to be out chasing wives,” Janelle elaborated in the episode. She said that in their religion, it was customary for women to come to a man with a “spiritual revelation.” This is exactly what happened with Janelle; she felt moved by God to join the Brown family.
As of what we’ve been watching on the show, and some hints she’s made since, because Janelle still maintains her faith, she remains “spiritually married” to Kody despite not having a relationship with him anymore.
Janelle points out that Kody is now making a distinction between Christine and Janelle and Robyn by saying that the former “asked,” while the latter was “invited,” and she feels he’s using this difference to explain why they “deserve less” from this plural marriage.
“It wasn’t like we were begging to be in the family,” Janelle says. “We simply asked. There was a courtship, and then we all got married.”
Last year when Christine told Kody she was leaving him, Kody made it seem like he had been forced or coerced into marrying Christine.
In the current time (September 2023,) Christine sent a message to Kody about his “special requirements” via Instagram. While wearing Washington Commanders shirts with her fiancé David Woolley, Christine wrote in the captain, “It’s really nice to be with someone who doesn’t have any ‘special requirements’ before we get married. I love being loved for just being who I am.”
In this episode, we also saw Kody go a bit off the deep end by discussing how dark his thoughts had become. Things have gotten so bad that he’s even having thoughts of leaving Robyn and her children behind.
As of 2023, Kody and Robyn are still together, but it’s unknown how they’re doing as a couple as they don’t use social media much aside from Kody’s occasional Cameos.
Part of his darkness comes from confronting how hard plural marriage has been for his wives, something he doesn’t seem to have considered much until the past few years when things started unraveling. He refers to the troubles women in polygamy go through as a “sacred loneliness.”
