During Season 8 of Sister Wives (filmed in 2014, aired in 2015,) the Brown family took a multi-stop road trip where Kody was invited to go fishing with his friend Ken. Christine was upset with this friend because he told Kody to divorce three of his wives, and she demanded that Kody ask for an apology from him. This angers Kody, and bad feelings ripple through the whole family. Eventually, Kody shifts the blame to Christine’s PMS so they can continue on with their trip.
In episode 2 of Season 8, right after they had made a stop at their friend Chris Bloxham’s Pawn Shop in St. George, Utah to ask him for a $100,000 loan for My Sister Wife’s Closet, the family’s jewelry business that has been on hiatus now for a while, they stopped by their former home in Lehi, Utah. The house was being renovated for resale, so it was gutted when they walked through. Christine seemed triggered by the experience and wanted to leave as soon as possible. In their interview, Christine revealed that she had bad memories there. In Season 15, Christine went on to share that she has negative feelings over being the “basement” wife in the relationship and sacrificing her own needs, and those of her children for the sake of others.
Next, they stopped by Christine’s mom Annie’s house, because they were thinking about moving her into Christine’s house in Las Vegas and they wanted to see if they could move all of her stuff. Annie says she was worried about seeming like an “intruder” in Kody’s home, and she wanted to make sure she and Kody wouldn’t trigger each other.
They next went to visit Maddie at college. They gave her some extra food and the moms rearranged all of her stuff while she was talking to Kody.
Soon after, they were supposed to meet up with a friend of Robyn’s, but they canceled so Janelle suggested that they meet with one of Kody’s high school friends, Ken Grant, who is always asking Kody to go fishing with him. Christine, however, was very angry and hurt with Ken because he had sent Kody a text telling him he needed to divorce three of his wives to ensure his salvation.
When Christine finds out that Kody wants to meet up with Ken, she gets angry. “He owes me an apology,” Christine says for saying that Kody is welcome back in the Mormon church, but he needs to leave three of his wives behind.
“I don’t know why he’s allowed on our family vacation when he’s against most of our family,” she tells Kody.
Kody says that Ken accepts all of his wives, but likes to joke about Kody leaving them. To be fair to Christine, Ken didn’t seem to be joking when he criticized Kody’s choices in the clip from a previous season. He said he thought Kody was “stupid,” and he couldn’t understand what was going through his head when he decided to live polygamy.
Meri spoke to Christine and asked her if maybe Ken was just saying a “stupid guy thing.” Christine says if that was the case, she still wanted him to clarify and apologize.
Kody later tells Christine that Ken just has religious prejudices like everyone else has. In confessional, Kody says his own sister has asked him to stop having sex with three of his wives and just be married to one. “My own sister doesn’t get that this isn’t about sex . . . so people piss me off like this all the time, so I understand Christine being mad about it.”
Christine asks him again to ask Ken for an apology, but Kody refuses, not because he doesn’t think it’s reasonable, but because he thinks this is about Christine’s ego. “This is all driven by her pride,” Kody says. “And now I’m pissed.”
Christine storms off and Kody tells his other three wives, “Let her play her games.” Unfortunately, it was Kody’s night with Christine that night, and he says that he didn’t sleep well.
Kody says he doesn’t like the “princess behavior,” from Christine. He explains that because Christine made him mad, the “poison” is spreading through the whole family.
The next day, he and Christine sat down to further discuss the situation.
“So, I’m very sorry that you’re upset with Ken,” Kody says. “And how he feels about us.”
Christine explains in her church she was raised to not trust outsiders because people who didn’t agree with them could turn their dad into the police so she lived in fear of people who passed judgment on polygamy. She again implores Kody to ask for an apology from Ken.
In confessional Kody admits that he thinks that maybe he should ask Ken for an apology, but the very thought of it makes his testicles shrink.
Christine also found Ken to be brutal at a high school reunion they filmed for the show. Because of Ken’s outward rejection of polygamy, Christine didn’t feel like Ken was safe.
At the start of episode 3, Christine spoke with Kody, Robyn, Meri, and Janelle about the situation. She said that she thought everyone was mad at her and apologized for causing discord in the family with her upset over Ken. Kody then says he wants to pray with them, and then speak to Christine privately so she doesn’t get embarrassed.
On the couch with Meri and Robyn, Janelle talks about how they all have had their turn in this type of Kody “hot seat.”
Kody starts their one-on-one conversation by letting her know he doesn’t think she’s being “very accountable” for her behavior. He goes on to say that he wants to be “careful” but he feels like Christine’s emotions and hormonal changes are becoming more erratic and he doesn’t know how to handle it. “Some people refer to it as PMS, but I don’t know what’s going on,” Kody says.
Christine replies firmly, “You would not appreciate my reply to this at all.” She promises to have a “better attitude,” but asks him to not talk anymore about this because it will put her on the defensive.
In confessional, however, Christine gets very defensive of Kody, not herself. She says that he’s not being a “misogynist pig or chauvinistic.” She says it’s “legitimate, good, and safer” to ask if she’s experiencing PMS.
She goes on to say that she started researching PMS a few months ago because she noticed a pattern where once a month she went “insane.” Christine says she used to think that PMS was just an “excuse for women,” but she now thinks PMS is a reality.
PMS is a real syndrome that affects about 75% of menstruating people. According to WebMD, symptoms include “mood swings, tender breasts, food cravings, fatigue, irritability and depression.”
Even if Christine is one of the majority of women affected by PMS, it is still disrespectful to invalidate her feelings because of it. Christine has explained on the show that she has deep-seated issues with people who are unaccepting of polygamy because of how she was raised in fear over people who “threatened” her family with their judgment of their practice. This isn’t something caused by hormonal changes, but by childhood trauma.
Back at the scene of their discussion, Kody tells her again that he doesn’t feel like she’s being responsible with her behavior. Christine counters that she feels the same with Kody.
In confessional Kody says he feels PMS has been a problem for the past few years, but they have only labeled it as PMS in the past six months.
Kody then puts his foot down. “From now on, when you are like that I am walking away,” he says. “I’m not addressing you, I’m not engaging you. I’m not going to have you rattle me to the core, in every sense of my being, and then act like it’s all okay.”
“I don’t think that it’s all okay,” Christine says.
“Alright, I’ll try and let it go from here, ok?” Kody replies.
“Ok, me too,” Christine says. In confessional, she explains that she is still really hurt by the Ken situation. At first, she says she thinks it’s something she and Kody will eventually work out, and then says that it will be okay. In this moments she seemed resigned to burying the issue forever instead of healing it, even though she knows it still hurts her, because it doesn’t seem worth the effort to fix.
This whole situation highlights a lack of communication and harmony within the family and a tendency to sweep things under the rug instead of addressing them. In this case, Kody seems to have used Christine’s PMS as a scapegoat to explain away her emotions so he didn’t have to feel any responsibility for them because of his own words and actions. Kody is quick to bring up Christine’s ego, but her ego isn’t the only one that was an issue in this situation.
It seems like he saw it as an easy out because Christine had just recently started researching a very real physical condition that women can have before menstruating. In doing so he invalidated her feelings by implying they were caused by hormones while also blaming her for not managing her “condition” well enough. Kody even admitted in confessional that he agreed that he should have asked for an apology, but revealed that it was more about an ego power play for him. He felt like if he did ask his friend for an apology, it would be admitting that his wives have some control over his life and he felt that was emasculating. Instead, he blamed the situation on a woman’s hormonal issue in order to feel better and move on.
After the PMS discussion, the family loads up their vehicles to go visit another polygamist family in Billings, Montana.
The season was filmed in 2014 (aired in 2015,) and later in the season Meri legally divorced Kody so he could marry Robyn and legally adopt her three kids. Around this time, either before or after the legal divorce, Meri asked Kody to stop coming around on her nights with him and began an emotional affair with a catfish, which was a huge turning point for the entire family. Meri was never added back into Kody’s nightly rotation, but or a while, Meri and Kody tried to salvage their spiritual marriage.
Ever since 2020, Kody has said multiple times that he is no longer in a marriage with Meri, but is instead “friends” with her.
Christine announced in the fall of 2021 that she and Kody were no longer married. The couple had been in a spiritual marriage but had never legally married. She’s since reported that life without Kody is “simple” and “great.”
