One of the remarks Kody Brown made during the breakthrough conversation with Christine about the end of his marriage was his claim that he was pressured into his marriage to Christine. He says he wasn’t attracted to her, and “didn’t know better at the time.”
“So did he marry me out of an obligation?” Christine asks. “You know, our church doesn’t have the whole arranged marriages but it sounds to me that he felt like he had to marry me. That’s so . . . sad.”
Kody went on to explain that once they “found a good place” in the marriage, he thought it was destiny. Now he’s arguing that they should try to work through reconciliation for the sake of their kids.
He said he felt “angry,” “pathetic,” and like a “dope” because Christine had already moved on from their marriage. Kody later expressed a fear that Christine would find a new man, who would be greedy and try to take all of Kody’s money and ban him from seeing their daughter Truely.
One of Christine’s grievances with Kody is that he no longer wants an intimate relationship with her. Now, however, she doesn’t want it either.
But why did he feel like he was somehow pressured into marrying Christine? At the time they got married he had two other wives he had married in the past few years who were already having issues.
Kody has also been pretty open for years that he was completely turned off by Christine in the beginning, and blamed his disgust on her eating a plate of nachos.
One theory about why Kody may have been motivated to marry Christine is her pedigree in the polygamist Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) church. Christine’s paternal grandfather Rulon C. Allred was the founder of their church. He was murdered by her maternal granduncle Ervil LeBaron, who was also a huge leader in Mormon polygamist fundamentalism.”
Kody often calls Christine a “princess” as an insult, and he may have been making a dig at the fact that her family was very powerful in their polygamist circles. Did Kody put pressure on himself to marry her because of who she was in their community and because she was really into him? Was his decision to marry Christine merely political?
Although Kody seemed to not have a crush on her or romantic feelings with her as he had with Meri, Christine was completely smitten with Kody before and during their courtship. (He also didn’t have romantic feelings for Janelle, but she didn’t really have them for him either, so that’s a different situation.)
Kody wrote in their book Becoming Sister Wives (affiliate link) that he felt a connection with her but he showed up at their wedding in a bad mood. He said that he wasn’t ready to add a new wife to his family and that they hadn’t taken the time to “get used to each other.”
Christine remembers Kody acting “morose” on their wedding day. He also hadn’t planned a honeymoon for them. Once they got in the car after the ceremony he still had “the faraway look on his face.” As they drove Christine felt “unbearably sad” and realized that they didn’t know each other at all.
It seems like in the 25 years since they haven’t been able to get to know each other or get beyond these detached and morose feelings from Kody.
“Why do you want me to stay?” Christine asks him at the end of Season 17, Episode 1.
“Because I’m supposed to,” Kody says.
“But you don’t really want to,” she notes.
Kody has made it clear that the only reason why things were ever “good” between them was because of how Christine fulfilled a mothering role in the household, and he can’t see her identity beyond that role. Once things began to change as Robyn joined, the Browns moved into separate houses, and the kids grew up, Kody lost what little appreciation he had for Christine. The last few years of COVID and living dispersed in Flagstaff, AZ have intensified and illuminated the problems in all of the relationships in the Brown family marriage.
