‘Sister Wives’: Christine Leaves Kody Brown in Dramatic Season 17 Premiere (VIDEO)

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Sister Wives Season 17 premiere, “It’s Over.”]

Fans knew Kody Brown and Christine Brown had split when Sister Wives Season 17 premiered on Sunday, September 11. But the episode gave them the dramatic conversation that led to their split, answering months worth of questions.

Christine left her plural marriage with Mormon husband Kody in 2021, breaking the news to fans in November saying they had “grown apart,” making her make “the difficult decision to leave.” The Sister Wives Season 17 premiere revealed there was a far more to their split than just growing apart, and fans are speaking out in support of Christine after watching Kody “gaslight” her throughout the talk.

The TLC reality show picked up right where Season 16 left off when Kody discovered Christine had moved his things into the garage. The subsequent conversation led to some shocking reveals and harsh words from Kody, who seemed ill-prepared for Christine’s clarity and honesty. The tense talk served as the long opening scene for the season. In it, Kody admitted he “wasn’t attracted” to Christine on their wedding day in 1994, saying “I felt pressured into the marriage. I did not know better at the time.” He also said that staying with Christine all these years required great “sacrifice” for him and that their marriage would only work if Christine worked harder to make her sister wives happy.

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Christine, on the other hand, called Kody out for the lack of intimacy in their marriage (he said they had intimacy, she said “a couple times a year” isn’t enough, which left Kody briefly silent), told him that living just to make the sister wives happy meant she can’t be herself, and didn’t let Kody’s antagonizing comments throw her composure. Viewers feel Kody couldn’t handle how level-headed she was — they think he expected hysterics.

As one Reddit user put it: “So much respect for Christine for holding it in so long. It’s hilarious that Kody is comparing relationships, not her. She was so calm and focused during the conversation. I don’t think Kody knew what to do. He expected hysterics, begging, promises to do better, etc., and he got none of that.”

In an interview, Christine addressed Kody’s “criteria” for her and their relationship. “I had all these criteria I had to meet in order for him to be attracted to me,” she explained. “Can we just say then that it’s over? If I have to meet all these criteria in order for him to be attracted to me, I just can’t be myself.”

 

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At another point in her solo interview, Christine called a spade a spade and said Kody clearly has a “favorite wife,” presumably referring to Robyn Brown (the fourth wife of the group, marrying in in 2014) and he resents her for not going above and beyond to put Robyn on a pedestal.

In his own interview, Kody said he felt “betrayed” by Christine because she didn’t conform to his standards of their plural marriage (that’s not exactly what he said, but it was the implicit message Christine and viewers gleaned). He said he’s been heartbroken for “years” because of his wife’s “complaints and hatred of plural marriage,” but Christine’s dislike of their circumstances, as she explained, were not solely about having sister wives. In fact, she said she believed in it at first — and believed their March 1994 nuptials were romantic, unlike her husband — but years of being treated differently by her husband (lack of intimacy, rarely calling her beautiful) were what made her unhappy.

Long-story short: Christine didn’t feel she had an equal partner in Kody, and Kody only saw Christine’s value as her ability to please everyone but herself. Episode 2 of Sister Wives Season 17 is called “Is There a Favorite Wife?” We know Christine’s answer to that question.

Sister Wives, Sundays, 10/9c, TLC