ReadMeLattice

True although I think they are very used to a certain lifestyle now after 10 years on the show. I can’t really imagine any of them living in a simple, normal home at this point. They all live WAYYY beyond their means. Could they make it on their own? Probably, but they definitely couldn’t live like they do now. I get the feeling that’s very important to at least some of them. There’s also just a lot of what I want to call... foolishness? Impulsivity? In that family about money. They don’t keep it when they have it, they just don’t. And that goes for all the adults. Also I died at “Robyn had pneumonia once” 😂 😂 Yeah, honestly when we watch Kody and his kids together they practically seem like strangers. It’s like they’re going out for the day with that one uncle that they don’t know that well. So I’m never sure how much of the kids’ real personalities we get out of those interactions. They all seem fairly guarded around him.

True. The cynical part of me wonders how much some of their greed/materialism plays in their choice to stay.

What really got me, too, was how many times he said “I have no idea why you can’t wait 6 months.” Christine and Ysabel had both said like 78 times by then that it was because of her extreme pain level. It was so dismissive of him to keep repeating “I just haven’t heard the reason for doing it now” when they had bloody well told him!! I’m assuming that means he doesn’t think his daughter’s pain is worth addressing. Fantastic.

He literally was setting her up! He really seems to enjoy abusing Meri and Christine equally but in different ways. and yeah, how can they just sit there and not offer any comfort?!?! Have they just been taught via Kody that it’s a punishable offense to comfort their sister wives if it makes him look bad?

I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, I truly don’t, but that scene with Meri was creepy/alarming to me. It reminded me of the classic situations where the older FLDS women or other cult members who have been fully indoctrinated actually work to keep the other victims in - just as the other wives did when Meri tried to escape via the catfish. Part of me is angry at her and part of me is just horrified that even with all the money and without living in Utah for years, they seem to be fully indoctrinated within the Cult of Kody. If Christine leaves, it makes them all look bad for staying - especially Meri, who’s treated just as poorly as Christine is. So I’m guessing it’s some sort of psychological thing where she has to “prove” the rightness of her own decision by encouraging other victims to make the same one?

Maybe not but Kody Brown calling anyone “privileged” makes me grit my teeth 😂 Like 80,000 pots calling one kettle black. Kody makes the Real Housewives look rational and selfless.

I was actually begrudgingly on Kody and Robyn’s side for some of the COVID stuff at first - I found Janelle and Christine’s cavalier attitudes fairly alarming - but how he acted on the finale firmly cemented my opinion of him as one of the most selfish and cowardly people I’ve ever seen even on reality TV, of all places. First off, I’m skeptical about Kody’s sudden “conversion” to the COVID rules king. He was trying to have some political argument with Mariah a few episodes ago, callously arguing that she “just cared about saving Grandma” (I guess his TWO wives who are grandmas themselves didn’t occur to him) and basically talking down to her and calling her a privileged brat for wanting to quarantine. So when he’s talking to Meri’s kid, quarantine is a ridiculous and bourgeois notion. Suddenly when he can use it as a weapon to manipulate, control, and degrade two of his wives, he’s all for it? The trajectory doesn’t make sense. Either Robyn demanded that he be Mr. COVID or he figured out it was a way to exercise his narcissism and withhold his lordly presence from his wives. Or both! How he treated Christine and Ysabel this episode was abusive. Point blank period. He’s done a ton of shitty things but I don’t see how this was anything but psychologically abusive. Lastly, the fact that Meri and Christine at the very least don’t leave is baffling to me. I understand that brainwashing and abuse can do a lot to people, but they have freedom, financial independence and opportunities that most former cult members never get. It’s hard to feel bad for them when he’s harming them as well as their children and they have their own properties and money that they could ride off into the sunset with. I get that it’s always more complex than that, but it’s incredibly frustrating to watch. He is autistic, I believe, so I don’t think there’s any connection between the two disorders. FATCO syndrome might be genetic, though, I’m not sure.

Here are the voicemails. http://www.notbatmanyet.com/voicemails/

Right?! This person had a VERY generous reading of Meri. If she’s sticking around and it has *nothing* to do with money, that’s a lot worse. “Excuse me, how dare you think I need money! What I NEED is to grovel and publicly humiliate myself for a polygamous marriage that’s been dead for the better part of a decade.”

Dont forget staunchly vegan and devoutly Catholic! Incidentally, that pretty much proves she is no longer fundamentalist Mormon or Mormon at all. Mormons can get unsealed sometimes from one person and marry another in the temple. No Mormon would marry a Catholic if they still fully believed in the religion.

At one memorable point, she actually told the catfisher that “he” was “better than Kody on all levels. On ALL fucking levels.” (Yes, with the swearing!) and the context of the statements was clearly sex & looks, so she was pretty clearly dogging Kody’s appearance and skills in the bedroom. I do honestly feel bad for Meri because it’s clear from those voicemails that she never got to experience any real romance in life. Her first “love” was Kody, and they were already talking about plural marriage during their courtship. A lot of women want a head over heels romance — at least once, at least for a few months. BUT you are also completely right. There is no way Kody would ever get over the sexy bathrobe and banana photos and the romantic voicemails. His ego is intense and he also just seems incredibly pushy about “purity” in women. He even said there was an “ick factor” about Robyn because she had children from another man. So for him, Meri is sullied. Then there’s the small part where I begrudgingly agree with Kody, which is simply in that it would drive me crazy for someone to lie to me this hard for so long. If my husband sent hundreds of voicemails to a woman telling her he was going to bang her brains out and marry her, the only thing that would bother me more than the actual affair would be if he lied about it for 6 years afterward and insisted he was a “victim” of some evil predator instead of just saying “yeah, I wanted to get with this other woman instead.”

This 100%. I think Nancy hit the nail on the head when she said “you are both exceptionally controlling people.” Bingo. Do I think Meri is overall less at fault in this particular scenario because of the ridiculous setup of their relationship? Yes. But do I think Meri sucks and would probably suck outside of this context too? Also yes. I also have to say I felt slightly bad for Mariah in some ways re: the catfish thing. She has a really annoying, pushy way of expressing herself (and she seems very much over the catfish thing now, it’s not like she brings it up), so I get why it seemed bratty at the time. But if I was a teen, which I believe she was at the time — who was only on a reality show about polygamy because my parents insisted they become famous for it — and came home to visit my mom during the summer in college and she was clearly flirting with and sexting a catfish, and then she BROUGHT ME to meet the catfish in person at Disneyland after I warned her repeatedly it was a catfish, I would have been a little vexed too.

Oh yeah, 100% agree actually. I would even say that Kody is way more at fault overall because he still isn't ending the relationship either. So he broke her heart, THEN is too cowardly to actually end it, but feels fine leaving her in limbo, which is disgusting. He's perceived as the "head of the family" within polygamy, to boot, so he should be taking more responsibility in general. I can even totally understand why Meri did it *at first.* And even the confusion afterward. But like 6 years later?? Still maintaining the lie and still defending polygamy and still staying in this sham of a marriage, whether for TLC paychecks or ego or some misguided affection for Kody? That's where I've just stopped caring. 6 years is too damn long, lol. I've lost patience. I used to think the problem was like 10% Meri, 90% Kody, now it's inching closer and closer to 50/50 from my view. Yeah, this is where I think Kody is being his usual cowardly self. The whole "my faith and conscience" BS is just that - BS. He just doesn't want to deal with the fallout of women being "mad" at him or whatever.

Yeah, I honestly cannot think of a single solitary reason why anyone would want a sister wife if it wasn't for very specific religious reasons or if they didn't also want to be with the wife themselves. The wife gets less sex, less romantic love, and less quality time, as well as a built-in competitor, all for the sake of a friendship? Which is available outside of marriage? It's not my thing but I could at least understand polyamory/a throuple because it's more sex/romance for all involved. Why on earth do I NEED my best friend to be fucking my husband?

Tosha and Sidian have major swinger vibes, not polygamous vibes. Which is fine and all, but I wish they'd just embrace it? They acted like they were approaching that hipster woman at the bar for a threesome, not a "plural marriage." Just go to some swingers' parties or something instead of trying to do allllll of that. Guys (meaning Sidian and Tosha), just be polyamorous or have a slightly open marriage! People do it all the time, especially artsy-bohemian types like them. Way less potential for things to blow up into ridiculous BS. Honestly way less creepy than trolling around for another WIFE at a random bar. This! I'm actually a fairly passive/submissive-ish person overall in life, but holy shit, if my husband tried to pull something like Garrick I'd end up on a true crime podcast. This is absolutely crazy-making.

Yes!! She had a fairly alto-sounding voice. That key was never going to work!!

I tend to agree with this post to an extent as well. While it's easy for us all to say that she should have been able to have an emotional affair because he's always been with 4 women, that's what they signed up for and have signed up for for 30 years. Is it unfair in the sense of being unequal? Yes. But I wouldn't be, like, angry at a couple in a BDSM relationship for having unequal power dynamics they both consented to. Or angry that a man in a couple that both agreed to an extremely traditional relationship with traditional gender roles wanted to be the only one who worked outside the home. Or angry that a Muslim woman wore a hijab when her husband doesn't have to. That's what they agreed to. Meri is a full grown adult and clearly outside the influence of the Browns' former church, which pretty much kicked them out. She has an openly gay daughter whose wedding she's paying for. I don't think in any way that her religion is an influence in her choice to stay. So if we take that premise -- i.e., the bounds of the relationship the Browns have set up -- then Meri cheated at least emotionally, while Kody isn't cheating. Would I be in a relationship like that? Hell no. But she is, and willingly signed up to promote that type of relationship on national TV. And if she'd had the affair and then been like "fuck you, Kody, I'm out of here and going to find a man who treats me right and doesn't have this double standard," I'd have been 1 million percent on her side. But she did the opposite! She had an affair, lied and said she didn't, still maintains the lie, treats everyone else like crap over it, and now pushes Kody who is clearly not interested (and who I cannot stand even more, don't get me wrong) to bang her. *She* is the one who still runs all over social media defending her marriage and defending polygamy when people criticize Kody. It's really, REALLY hard for me to have any pity at this point. I still have a *little,* but it wanes just about every time I see her on screen.

Yeah I do feel bad for them, I’m bi and previously dated a number of butch women and shopping with them was a trip. It’s VERY hard for plus size butch or just somewhat androgynous women to find flattering clothes. There was also so much pressure from within the queer community in my case to chop my hair off and start dressing more masculinely even though I’m ultimately way too girly for all that. But it took some time to figure out how I actually wanted to dress and express myself. Couple that with couples’ and pandemic weight gain and its got to be rough to “discover” yourself. They pretty much came out together as college kids. I think they’ll find their style eventually. But yeah I mean their usual haircuts and clothes right now are not flattering, I can’t deny that lol. I know Mariah in particular is not all that likable. I do feel for her just in that it’s rough enough to come out and figure all out stuff out in the years afterward, much less having come from a polygamous background and doing it all publicly. It’s gotta be weird.

Last I checked, she was working as a program manager at a nursing home in Salt Lake. She also worked at a veterans’ facility there. Maybe she’s going into that area of social work after her master’s.

I honestly wish they’d all just yell at each other at least one time and get it over with. the quiet passive aggressiveness, festering wounds that never heal, and barely repressed bitterness and resentment are driving fans up a wall. I can’t IMAGINE actually being around them. At this point I’d almost rather just see them scream and call each other names a few times. I can feel the tension from the constant torture of the little pokes and jabs and barbs through my TV screen, for God’s sake.

I could not STAND the passive aggressive, manipulative "I know you don't like it when I make my own schedule" comments from Kody to Christine. So transparent when she was very clearly saying that 1) yes, her birthday is pretty important to her because that's one of the very rare times she and Kody get to spend alone together, and more importantly 2) she just wants him to do the basic courtesy of communicating about his schedule so he's not crashing at her house randomly at 9 p.m. with no warning like a drunk college hookup who passes out in your dorm bed. He is absolutely setting himself up as the victim of "demanding" Christine, who isn't perfect by any means but seems to essentially want the very basic fundamentals of an adult relationship. Polygamy isn't a relationship structure I think is generally the healthiest, but a more mature person could at least likely make it work by making and keeping to a schedule and communicating openly when it has to change.

Especially a dad that demonstrably doesn't care if he sees you. Why would I sacrifice for him??

Yeah, I'm absolutely not blaming her for not acting incredibly all the time, but she's chosen to stay in this lifestyle for over 30 years and MULTIPLE members of the Brown family have called her abusive. Several of her clients have complained about how rude she is to them. There's got to be something she does that is actually cruel or she wouldn't get *this* many complaints from people in her life. And again, she's had many many many chances to leave for years now. She has refused to. Of course, I personally think Kody should stop talking about his "conscience" and do the right thing for once and end the relationship, it's cowardly of him not to.

I can understand the catfish thing - she had just gone through a legal divorce, even if she still considered herself married, and yes, that must have been painful - but maybe I'm just heartless, but it gets old hearing about how bad we should feel for her at THIS point. The Browns obviously don't hold to their intense religious beliefs anymore, so I really don't believe she has some fear of hell or something if she leaves. She could leave and she won't. I can only have so many years of understanding for someone who just refuses to improve their life. This was a year ago and we know she's STILL there. She doesn't have a need for money, she doesn't have little kids at home, she just has her obsession with proving that Kody can fall back in love with her (when it seems like he never really was in love with her, to be honest). Yes, Kody is a total douchebag and way more at fault, but come on!! He's literally BEGGING you to leave and you haven't had sex with your own husband in like 6 years! You have no legal ties to him! Just go!!!!

Do you remember the sweatbands he used to wear to emphasize how much he was Into Fitness? And his bragging about his "washboard abs" to Maddie?! AAHHH!