Janelle Brown was faced with the harsh reality of her future without her ‘spiritual’ husband, Kody Brown, after a blow-out fight that led to their separation.
The former couple’s mounting issues came to a boiling point on Sunday’s episode of the TLC reality series Sister Wives, which documents the life of a polygamist family and their 18 children.
The show’s 18th season was filmed in the fall of 2022, right before Kody split with three of his four wives — Meri, Janelle, and Christine — in a 14-month period. On the latest installment of the show, titled Throwing Stones in Glass Houses, Kody and Janelle, both 54, got into an explosive argument while discussing their plans for Christmas.
They accused each other of ‘gaslighting’ as they fought about his estrangement from their sons — Gabriel, 21, and Garrison, 25 — over his COVID restrictions.
‘You’re always flipping it back on me,’ Janelle griped.
‘That’s because it belongs on you, Janelle,’ Kody hit back. ‘Because you didn’t support my stand when it came to actually doing the COVID stuff.’
The patriarch introduced a strict set of rules to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic, which only amplified his family’s problems.
Janelle was forced to choose between her husband and their adult sons, who continued their social lives and ignored their father’s COVID protocol.
‘Kody, I was protecting my children,’ insisted Janelle, who is also mom to Logan, 29, Maddie, 27, Hunter, 22, and Savanah, 18.
‘And you have said, “Choose your loyalties or you’re not gonna have a husband.” So I’m supposed to choose between you and our children? That’s what you basically said.”‘
Kody argued that all Janelle had to do was support his rules, asking, ‘Do you understand that parents are supposed to make a united front?’
He accused her of ‘gaslighting’ him and ‘throwing me under the bus,’ but she maintained that’s what he was doing to her.
Kody questioned whether they were ‘ever a team’ and called it ‘bulls**t’ when she used the ‘excuse’ that he wasn’t always around for their children.
As their argument escalated, Kody continued to blame Janelle for the rift between him and their sons, and she felt she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
‘Shut your f*****g mouth and let me talk to you for a second,’ she told him.
An outraged Kody stood up and prepared to leave, insisting that their relationship was over and couldn’t be saved.
‘There is no interest in understanding each other here. There is no interest in understanding. There is only a bitterness that has no place,’ he said.
‘I don’t expect you to back me up anymore. I’m not going to look for it. I’m not going to ask for it. I don’t expect you to try and help us co-parent the kids. That’s too late. We’re never going to do that.
‘So what partnership do we have?’ he asked.
Janelle grabbed his jacket in an attempt to get him to stay and talk, but he refused and stormed out.
‘F**k you,’ she said right before he slammed the door.
The mother of six told the camera crew to ‘shut it off,’ but she later detailed the fallout from their argument and how it affected her financially.
‘We were throwing accusations at each other about what’s going on and it was shocking. Like, it was shocking. I was really upset when he left because, like, there’s a finality to it and now I’m worried about what happens to me,’ she explained.
‘Moving forward, do I live here? Do I build? It feels like Kody and I are no longer going to be a couple. It really does. It was that dramatic. There had been so much build-up and then, not so much the words. Yes, the words were very harsh, but just the feeling was like, “We’re done.”‘
Janelle said that after he left, she called him and told him to pick up his stuff. She noted that she didn’t want to see Kody after she kicked him out of the house, but she soon realized the implications of their separation.
‘So after I kind of got over the shock after Kody left, I thought, “Oh my heck. Like, I have nothing financially.” I am tied up in this property, everything as far as my estate goes,’ she explained, referring to the family’s Coyote Pass property in Flagstaff, Arizona.
‘Any kind of savings, money, anything is tied up in this property. I am a smart woman and I have done this very dumb thing.’
‘I trusted in this family structure, but now I’m really stuck,’ Janelle admitted. ‘And I’m like, “Oh my hell. I’m 50, and I have nothing.”‘