If you’ve seen any episode of Sister Wives — like any episode ever, pretty much — you’ve probably seen that Kody and Meri Brown don’t exactly have the best relationship.
And if you’ve seen an episode from the past few seasons, you know that’s a massive understatement.
Meri has been with Kody since the very beginning — she was his very first wife, and his only legal one until they divorced so he could legally marry Robyn, a move that was required so he could adopt her three children from her first marriage.
But as we’ve observed on the show, things haven’t always been great between them.
In the early seasons, they struggled with Meri’s infertility and with the fact that she was only able to give birth to one child while the other sister wives have had several.
Then, of course, came the catfish scandal — you remember, that whole thing where Meri was so miserable in her marriage that she had an emotional affair with a man that turned out to be a deceitful woman.
This put a strain on their marriage for obvious reasons, and in the years since they’ve only grown further apart.
Things got so bad that at the end of the last season of the show, Meri declared that their relationship was “dead.”
So how is their relationship now?
Well, judging by a new sneak peek for this week’s episode, it’s still really terrible.
The clip, which you can watch in full below, begins with Meri, Kody, and Robyn out for a walk.
As Robyn explains in a later interview, “Kody and Meri don’t need more, kind of like misunderstandings or even like issues in their relationship. They’re already struggling right now.”
Kody agrees in an interview of his own — according to him, “My relationship with at Meri is, at best, just distant and amicable.”
“You know, I could buck up, put my backpack on and go for a run, be tough about it, but I’m just not interested in it.”
He says that “For all of my marriage with Meri, I’ve felt like she unloads her emotions into a burden that I’m supposed to carry.”
“I’m not carrying this burden,” he says. “There’s no reason that I should.”
Yikes, right?
There’s some footage of their walk, which is silent and awkward, then Kody gets right back to talking about what a bummer it is to be with Meri.
“I haven’t put effort into that relationship specifically because I have three other relationships that are rewarding and wholesome and with children that need me, need to see me,” he explains.
Over in Meri’s interview, she says that “I’m really careful about pushing Kody because I don’t want him to feel like I’m being demanding or pushy or anything like that, so I feel like I’ve made it known to him enough where I want the relationship to go as far as even just moving forward and just starting to figure things out.”
“It’s best to just leave the ball in his court.”
Meanwhile, we hear Kody say “Neither of us see real value in the relationship, ’cause if Meri and I really wanted to be together, we would.”
A romance for the ages, huh?
We know that marriage is very important in their religion and that divorce has never really seemed to be an option, but you’d think that if both of them were this sick of each other, they’d be able to figure something out.
It’s just getting uncomfortable to see how much contempt he seems to have for her and to see them pretend like this is working.
Guys … it’s not working.