Christine Brown has announced the end of her marriage and moved back to Utah.
She is done with Kody, that much is certain.
Throughout Sister Wives Season 16, which was filmed in late 2020, we’ve seen how intensely the now-former couple clashed amid the COVID-19 outbreak, with Kody even saying toward the end that he felt betrayed by Christine.
And ending their sexual relationship as a result.
“He goes, ‘I’m not interested in having an intimate marriage anymore. I don’t like your behavior. We’ll see if you can be a good sister wife,’ and all this,” Christine said in a confessional on this past Sunday’s episode of the show, adding:
“I’m like, ‘Okay, so you don’t want us to have an intimate marriage?’ And he goes, ‘No.’
“I’m like, ‘That’s not enough for me. I can’t not have an intimate marriage.'”
Christine then boxed up Kody’s things, and, we presume, starting planning her escape from this unhappy union.
We didn’t learn that Christine had left Kody until several months after this scene concluded, perhaps because the long-time reality star had to first speak with her mom… gain some confidence… and become a true badass.
But what does leaving truly mean in a plural marriage?
Christine wasn’t legally married to Kody, prompting fans to wonder:
Did she have to fill out any paperwork to end this romance? Was there any sort of formal divorce process?
For the important record here, the Browns are members of the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB), a fundamentalist sect of Mormonism (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).
This church sect has around 7,500-10,000 members in the midwest, predominantly in Utah.
“You can leave marriage in our church,” Christine said on air this week, explaining to viewers:
“If it’s a marriage like mine and Kody had, where it’s just a spiritual marriage, then they release you spiritually and you go through them.”
This said, Christine went on to emphasize that she chose to forego this formality.
She basically just decided to up and leave last year, saying on Sister Wives:
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s just between me and God.”
Based on what we’ve seen from Kody of late, we’re guessing The Big Guy Upstairs is totally on Christine’s side here.
The father of 18 didn’t seem especially troubled when Christine packed up his belongings on the penultimate installment of Season 16, although he did later tell the camera that he wasn’t psyched about any prospect of a divorce.
“I think I’m more afraid of what karmic value this has. The idea of divorce seems tragic, seems terrible,” Kody said at one point.
“All my faith, my belief systems [are] kind of anti-divorce, I suppose.”
Just under a year ago, meanwhile, Kody acknowledged to Us Weekly that his relationships weren’t perfect.
But echoing the above sentiment, he said he’d never be the one to pull any romantic plugs.
“In plural marriage, I don’t feel like I’ve got the right to say, ‘This is over, this is ending,’” the reality star claimed in March 2021.
“I have dominion over my own body and where I’m at, but I’m not in place where, like, I can say, ‘Hey, I’m divorcing you.’ I can’t do that. However, any one of them, I feel like, can.”
Christine, of course, finally did a few months back.
Wrote Kody on Instagram in response:
“Christine’s decision to leave comes with a great deal of sadness. We enjoyed many years together and I have a large amount of respect and admiration for her.
“Although we are moving forward on different paths, we will always remain committed parents.”
