Sister Wives Season 19, Episode 10: 'I Never Loved Kody As Much As I Love David'

This week’s episode of Sister Wives, entitled “A Man After My Own Heart,” picks up where we left off last week, with the Brown family still learning to adjust to their new normal after three of Kody’s four wives left, leaving Kody with just one wife, his beloved Robyn.

For a quick refresher of Season 19, we’ve recapped all episodes here:

Christine Reflects On Raising Kids

The episode opens at the home of Mykelti and her husband, Tony, as they ask Mykelti’s mom, Christine, and her boyfriend, David, to watch their three kids while they go on a date night. In a confessional, Christine describes introducing her ex-husband, Kody, to her new boyfriend, David, as shown on Episode 9.

But Christine said David handled it like a pro, even saying he was excited to meet Kody.

After Tony and Mykelti leave for their date night, David throws some subtle shade. “They actually cleaned their house,” to which Christine responds, “I can’t believe you just said that.” She probably meant to add, “on camera,” but we know she meant it.

Christine and David have only known each other for five months, and they officially started dating three months ago. But Christine says she has no doubts about their relationship.

“When you know, you know,” she says with a smile.

Up in Parawan, Utah, we check in at Meri’s bed and breakfast. Meri and her two friends, Blair and Jenn, are painting a room in the inn. Meri shares that, although she and Kody only recently officially ended their relationship, she’s been living as a single person for the last decade. She says that it’s sad that she doesn’t have anyone to check in with, or anyone asking how she is, and she looks forward to the day that changes.

Meanwhile, Christine and David are on diaper duty at Tony and Mykelti’s house. Christine says that when the kids were younger, she was at home full-time with them, since Kody and the other wives worked. She said at one point, she was caring for five babies in diapers. S

Two of the babies, Gabe and Gwendlyn, were born only four days apart, so they were raised like twins, despite being born from different mothers. Janelle says she went back to work shortly after Gabe’s birth, so Christine did most of the childcare. Meri remembers taking time off during that time to help with the babies, and she says it was a struggle to figure out what to tell her employers. At the time, the family was still keeping their dynamics private, so Meri said she was just vague about why she needed the time off.

Christine and David have purchased a home, and she says it’s everything they were looking for. The new home is only minutes away from some of their grandkids, which makes babysitting easy. David is planning to fix up the backyard and add a hot tub. Christine says the second she asks for something to be done around the house, he does it quickly, which is a big shift from her relationship with Kody.

This is Christine’s next chapter, which she says she’s excited to start.

Meri Comes To Terms With The End Of Her Marriage

After a commercial break, we’re back in Utah with Meri. Meri’s friends press her on the details of her split with Kody, but Meri brushes them off. She says it doesn’t matter what Kody thinks or feels about her plans for a new life. She mentions that when she was cleaning out her Arizona home, Kody asked her if she would be keeping anything as a memento of her marriage. But she says she only feels sentimental towards her grandmother’s furniture, not the furniture from her broken marriage. She wonders if Kody was asking if she felt sentimental about their furniture because he’s feeling some kind of way about it and hasn’t processed his emotions regarding their split. But he is the one who wanted to end the marriage, so Meri says she’s confused about his feelings.

Meri says that things have been confusing since the family left Vegas for Arizona. Kody made promises of the move being a fresh start for he and Meri, and at first, Meri says he was very involved. But he began withdrawing, spending more and more time with Robyn and their kids. But she says that confusion made her stay in the marriage much longer than she should have.

According to Kody, he was trying to work on things with Meri at that time, despite her infamous catfishing scandal. He said he was able to put all that behind him, but that the two of them didn’t have “a fertile bed for the love to grow.” He says they grew estranged, and that estrangement lasted eight years. They never even slept in the same bed during that time.

Meri says Kody told her that he’d made the decision not to work on their marriage two years ago. Again, news to Meri. She feels that Kody wasn’t being fair to her at that time, and she wishes he’d just talked to her about it instead of sending mixed messages.

Meri is able to laugh about it now with her friends, but she’s still hurt by the way Kody withdrew from the marriage. She says Kody even gave her a list of things she needed to do in order to remain married to Kody, but she says once she did those things, nothing changed. She now feels Kody used that list as an excuse to blame for the failure of their marriage.

Her friends start questioning her about whether or not she wants to start dating again.

“Right now, I’m not wanting to date because I’ve been single like a month,” Meri says. “Or 10 years,” her friend Jenn adds. “Oh, or 10 years, that’s true,” Meri says with a laugh.

Christine: ‘I’m Not Going To Slow Down For Anybody’

Back to Utah and Christine and David’s new home. They’re moving in together, despite only having met a few months ago. Christine is deliriously happy, but one can’t help but hope that her deliriousness doesn’t cause her to make a mistake. She seems very sure of hers and David’s relationship, so much so that she’s going to move in with him before they are married.

Her daughter Ysabel sees the house for the first time, and again, expresses that they are moving too soon.

Janelle reminisces about how Christine used to be so religious and “straight-laced” when their kids were younger, and now she’s getting matching tattoos and she’s about to move in with someone she isn’t married to.

It seems like the running theme with Christine and David is that they may be moving too fast, but Christine is adamant that she’s making the right decision.

“I know that Ysabel is struggling with us moving in together. I know she thinks it’s too fast. But the thing is, I’m not going to slow down for anybody else. David and I are 100% sure that moving in together right now is what we want to do, so we are, and everybody else can catch up on their own time.”

Christine is nervous because she has never lived with a man full-time, since her time with Kody was split with his other wives. But despite her trepidation, she has no regrets about moving forward with David.

Back at Robyn’s house in Flagstaff, Meri visits to let them know that she’ll be moving full-time to Utah. She says she doesn’t think Kody will care, but she still feels obligated to let them know. They’ve been in each other’s lives for over 30 years, so she wants to do them the courtesy of letting them know. She’s sad to not be able to see Robyn and Kody’s kids, but she says she hasn’t been seeing them regularly for a few years now, so it won’t be that much of a change.

“This whole thing with the family has been very hard,” Robyn says. She wants to protect her younger kids from the pain of the broken family. After Meri lets them know her plans, Kody asks why she’s moving so soon. After so many years of Kody pushing her away, she doesn’t understand why he’s questioning it. Kody explains that, ultimately, he thinks the move is in Meri’s best interests.

Kody agrees to help Meri with her move, loading up all her things and driving them to Utah. Meri jokes it’s a “severance package” for her, but Kody doesn’t seem to think it’s funny. He questions whether she’s joking or being passive-aggressive.

“I put 30 years into this. Help me move and get out of here and we’ll be good to go. We’ll call it even, I guess,” Meri says.

Meri says she’s been living in a “limbo land” for so many years, so she’s excited to finally have control of her life. Robyn says she understands how that must have been difficult for Meri, always waiting for Kody.

“He didn’t have the integrity, the courage, to actually sit down with me and have a conversation, to say this is not going to work. It was him trying to do everything he could to push me away so that I would be the one to leave so he could say, ‘I didn’t do anything, she’s the one who left.’”

Kody admits that he dragged things on for too long, hoping Meri would finally leave, which Robyn had to tell him wasn’t kind or fair to Meri.

Let that sink in: Robyn had to tell Kody, a grown man, that leading someone on for years and years was cruel.

Back in Utah, Christine and Ysabel continue setting up the new house, and Ysabel opens up about what would happen if things didn’t work out between her mom and David. Christine says that ever since meeting David, she’s felt a sense of inner peace.

Ysabel: “He won’t try to replace dad, right? For us?”

Christine: “No one’s going to replace your dad.”

But she does say that David will be a father figure to Ysabel, if she needs it. Ysabel is struggling with the idea of losing her dad, whom she’s felt more and more distant from him, and she worries that David will hurt her relationship with Kody further.

Christine says she still wants her kids to have good relationships with their dad, and David won’t be there to replace him. Ysabel tearfully mentions that David seems to be very present and involved in the lives of his own kids, and she wishes she had that with Kody.

The End Of The Meri Era

Back in Arizona, Robyn says she thinks they should tell the kids about Meri’s move. Robyn thinks her kids will take it hard, as Meri has been a somewhat steady presence in their lives. Meri lets them know her plans to move to Utah permanently, and she offers to let them help her move. They’re confused and sad that she’s leaving, but Meri knows this is the right move for her.

Kody seems to finally be processing that Meri’s leaving and he seems sad.

“It’s weird to me because I can see Kody’s sad, and he has gotten emotional several times about it, but this is what he chose,” Robyn says.

“There’s so many mixed emotions. It will be good for Meri to move. It’s a beginning. I have a bit of a nostalgic heart and it’s a little broken,” Kody laments.

In a confessional, Robyn says she always looked at other plural families, and felt like they all had each other’s backs and supported each other, but that didn’t happen for the Brown family. Robyn says she and Kody were always much happier when he was in a good place with each of his wives.

She says Meri was one of the only wives who actually seemed interested in having a strong relationship with her. She says she felt like some of the other sister wives didn’t have her back.

Christine And David Get Engaged

After a commercial, we’re back in the deserts of Utah, with David, Christine and Truely going off-roading for one of David’s friends’ birthdays. They just moved into their new home the day before, and they stop at a particularly picturesque spot to take pictures. As they stand on the beautiful dunes, David says it’s his favorite spot in the world with his favorite person.

As David’s friend records, David gets down on one knee officially proposes to Christine.

After moving in together and looking at wedding locations, it isn’t much of a shock, but Christine is elated. She’s finally getting the real proposal she dreamed of. They cry and embrace, and Christine, of course, says yes.

The show ends with Christine reaffirming her love for David, and saying it’s nothing like the love she had for Kody.

Since the split, Kody has expressed many times that he never actually loved any of his wives, aside from Robyn, so it feels good for Christine to finally be able to speak her truth.

For more reality show coverage, visit our hub page. Episode 11 of Sister Wives airs on Nov. 24 on TLC, and the following day on Max and Discovery+.

Sister Wives is a TV series created for TLC that follows Kody Brown and his four wives as they raise their eighteen children and tackle the challenges associated with their massive family dynamic and the stigma that comes with their way of life.

TMDB User Rating

61

Release Date

September 16, 2010

Main Genre

Reality

Cast

Kody Brown , madison Brown , Janelle Brown , Tamron Hall , Aspyn Brown , Robyn Brown , Andrea Canning , Gwendlyn Brown , meri brown , Logan Brown , Christine Brown , Sukanya Kirshnan

Seasons

19

Cinematographer

Doug Monroe, Callan Griffiths, Richard Alexander Walkling, Anthony Derosa, Matthew Thompson, Ray Farmer

Distributor

TLC

Filming Locations

Nevada, Utah, Arizona

Main Characters

Timothy Gibbons, Kirk Streb, Deanie Wilcher, Christopher Poole, Bill Hayes

Producer

Deanie Wilcher

Production Company

Puddle Monkey Productions, Figure 8 Films

Number of Episodes

167

Network

TLC

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