During Sunday’s ‘Sister Wives’ episode, Kody Brown acknowledged that the now-exes weren’t “that interested” in making things work but he was still “trying to be interested” and is “trying to talk about reconciliation”
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Kody Brown knows he needs to step it up if he wants to win back his ex-wife Janelle Brown.
Sunday’s episode of Sister Wives saw Kody, 54, visiting Janelle and their daughter Savannah at their new apartment for the first time. And while he was impressed by the massive space, he quickly realized that Janelle’s new home — which she called her “little sanctuary” away from Kody — seemingly didn’t accommodate his being there.
“I like this place. The other apartment was pretty cramped. But it’s just dawning on me that maybe the whole reason Janelle moved here was because the other apartment was our place,” he told the cameras. “I was living there with her and she’s moved here, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be living here with her.”
Kody continued, “It’s her apartment. It’s not ours. But there’s no room for me. It’s not about me and her. I honestly don’t know why she’s showing me other than, well, I mean, our daughter [Savannah] lives there.”
The Brown family patriarch suggested that he’s “not even welcome here,” which was the likely reason everything between the trio felt “so awkward.”
“I’m looking at this apartment. I’m like, it’s really obvious to me. I’m never going to live in it,” he added.
Though discussions around what’s happening with the family’s Coyote Pass property didn’t help ease the tension, Janelle noted that the meet-up “went better” than she anticipated. But this still didn’t push her into wanting to reconcile their marriage.
“I don’t really see Kody in the equation,” she admitted to the cameras. “I really just don’t.”
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Kody doesn’t “know how to define the relationship” the two currently share. He suggested that “neither of us are that interested” in figuring things out but he’s still “trying to be interested” in the idea and is “trying to talk about reconciliation.” However, he admittedly feels “pathetically” that she “commonly rejects” him.
“I asked Janelle once, ‘Say, what is it? Why can’t we reconcile? Let’s try and reconcile. Why can’t we?'” he recalled. “[She said], ‘Well, I don’t know what your relationship with Robyn and Meri are, but I’m just not interested in being involved with those people. And that’s sad, because that’s the deal we made about plural marriage.”
But Janelle shared a different perspective. “He’s never come to me and said, ‘Hey, I love you. I miss you. I want to get this back together.’ It’s always about, don’t you want to get the family back together so that his life can run smoothly again? And I’m done with that, I really am,” she explained in a confessional.
Janelle also noted that if Kody were “dying to get back with me,” he would be “actively pursuing” getting a counselor to further work on their issues.
“It’s sad, but it’s unwound. I can’t get the puzzle pieces back together,” Kody then said in a separate confessional interview. “But I’m going to ask her again next week if we might be able to reconcile. It’s painful every time. Maybe I should get more serious about it. But every time it’s like, ‘Nope.'”
On the upside, Kody’s relationship with Savannah has improved. The pair previously experienced strain following Kody and Janelle’s blow-out fight, which resulted in him going weeks without speaking to the 18-year-old.
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“Kody has been making effort with Savannah. He takes her out to dinner every couple of weeks,” Janelle said. “He is seeing her more frequently than he was at the beginning of the year for sure.”
But there is still a lot of work to be done regarding his estrangement with the exes’ sons, Garrison and Gabe. “My relationship with Savannah is sweet, gentle. I haven’t been in touch with Gabriel and Garrison for quite a while,” he shared.
“I’m pretty sad that I’m not close [to them] anymore. There was just so many things in our lives that we did that were rich together, you know, just special experiences,” he continued. “I think and hope that in time we’ll just get over this and that we’ll be safe being back around each other. Right now, there’s not really an open door with Gabe and Garrison. They’re they’re not willing to engage me.”
After years of practicing polygamy, Kody now finds himself in a monogamous marriage with his fourth wife Robyn after Janelle, Meri and Christine left him within 14 months. The fallout from those three marriages, as well as overall family turmoil, have been a focal point of Sister Wives‘ 18th season.
