It’s all over between Christine Brown and Kody Brown.
This has been the case for months, of course.
By the time Sister Wives Season 17 airs, it will have been the case for nearly a year.
Courtesy of an extended trailer for upcoming episodes, however, we’re about to get our first look at just how this split played out between Christine and Kody… along with Christine and her fellow sister wives.
The new season’s first sneak peek features Christine packing her life into boxes after choosing to leave her plural marriage. “
“I have decided to leave. I’m gonna leave Kody,” she says simply in a confessional.
The last time we saw Christine on television, of course, she was first lamenting the loss of intimacy in her relationship — and then emphasizing on the reunion special how happy she was with her decision to walk away.
Kody and I are divorced,” she said back in February. We’re completely separate.
“We’re just gonna be friends, eventually. I just realized I had to make a decision for my heart, and my heart was done being broken. And it felt, well, freeing.”
Elsewhere… while acknowledging in this trailer some of the tension between herself and Kody, Christine also admits that part of what caused her to leave was Kody’s devotion to another spouse.
“To Kody, Robyn [Brown]’s more important,” she says in public for the first time.
We’ve noted for a long time, of course, how Kody’s clear preference for Robyn impacted Christine‘s decision to leave an unhealthy situation.
“It’s been heartbreaking being your wife for years,” Christine actually tells Kody in this stunning footage.
In a separate confessional at another point in this video, Christine says she was well aware of the polygamous arrangement she entered into years ago.
Yes, “I agreed to be a sister wife,” she notes. “But I agreed to be an equal wife.”
In a meeting with the other women, Kody is unable to hold back his irritation with Christine.
“You never tried to have a really good relationship with these people and that’s the reason I’m pissed off,” Kody screams at Christine as Robyn and Janelle Brown look on.
“Man, just the knife in the kidneys over all these years.”
Before storming away, Kody adds: “All the sacrifices that I’ve made to love you.”
For Janelle, who remains very close to Christine, her friend’s departure is not a shock.
“I feel like it’s more of an inevitability coming instead of a ‘Let’s try to work this out,'” she says on camera, while Meri breaks down and says:
“I felt like Christine was more than a sister wife. I felt like she was a friend for a lot of years.”
Janelle is also concerned about how the absence of Christine will impact the household in general.
“I’m not really sure we have a family anymore,” she says on Season 17, later stating that that Kody is “no longer acting like my husband.”
Where will things go from here?
“The message that we had to the world about functional polygamy seems so dysfunctional now,” Kody says in a confessional, unsure what will happen next.
Back on November 2, Christine wrote the following on Instagram:
After more than 25 years together, Kody and I have grown apart and I have made the difficult decision to leave.
We will continue to be a strong presence in each other’s lives as we parent our beautiful children and support our wonderful family.
At this time, we ask for your grace and kindness as we navigate through this stage within our family.
Sister Wives Season 17 premieres Sunday, September 11 at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
Check out the revealing Season 17 trailer HERE!