MERI WALKS OUT
SISTER WIVES BOMBSHELL 36 IN TOUCH APRIL 18, 2016
Meri Brown escapes her troubled plural marriage
She jetted off to paradise. Six months after Meri Brown made headlines with a mortifying catfishing cheating scandal, the first wife of polygamist reality star Kody Brown fled the family’s Las Vegas cul-de-sac for the white-sand beaches of Hawaii — without her husband. There, the Sister Wives star hiked with a friend, toured Pearl Harbor with a cute sailor and documented her joy on Twitter, sharing on March 30 that she was having an “amazing experience.”
It was a bold and daring move for Meri. Despite her initial assurances that she remained dedicated to her plural marriage, she continues to distance herself from the man and family she betrayed after engaging in a lengthy emotional online affair with a man later exposed by In Touch as female con artist Jackie Overton, 41. (Jackie denies she’s pretending to be Sam.) “She’s been preparing to leave for some time now and has one foot out the door,” a source close to the Browns tells In Touch. Kristyn Decker, the cousin and aunt of Meri’s sister wife Christine, 43, tells In Touch that Meri’s escape to Hawaii and her public flaunting of the fun she had there — with another man — speaks volumes. “Going on vacation, that’s one of the ways that she’s trying to find herself and make the best of the situation [at home],” Kristyn explains, adding that Meri clearly needed “some time alone to figure things out for herself.”
While in Hawaii, Meri toured local sights with a hunky young former Navy sailor. She even tweeted a photo of them together — a rare, wide smile on her face. “I don’t think it will be accepted at all that Meri was hanging out with other men while on vacation in Hawaii,” says Kristyn, who once belonged to the same church as the Browns but has left the polygamist lifestyle. “I think she is doing it to make Kody jealous, to make him understand how she feels. I think she is trying to show, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’”
She doesn’t. Meri, 45, admitted that the reason she engaged in her 2015 emotional affair with someone she believed was a handsome businessman named Sam Cooper was because she was in the midst of “an emotional and vulnerable time.” Those feelings haven’t gone away, says Kristyn. “For women who aren’t having babies anymore or don’t have kids at home, they are alone and lonely because their husbands are with the other wives,” she explains. “I think that without the companionship of a husband and partner who is your own, you are lonely. Kody is busy with the other wives and their children, so Meri [whose daughter Mariah, 20, is in college] is lonely and sad. When I was in that lifestyle, I convinced myself that I was happy and made it work.” Kody, 47, has been focusing his attention on newest wife Robyn, 37, and that has changed the family dynamic.
Meri is trapped in a place of “miserable happiness,” says Kristyn. She hopes the Hawaii sojourn gave Meri a taste of what life could be like without Kody and the other wives. “These women don’t understand what genuine happiness is. Until I left, I didn’t figure it out. It’s a whole different life,” she says. “I’m thrilled she went on this vacation — I hope it gives her that comparison so she can see, ‘This is what I want.’” ◼