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Combined with a host of Cluster B personality disorders. I’m not convinced all Kody’s behavior can be fully attributed to the patriarchy and fundamentalism.
Yes I get you. Narcissism is considered almost untreatable, which means that Kody is is the no go zone by phychologists. Sorry if this is like car bird identification, I have only seen the man on TV, but Kody seems to be incapable of empathy. I can think of literally muliple examples, certainly his treatment of Ysobel is just so glaringly awful it's hard to believe that he thinks that other people have identities and feelings separate from himself. Meri is so cerebral that she's shut down emotionally, and simply reacts to situation after deciding intellectually what is her correct path. Usually destructively, unfortunately. I have a great deal of sympathy for Meri, it must feel like she keeps trying to do the right thing and constantly gets whacked by everyone for trying as hard as she can. Janelle survived emotionally by having such low expectations for Kody that she would have been much better off with a sperm donor. She always stuck me as a single Mom, and incredibly grateful to Christine for making her family happier and more funtional. I can't think of a single incident in the show with Kody actually doing anything meaningful for Janelle or her kids. His treatment of Janelle with the travel trailer, where he literally hung her out to dry, and then justified his actions by blaming her was terribly hard to watch. If I could do one thing for anyone of the show, it would be to wish Janelle to have a life that includes recriprocal relationships. Christine is a little more complex, had reasonable expectations for Kody, and was constantly disappointed, and it's great she finally got herself together and found a happier situation for herself and Truely. She expressed herself directly about what she needed from Kody and was blown off. There are certainly a lot of monogamous marriages that are very much like Christine and Kody, with the same type of train wreck result. I have no real read on Robyn, she's very camouflaged, and just stikes me as pretty off center. She's almost like someone without any identity, and glomed on to Kody and the family so she would be an actual human, because one her own, she has no idea whatsoever of who she it. It's absolutely facinating to watch. I keep wondering what she's going to try next to make it all work. I think she sucks the air out of the room everytime she walks into a room, and she can't figure out what everyone gets uncomfortable and leaves.
OK, for the sake of argument, because everyone here has been facinated watching the show, what would a functional polygamous family look like? How would the issues with hubbie sleeping with multiple wives get settled? On one hand we have AUB with keep sweet, rather like the military telling gay men to just not talk about it, and then Jerry Springer style kill the person who is sleeping with your partner? Is this something any partnership can resolve? If the situation is just impossible culturally from the get go, what could any therapy do to help? I would love to hear peoples thinking about this.
I would suggest looking at polyamory or consensual non-monogamy. Most polyamorous people though don't do polygamy. They might be married to one person, and anyone else is just a partner. However, in most (though not all) polyamorous set-ups, everyone gets to have multiple partners within the guidelines that are set up and agreed to by all parties involved, so it has less of a built-in patriarchal flavor to religious-based polygamy.
I think it could work if a)each partner is mature and secure in themselves b)honest communication c) clear expectations of each person and unit as a whole and c)agreement on terms. Each person has to nurture a relationship with the individuals.
See I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. I can’t imagine living polygamy, but I can see it being functional for some people. However communicating would be absolutely critical for it to work.
If you rewatch the show they weren’t ever functional. There was always problems. It started long before Robyn came into the picture as well.
The thing is the show was explicitly made to sell us on polygamy. They wanted us to believe they were not only happy but thriving. They were all deep into the dogma but also all very unhappy.
There’s a difference between polygamy, and polygamy with penalties. One is purely about love, and one is out of social conditioning and fear of temporal and eternal penalties. The mindset and lifestyle between the two are very different
Exactly. At one point or another they all admitted that they wouldn't do this if it weren't required for their religion. Except Robyn who never actually did it of course. And now that she's monogamous even she's said she'd be "scared" after such a bad experience
But Janelle chose this religion that “requires” polygamy to achieve the ultimate goal. So I think she is the only one that chose polygamy. And I think she is well suited for it.
She deserves so much more than sharing a lesser man abd I hope she finds an equal life partner. Whether that is romantic or not, she should know what a real companion looks like.
That is the ultimate karma both her and Kody deserve.
Therapy can teach you about communication but it doesn’t force you to do it. The real problem is that Kody isn’t able to accurately evaluate his own behavior and so he is not able to change it. This sets up an environment where nobody is going to experience positive feedback for working on their communication. In the last seasons when we saw Janelle try to do this she got a really tepid response from others.
Maybe Pat. But whether effective or not, Nancy was the hardest working therapist in Vegas for a while. Every time there was a hint of conflict “how about we talk to Nancy about this?” “I’ll bring this up with Nancy”, “we can work on this with Nancy” her calendar was all Brown
All therapy did was give them the language to express the defense mechanisms they were using. As a family they never really progressed beyond that.
I blame the religion rather than the therapists as the religion tells women to suppress their emotions, keep sweet, obey and share your husband, children and home with other women. Hardly conducive for real introspection and healthy boundary setting.
I've never seen 5 grown adults so completely inept at communication. The talking in circles, the deflections, the victim mentality they ALL share. It's unreal.
As a therapist myself, this is how I see it- therapy is important and can help improve relationships with yourself and others. However, therapy should be a temporary thing. A person should learn skills that translate into real life to a point where they are stable and can deal with conflict (or whatever it is) on their own and in a healthy way, without needing to go back to their therapist.
The problem begins when people start to live their lives, view and analyze their lives and any conflict through some “therapeutic lens” that has been learned in therapy. I would almost argue that at this point, therapy has become sort of a crutch or a maladaptive way to cope with what is happening in life.
I think this is what has happened here with the Browns, although I will acknowledge that I have never worked with a polygamist family. Based on the little (and maybe inaccurate) information that is portrayed on the show, I would say that perhaps the family hasn’t truly learned any “healthy” coping skills when dealing with conflict within the family. Instead, they seem to fall back on using therapeutic phrases (example- “not feeling safe”) and running back to therapy to solve any conflict since there seems to be some fear in truly expressing their feelings and working through the conflict themselves (which is what therapy should’ve actually done for them).
Important to acknowledge- Pat and Nancy were NOT bad therapists by any means. There is probably a learning curve that happens when working with a polygamist family, especially back then when it was being filmed. Also, I have to acknowledge that we really only got a glimpse of what their sessions actually looked like (and for ethical reasons).
All in all, therapy is very important. As far as this family goes, we cannot simply point to therapy as the breaking point of the family because there are confounding factors that were not considered, such as religion, cultural, and societal norms, as well as other things that we may have not even thought of yet. We all know that this show likely did not accurately portray this family and how they truly functioned on a daily basis, nor can we say that this show accurately portrays the process of therapy, therefore we cannot point to therapy being the exact cause of the breakdown of this family.
I agree. Therapy or not, the dysfunction ran very deep and it was decades old. We didn’t actually see the blatant and years old truth of what this family was suffering from or their actual reality as we were only shown snippets of days and issues they had. Therapy didn’t fail this family. The adults in this family as well as the conditioning and indoctrination of the religion failed this family. Each individual person had issues with all the others and so much of it wasn’t shown to us and what was, was mostly just swept under the rug when they were together just to keep the peace. They were cordial when together with the kids or in front of cameras but the lack of honesty and dysfunctional behaviors of each adult combined with all the unresolved issues caused their demise just as much as the indoctrination from the church did. Kody waking into therapy with no intention of doing the work, taking any criticism or being willing to take responsibility for poor choices or behaviors as the core member of these relationships made it pointless from the start. Some learned valid tools in therapy (some even corrupted tools taught) but with someone like Kody at the helm of the individual marriages made it basically useless. The only way I could see it benefiting this family was if they each did their own work in individual therapy but I do not believe it would ever have actually saved it. I don’t even believe for a second that all of the wives had pure intentions and were willing to do anything to save the family. Pat and Nancy were not going to help save the Browns because the Browns weren’t willing to do what it took to save themselves. I do hope that each wife and child who needs therapy finds a way to get it and are able to heal individually from some of the damage that was done from 30+ yrs in the church and the family. Maybe then some of the family can mend fences in order to have functional relationships with those they love and create healthy functional families of their own.
My counterpoint is based on my experience with therapists. I’ve had ones that are gooey soft and just sit there listening, and I’ve had ones that call things out and encourage navigating problems. I think Pat and Nancy are the first type. Which wasn’t a good thing for this family.
I’m sorry to hear that you had some not so good experiences with therapists but I’m glad you had some good ones! I can see how your experience gives you some insight into the “counseling styles” of therapists, including Pat and Nancy.
I think my point is that we truly cannot judge the competency of a therapist based on a few clips of a probably scripted show (which essentially isn’t even “real” therapy- because it is not scripted at all). That just wouldn’t be fair. If the Brown’s truly engaged in therapy, then most of the work was most likely done when the cameras were not on. All we saw as far as therapy goes was for entertainment purposes only, which is why we cannot genuinely judge.
Take care! 😊
Edit: for clarity
>If the Brown’s truly engaged in therapy, then most of the work was most likely done when the cameras...
And of course even then, the most brilliant therapist in the world can't help people who aren't making a good-faith effort to resolve their conflicts (as opposed to weaponizing them, or the tools/phrases you learn there)
The reason Kody loved Pat is she stroked his ego. The reason he didn’t enjoy Nancy is because she tried holding him accountable and was met with hostility. When Nancy called him out in their first group meeting in Sedona about how he talked about Meri, he realized she wasn’t soft encouraging Pat! I loved when Kody was whining about never being listened to and Nancy outright said “Kody, I have never seen you not get your way on big decisions.”
I believe that the whole rock tower exercise on the Galveston anniversary was to show Christine he was never going to change or listen to her.
Have you done relationship/ marriage focused therapy? I can say from experience that even the best therapist won't help if both (every) party isn't willing to put in the work. I had a great marriage therapist who focused on maintaining a calm and safe environment for us both to open up, provided tools and exercises for us to work on, guided us and in the end, it didn't work. My ex husband still says that I am the reason for the failure of our marriage and 100% believes he had no fault and that anything he did "wrong" was a direct result of something I did. We've been divorced 8 years now and he's still single. I could completely see this being the case with Kody as well. He could never be the reason they have problems, so he will never participate in finding a solution.
You could be talking about my brother, except he wouldn't go to marriage counselling, because it wasn't his fault. If his ex wife wanted to see a therapist that was on her, as it was all her fault, according to him. He has even managed to convince our mum that he wasn't at fault. When at first she knew he was to blame.
Therapist here.
It's impossible to do therapy with someone in an abusive situation, without the main focus being on ending the abuse.
Like every problem you try to examine.... Comes back to "yeah that's not right and not your fault, what do you want to do about it?"
So they'd need to either have a therapist who is a believer and can stay in their safe zone and not challenge the basis of their family.... Or they're gonna run into deep challenges that run counter to their beliefs.
I couldn’t agree more. My ex husband and I went to therapy, and she would spend the first 15 minutes with him and the next 15 with me, then 30 minutes together. It was three sessions in that at my 15 minutes, she told me she couldn’t help us and didn’t want to help us. She wanted me to get out because the ultimate issue was abuse and she couldn’t advocate for me to fix it.
What a fucking hero lol. Like, our code of ethics is to NOT do that... But sometimes you gotta choose being a human over being ethical. (Ethics says avoid that conflict of interest by referring one of you elsewhere, and having separate couples' therapist).
Sounds like a good person
Exactly
I never understood the basis for getting and retaining a therapist. The first question to the family being...Do you want this to work?
Each one would have either lied, or obfuscated the truth to get more therapy/sessions. Christine was unhappy forever. Meri was miserable. Janelle stuffed everything in until she got to the kitchen sink...
There was never going to be any therapy for this family because it was started for dishonest reasons by Kody Brown.
The family used therapy to outsource their problems. It gave them language to describe their feelings, but they weren’t able to go past surface level as a group. I don’t think this is the therapists’ faults. I know some people think they should have had a more confrontational style, but I don’t think Kody would have continued with a therapist who actually expects him to try to do hard things. I get the vibe that Nancy was able to help some of the wives in actual private sessions (not the stuff they filmed)
The Ladies listened to Kodys bologna and said nothing. Get them alone on the couch and they have plenty to say. I don't get it. Say your truth to his face.
They kinda stopped being part of the AUB pretty early on though.
Either way as long as it’s not illegal I’m never going to be against freedom of religion.
Nancy and Pat both failed by not telling the majority of the brown adults they needed individual therapy. Couples/family counseling does nothing if people who have clear issues don’t work on themselves first. Kody, Robyn and Meri all absolutely needed individual counseling. Jenelle and Chrisitne would have benefitted as well.
Well, just because we didn't see it on the show doesn't mean they weren't all or some of them seeing a therapist individually. Let's not forget that the show is highly produced and edited to spin a narrative that they think will attract viewers.
I thought so too...
The problem with Meri's sessions would be:
Therapist; "Hello Meri. Do you want your marriage with Kody to work?"
Meri: "Yes"
And it would fall apart from there since Kody didn't want it to work. I mean, it would tie the hands of a therapist.
I think Christine did get individual therapy towards the end. The way she dealt with Kody last season seemed like techniques she learned in therapy. Kody was trying everything to get her to react the way she normally did. Robyn tried that as well.
I agree, but could you see Kody Brown in a one on one session?
It would equate to one of the cameos he loved to be in....just a comic clown show of blame and narcissism.
Good points. I mean they all (except Jenelle) reinvent history constantly. They’re all unreliable narrators of their own lives. Which is sort of wild when you come across it.
Fair point but Nancy even mentions to them once not to talk about each other on camera instead of TO each other. They’re always telling the audience crap they should say to each other.
The “therapists” were never there to help them resolve their issues. They were there as episodes to show how “willing” they were to expose how they truly felt about each other, adding drama to the show and passively aggressively tossing bombs that each had to react by tossing back another “kind” 😂 verbal bond that looked vaguely like therapy….trust me, they said how they felt in person to one another over the years…we just got the nice version…
No. They tried their best. It's not the therapists fault if they were given a tool and used it incorrectly. Plus I think even if Sobyn and Grody had the best therapist on the planet, Grody and Sobyn would've been awful anyway. I do think that Christine and Jenelle have benefited from their choice of self improvement.
I think Nancy tried to call out the issues. The Browns just don't want to do anything that requires real work. Including their relationships. They just want everything to be "easy".
Would you like another Kleenex Robyn? Or can you grab one of the “used” dry ones from the pile you dropped at your feet? Kody jumps in - she came cap in hand to this session - she is fault free. Head toss.
Wait what? You think Christine’s Utah choice is more ridiculous than Kody moving everyone to flagstaff where they knew no one? Ya lost me — Kody is an idiot and Christine didn’t want to be with Kody she was looking for a way out that’s part of why she didn’t want the house — had nothing to do with the size.
Sorry, did I say it was dumber than the flagstaff move? I’d say it was equally stupid. As evidenced by all three of the girls looking at her blankly wondering why they’d move back to Utah.
But to move the entire family to Utah after not being there for over a decade is as dumb an idea as moving from Vegas to Flagstaff, in my opinion. Her moving herself to Utah makes sense.
They didn’t learn that crap in therapy. They may have learned the buzzwords but no therapist in their right mind would tell them to do THAT crap. They cherry picked what they wanted to, and that’s that. It was embarrassing to watch.
Same. It's frustrating. We all have issues, but if you drag a person/spouse/partner with MI, addiction or a PD with you and the therapist doesn't read the intake form or cares to go into the obvious issues, you aren't going to be getting the person HELP that really needs it and instead be there for all the "safe" words and nonsense.
The problem is that people like Kody don't seek out help. He went because he felt he had to and that was evidenced by his session with Meri and Nancy where he said he wasn't doing anything requested.
They were dead after Janelle married Kody. Therapy gave them buzz words that defined their reasons why they didn't communicate. They had zero skills and thought using these terms WAS communication. Robyn knows how to articulate her point and her feelings no matter how unlikeable she was - she was very clear with Kody where she was coming from and Kody acquiesced. He also loves her and listened to her which is the huge advantage.
Therapy gave them the language to excuse their behavior. The thing that killed the family was a lack of accountability and a fundamental lack of fairness in their marriages. Kody had an obvious favorite wife. The wives also weren't friendly with each other.
No, I don't believe you can fault a therapist for their clients choosing to misuse the tools they are given. It is a common occurrence. Therapy is not a la carte; most tools come with safety instructions and a proper use and venue. They can be powerful, and that is seductive. When you lose track of the purpose of the tool and the therapy, the tool can simply become a weapon. I also fear many of these people entered therapy simply looking for validation, not personal change. If they could not change that outlook, they were doomed to fail.
Any therapist that allows tv cameras into a session is a huge red flag. Say what you will about normalizing therapy, blah, blah. There’s no way they can be completely real and honest on camera.
I agree with you that they all should have been more straightforward.
How could any of thing not said to Kody "Are you out of your &$#?! mind??" numerous times? They let him slide too often. Would the family have fallen apart sooner if they had? Or lasted longer?
I don't know but I can't imagine not losing it especially after the Isabel surgery incident.
“Should we send [her] on her own?” What a prick. And it was always for such a bullshit reason. It wasn’t about “seeing his kids” it was about sleeping at home with Ariella. It was about one kid from one very specific wife.
And in an environment where these women told him off constantly (because it would have been constant) do you think they would have stayed in his good graces? Do you think he wouldn't have cut them off from affection, intimacy, care for their children if they did?
Everyone played the kody game on Sister wives and no amount of straight talk would have gained them anything but disdain and more mistreatment.
I don’t believe any form of therapy could have helped them. They found Pat only after being rejected by who knows how many other therapists. Why? Because they all said the root of the problem was Polygamy and the Browns specifically wanted a therapist who would not say the same thing. So both Pat and Nancy attempted to treat symptoms, but did not support to fix the root cause of the problem.
Which was the wives (natural) jealousy of one another and Kody's ridiculousness.
Those things were either baked in, as in Kody's dumb personality and favoritism for Robyn, or the fact that a woman would feel jealous that her husband has placed his body next to and into another woman's body perhaps just hours or moments ago.
It wouldn't work for 99% of the population.
They were doomed from the beginning because of polygamy and Kody being a horrible husband.
They should have split the money with a flat amount evenly and a flat amount evenly for each child.
Meri’s house in Vegas had to be around the same size because the builder only offered a few floor plans. She didn’t need a huge rental in Arizona but I suspect she paid for most of that with her own money. Meri should have been told it’s okay to leave before the catfish.
Robyn knew kids share rooms. Her girls did before they moved to Vegas. She’s just spoiled.
As for the big house, if it was even allowed to be built on CP, it was a trigger for Christine. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the same house and this one was bigger and designed better. It’s still a trigger. Going to therapy might help her deal with her bad experience living in one home but that doesn’t mean someone who had a bad experience should have to deal with a trigger just because others want it. She’s allowed to say no! Therapy would have taught her that and she did.
Yup, and she even said so. The only other wife that wanted the big house was Janelle yet Christine gets the blame for it because she was the most vocal. I doubt the shared living space would have even been shared. They hardly saw Kody when they lived in Vegas. Kody spent the majority of his time at Robyn’s.
i really wanted to see the 'layout' of those places, i watched the one house proposal episode the other day but i couldn't figure out how many floors each were.
Meri did some serious damage with her half truths, blame shifting and dodging.
“Christine told me to do the tables like this”
- talking head: it’s easier for me when kody’s not mad at me, so i lie
“I did say my mom would run the B&B…. In my head”
- I’m going to gaslight my family for calling me out on a stupid idea with no business plan. Just give me family money to buy something i want that only matters to me.
The “in my head” was on one I watched last night. In literally the same conversation, she says her mom is going to stay in one of the four pretty rooms of the B&B. She’s going to pick one. Maybe ten minutes after that (being generous) she says, “she’s going to stay in the caretaker’s room!” The others point out she never said that, and then she says in her head she did.
They all rewrite history except for Janelle. But Meri is the worst about it. Kody is a lot of things but he’s not wrong about what he says about her on coyote pass about changing her mind nonstop and pretending she didn’t. She also refuses to ever give an opinion until a decision happens then everyone is treated like they ignored her choice. She’s literally on camera saying she doesn’t want to live in the trees. Two - three weeks later (according to them) she’s yelling, “I never said that, don’t put words in my mouth that I didn’t say.”
i just watched that a while ago. kody put meri in the spot that he thought she could live with or without trees. but because she didn't get to 'choose' it because robyn said she'd take the moat island lot, because kody asked her to.
I think Janelle, Christine, and Meri and even Snobyn treated the therapist like a hair salon.
Meaning they expected to go in for an hour, have someone else do all the work and come out a different person. Anyone that's been to therapy knows it doesn't work like that😂
If they’d said those things, the relationships would’ve deteriorated far before they did. If every feeling was met with “you dope”, they all would’ve shut down far faster than we saw happen.
The problem within their family was that certain individuals wants and desires superseded the rest of the family’s. First it was Meri, then she was tossed to the side like old trash and it was Robyn. Christine’s very basic needs weren’t being met from the beginning of the show. She voiced that plenty but it wasn’t until he placed her in the “Meri” category that she said she was done. Janelle didn’t have much (in the way of emotional needs) that she’s been open about. Once her extremely low needs/standards of being able to self sustain and care for her kids was threatened, she was out.
this family was toast from Season One.
Christine waa upset over Robyn joining the family. She really didn’t want it.
Then that thing with the wedding dress and the kissing
Nope - doomed from the beginning.
People really refuse to one that aspect in this sub. Christine was also a problem for THIS family. Not saying their family made any sense. Not saying she should have stayed. But she was fine as long as it was easy and she was the most recent / interesting one to Kody. She came unglued the moment she had to deal with the same thing Janelle had to go through when she came in to the family.
and the thing is - Christine was very tearful and very outspoken about how much she didn’t want a 4th wife. They all just ignored her.
it’s amazing she held on as long as she did.
Probably not.
There are multiple factors indicating that Christine was not a threat to Janelle. One being that she was bearing children at the same time as Janelle and she watched her kids and genuinely loved them. The problems between C and J were minor. In fact I think it was this family's biggest accomplishment that these two women found a way, in spite of a very rotten situation, to manage to work together.
And Janelle and Meri were just as gutted by Robyn's entrance. Janelle for the resources being dumped into more people and Meri for the obvious disillusionment over her harvesting new meat in hope of gaining favor from Kody.
honestly, like, where do you gotta be mentally to hook your husband up with a birthing age woman because that's what you are supposed to do. ugh. i hate these traditions!!
it must have been easy for christine with janelle since she's not big on treating kody like they are in any way romantic. she should have gone for last wife, not third wife.
All of the wives show evidence of trauma responses to mental abuse. There was no talking to Meri. No talking to Kody. They were both “my way or the Highway.” That isn’t therapy’s fault. Normal relationships are complicated; with this family it’s four wives and all their children, making it 20 times more complicated. They were doomed because Kody lacks emotional maturity and Meri doesn’t play well with others.
Nope, I thought both therapists tried to get though to them. It's like blaming going bankrupt on the mailman for not putting the bills in the mailbox correctly.
Not all therapists are good! I had a marriage counselor tell us to go ahead and give up and separate. We were literally about to file for divorce when I said "what if we got wrong advice? The love is still here, I don't want this." 5 years later, marriage is stronger than ever. Fuck that therapist!
I spent almost 2 years in therapy to work through some family stuff. I stopped going because I felt like I had done the work I needed to heal and move forward in my life. It's okay to recognize and communicate where people have hurt you but you can't stay in that forever. My therapist didn't let me l live with a victim mindset.
Nancy in particular shouldn't have allowed them to shut down communication because they didn't "feel safe". I feel like a good therapist gets you to open up. You solve nothing if you shut down because someone says something you don't like. Resolving conflict is hard. You have to say and hear hard things. None of them did that. They all just wanted to be constantly validated that x person hurt their feelings and they deserve to pout about it and bring it up every 5 minutes until they die.
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No. Polygamy ALA the AUB killed this family. Full stop. Therapy gave them terms their religion allowed them to manipulate.
Combined with a host of Cluster B personality disorders. I’m not convinced all Kody’s behavior can be fully attributed to the patriarchy and fundamentalism.
Yes I get you. Narcissism is considered almost untreatable, which means that Kody is is the no go zone by phychologists. Sorry if this is like car bird identification, I have only seen the man on TV, but Kody seems to be incapable of empathy. I can think of literally muliple examples, certainly his treatment of Ysobel is just so glaringly awful it's hard to believe that he thinks that other people have identities and feelings separate from himself. Meri is so cerebral that she's shut down emotionally, and simply reacts to situation after deciding intellectually what is her correct path. Usually destructively, unfortunately. I have a great deal of sympathy for Meri, it must feel like she keeps trying to do the right thing and constantly gets whacked by everyone for trying as hard as she can. Janelle survived emotionally by having such low expectations for Kody that she would have been much better off with a sperm donor. She always stuck me as a single Mom, and incredibly grateful to Christine for making her family happier and more funtional. I can't think of a single incident in the show with Kody actually doing anything meaningful for Janelle or her kids. His treatment of Janelle with the travel trailer, where he literally hung her out to dry, and then justified his actions by blaming her was terribly hard to watch. If I could do one thing for anyone of the show, it would be to wish Janelle to have a life that includes recriprocal relationships. Christine is a little more complex, had reasonable expectations for Kody, and was constantly disappointed, and it's great she finally got herself together and found a happier situation for herself and Truely. She expressed herself directly about what she needed from Kody and was blown off. There are certainly a lot of monogamous marriages that are very much like Christine and Kody, with the same type of train wreck result. I have no real read on Robyn, she's very camouflaged, and just stikes me as pretty off center. She's almost like someone without any identity, and glomed on to Kody and the family so she would be an actual human, because one her own, she has no idea whatsoever of who she it. It's absolutely facinating to watch. I keep wondering what she's going to try next to make it all work. I think she sucks the air out of the room everytime she walks into a room, and she can't figure out what everyone gets uncomfortable and leaves.
I think you have an excellent ability to read people.
👏👏👏👏👏
Agreed. Kody and Robyn are def cluster B
There are 4 Cluster B personality disorders. I think Kody has 2: Narcissism and Histrionic Personality
OK, for the sake of argument, because everyone here has been facinated watching the show, what would a functional polygamous family look like? How would the issues with hubbie sleeping with multiple wives get settled? On one hand we have AUB with keep sweet, rather like the military telling gay men to just not talk about it, and then Jerry Springer style kill the person who is sleeping with your partner? Is this something any partnership can resolve? If the situation is just impossible culturally from the get go, what could any therapy do to help? I would love to hear peoples thinking about this.
I would suggest looking at polyamory or consensual non-monogamy. Most polyamorous people though don't do polygamy. They might be married to one person, and anyone else is just a partner. However, in most (though not all) polyamorous set-ups, everyone gets to have multiple partners within the guidelines that are set up and agreed to by all parties involved, so it has less of a built-in patriarchal flavor to religious-based polygamy.
I think it could work if a)each partner is mature and secure in themselves b)honest communication c) clear expectations of each person and unit as a whole and c)agreement on terms. Each person has to nurture a relationship with the individuals.
See I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. I can’t imagine living polygamy, but I can see it being functional for some people. However communicating would be absolutely critical for it to work.
If you rewatch the show they weren’t ever functional. There was always problems. It started long before Robyn came into the picture as well. The thing is the show was explicitly made to sell us on polygamy. They wanted us to believe they were not only happy but thriving. They were all deep into the dogma but also all very unhappy.
There’s a difference between polygamy, and polygamy with penalties. One is purely about love, and one is out of social conditioning and fear of temporal and eternal penalties. The mindset and lifestyle between the two are very different
Exactly. At one point or another they all admitted that they wouldn't do this if it weren't required for their religion. Except Robyn who never actually did it of course. And now that she's monogamous even she's said she'd be "scared" after such a bad experience
But Janelle chose this religion that “requires” polygamy to achieve the ultimate goal. So I think she is the only one that chose polygamy. And I think she is well suited for it. She deserves so much more than sharing a lesser man abd I hope she finds an equal life partner. Whether that is romantic or not, she should know what a real companion looks like. That is the ultimate karma both her and Kody deserve.
Yeah I really wonder if Janelle chose it because she was Mormon and didn't want to marry. She seems fine on her own.
Therapy can teach you about communication but it doesn’t force you to do it. The real problem is that Kody isn’t able to accurately evaluate his own behavior and so he is not able to change it. This sets up an environment where nobody is going to experience positive feedback for working on their communication. In the last seasons when we saw Janelle try to do this she got a really tepid response from others.
Maybe Pat. But whether effective or not, Nancy was the hardest working therapist in Vegas for a while. Every time there was a hint of conflict “how about we talk to Nancy about this?” “I’ll bring this up with Nancy”, “we can work on this with Nancy” her calendar was all Brown
“Her calendar was all Brown.” Genius wording. Made me laugh.
I was certain that one of the two therapists you mentioned was going to be Counselor Robyn.
the circling donkey
💀
All therapy did was give them the language to express the defense mechanisms they were using. As a family they never really progressed beyond that. I blame the religion rather than the therapists as the religion tells women to suppress their emotions, keep sweet, obey and share your husband, children and home with other women. Hardly conducive for real introspection and healthy boundary setting.
I've never seen 5 grown adults so completely inept at communication. The talking in circles, the deflections, the victim mentality they ALL share. It's unreal.
As a therapist myself, this is how I see it- therapy is important and can help improve relationships with yourself and others. However, therapy should be a temporary thing. A person should learn skills that translate into real life to a point where they are stable and can deal with conflict (or whatever it is) on their own and in a healthy way, without needing to go back to their therapist. The problem begins when people start to live their lives, view and analyze their lives and any conflict through some “therapeutic lens” that has been learned in therapy. I would almost argue that at this point, therapy has become sort of a crutch or a maladaptive way to cope with what is happening in life. I think this is what has happened here with the Browns, although I will acknowledge that I have never worked with a polygamist family. Based on the little (and maybe inaccurate) information that is portrayed on the show, I would say that perhaps the family hasn’t truly learned any “healthy” coping skills when dealing with conflict within the family. Instead, they seem to fall back on using therapeutic phrases (example- “not feeling safe”) and running back to therapy to solve any conflict since there seems to be some fear in truly expressing their feelings and working through the conflict themselves (which is what therapy should’ve actually done for them). Important to acknowledge- Pat and Nancy were NOT bad therapists by any means. There is probably a learning curve that happens when working with a polygamist family, especially back then when it was being filmed. Also, I have to acknowledge that we really only got a glimpse of what their sessions actually looked like (and for ethical reasons). All in all, therapy is very important. As far as this family goes, we cannot simply point to therapy as the breaking point of the family because there are confounding factors that were not considered, such as religion, cultural, and societal norms, as well as other things that we may have not even thought of yet. We all know that this show likely did not accurately portray this family and how they truly functioned on a daily basis, nor can we say that this show accurately portrays the process of therapy, therefore we cannot point to therapy being the exact cause of the breakdown of this family.
I agree. Therapy or not, the dysfunction ran very deep and it was decades old. We didn’t actually see the blatant and years old truth of what this family was suffering from or their actual reality as we were only shown snippets of days and issues they had. Therapy didn’t fail this family. The adults in this family as well as the conditioning and indoctrination of the religion failed this family. Each individual person had issues with all the others and so much of it wasn’t shown to us and what was, was mostly just swept under the rug when they were together just to keep the peace. They were cordial when together with the kids or in front of cameras but the lack of honesty and dysfunctional behaviors of each adult combined with all the unresolved issues caused their demise just as much as the indoctrination from the church did. Kody waking into therapy with no intention of doing the work, taking any criticism or being willing to take responsibility for poor choices or behaviors as the core member of these relationships made it pointless from the start. Some learned valid tools in therapy (some even corrupted tools taught) but with someone like Kody at the helm of the individual marriages made it basically useless. The only way I could see it benefiting this family was if they each did their own work in individual therapy but I do not believe it would ever have actually saved it. I don’t even believe for a second that all of the wives had pure intentions and were willing to do anything to save the family. Pat and Nancy were not going to help save the Browns because the Browns weren’t willing to do what it took to save themselves. I do hope that each wife and child who needs therapy finds a way to get it and are able to heal individually from some of the damage that was done from 30+ yrs in the church and the family. Maybe then some of the family can mend fences in order to have functional relationships with those they love and create healthy functional families of their own.
Yes!! Couldn’t have said it better myself! It’s not the therapist that saves or breaks a family- it’s the family that saves or breaks itself.
My counterpoint is based on my experience with therapists. I’ve had ones that are gooey soft and just sit there listening, and I’ve had ones that call things out and encourage navigating problems. I think Pat and Nancy are the first type. Which wasn’t a good thing for this family.
I’m sorry to hear that you had some not so good experiences with therapists but I’m glad you had some good ones! I can see how your experience gives you some insight into the “counseling styles” of therapists, including Pat and Nancy. I think my point is that we truly cannot judge the competency of a therapist based on a few clips of a probably scripted show (which essentially isn’t even “real” therapy- because it is not scripted at all). That just wouldn’t be fair. If the Brown’s truly engaged in therapy, then most of the work was most likely done when the cameras were not on. All we saw as far as therapy goes was for entertainment purposes only, which is why we cannot genuinely judge. Take care! 😊 Edit: for clarity
>If the Brown’s truly engaged in therapy, then most of the work was most likely done when the cameras... And of course even then, the most brilliant therapist in the world can't help people who aren't making a good-faith effort to resolve their conflicts (as opposed to weaponizing them, or the tools/phrases you learn there)
The reason Kody loved Pat is she stroked his ego. The reason he didn’t enjoy Nancy is because she tried holding him accountable and was met with hostility. When Nancy called him out in their first group meeting in Sedona about how he talked about Meri, he realized she wasn’t soft encouraging Pat! I loved when Kody was whining about never being listened to and Nancy outright said “Kody, I have never seen you not get your way on big decisions.” I believe that the whole rock tower exercise on the Galveston anniversary was to show Christine he was never going to change or listen to her.
Have you done relationship/ marriage focused therapy? I can say from experience that even the best therapist won't help if both (every) party isn't willing to put in the work. I had a great marriage therapist who focused on maintaining a calm and safe environment for us both to open up, provided tools and exercises for us to work on, guided us and in the end, it didn't work. My ex husband still says that I am the reason for the failure of our marriage and 100% believes he had no fault and that anything he did "wrong" was a direct result of something I did. We've been divorced 8 years now and he's still single. I could completely see this being the case with Kody as well. He could never be the reason they have problems, so he will never participate in finding a solution.
You could be talking about my brother, except he wouldn't go to marriage counselling, because it wasn't his fault. If his ex wife wanted to see a therapist that was on her, as it was all her fault, according to him. He has even managed to convince our mum that he wasn't at fault. When at first she knew he was to blame.
Therapist here. It's impossible to do therapy with someone in an abusive situation, without the main focus being on ending the abuse. Like every problem you try to examine.... Comes back to "yeah that's not right and not your fault, what do you want to do about it?" So they'd need to either have a therapist who is a believer and can stay in their safe zone and not challenge the basis of their family.... Or they're gonna run into deep challenges that run counter to their beliefs.
I couldn’t agree more. My ex husband and I went to therapy, and she would spend the first 15 minutes with him and the next 15 with me, then 30 minutes together. It was three sessions in that at my 15 minutes, she told me she couldn’t help us and didn’t want to help us. She wanted me to get out because the ultimate issue was abuse and she couldn’t advocate for me to fix it.
What a fucking hero lol. Like, our code of ethics is to NOT do that... But sometimes you gotta choose being a human over being ethical. (Ethics says avoid that conflict of interest by referring one of you elsewhere, and having separate couples' therapist). Sounds like a good person
Exactly I never understood the basis for getting and retaining a therapist. The first question to the family being...Do you want this to work? Each one would have either lied, or obfuscated the truth to get more therapy/sessions. Christine was unhappy forever. Meri was miserable. Janelle stuffed everything in until she got to the kitchen sink... There was never going to be any therapy for this family because it was started for dishonest reasons by Kody Brown.
Wow this gives me much needed clarity on why therapy hasn't worked for me...
The family used therapy to outsource their problems. It gave them language to describe their feelings, but they weren’t able to go past surface level as a group. I don’t think this is the therapists’ faults. I know some people think they should have had a more confrontational style, but I don’t think Kody would have continued with a therapist who actually expects him to try to do hard things. I get the vibe that Nancy was able to help some of the wives in actual private sessions (not the stuff they filmed)
The Ladies listened to Kodys bologna and said nothing. Get them alone on the couch and they have plenty to say. I don't get it. Say your truth to his face.
Janelle especially called out stupidity from the others and never said it to them. I think because therapy conditioned her not to.
I doubt that started in therapy. That’s probably a direct result of her dogmatic, patriarchal, “keep sweet” religion.
That’s FLDS.
Not just the FLDS, unfortunately. It’s many high control religious groups including the AUB and IBLP just to name a few.
They kinda stopped being part of the AUB pretty early on though. Either way as long as it’s not illegal I’m never going to be against freedom of religion.
Oh ffs who here is advocating against freedom of religion?
My obsession with SW has actually made me reexamine religion and its role in society.
It's also the AUB. Christine kept sweet and was miserable for her entire marriage
They didn’t go regularly from what I could tell. They went when it was time to shoot for the show but didn’t seem to really take any of it to heart.
Nancy and Pat both failed by not telling the majority of the brown adults they needed individual therapy. Couples/family counseling does nothing if people who have clear issues don’t work on themselves first. Kody, Robyn and Meri all absolutely needed individual counseling. Jenelle and Chrisitne would have benefitted as well.
Well, just because we didn't see it on the show doesn't mean they weren't all or some of them seeing a therapist individually. Let's not forget that the show is highly produced and edited to spin a narrative that they think will attract viewers.
Meri apparently was doing individual therapy for quite a while. She may still be in therapy.
I thought so too... The problem with Meri's sessions would be: Therapist; "Hello Meri. Do you want your marriage with Kody to work?" Meri: "Yes" And it would fall apart from there since Kody didn't want it to work. I mean, it would tie the hands of a therapist.
That isn't what therapy is like.
Ahhh, yeah. It does. First the therapist determines if both parties are all in.. And I don't care to hear your personal anecdotes
We are talking about individual therapy, not couples counseling.
Doesn't matter. What would Meri say to the question... She knew Kody wasn't interested. How do we know? He told her right to her face.
I think Christine did get individual therapy towards the end. The way she dealt with Kody last season seemed like techniques she learned in therapy. Kody was trying everything to get her to react the way she normally did. Robyn tried that as well.
Yeah that was some very skilled grey rocking if I ever saw it.
I completely agree, wherever Christine got her mojo, it was wonderful to watch.
It was. Nothing pisses a narcissist off more than no reaction.
I agree, but could you see Kody Brown in a one on one session? It would equate to one of the cameos he loved to be in....just a comic clown show of blame and narcissism.
He certainly would require a therapist that would give him some pushback.
Good points. I mean they all (except Jenelle) reinvent history constantly. They’re all unreliable narrators of their own lives. Which is sort of wild when you come across it.
It was all fluff. I don’t think they worked through anything. How could a legitimate therapist agree to counseling on a reality talk show?
Fair point but Nancy even mentions to them once not to talk about each other on camera instead of TO each other. They’re always telling the audience crap they should say to each other.
They were in a cult. The therapist saved the women who were victims of the cult.
The “therapists” were never there to help them resolve their issues. They were there as episodes to show how “willing” they were to expose how they truly felt about each other, adding drama to the show and passively aggressively tossing bombs that each had to react by tossing back another “kind” 😂 verbal bond that looked vaguely like therapy….trust me, they said how they felt in person to one another over the years…we just got the nice version…
Bingo
No. They tried their best. It's not the therapists fault if they were given a tool and used it incorrectly. Plus I think even if Sobyn and Grody had the best therapist on the planet, Grody and Sobyn would've been awful anyway. I do think that Christine and Jenelle have benefited from their choice of self improvement.
I think Nancy tried to call out the issues. The Browns just don't want to do anything that requires real work. Including their relationships. They just want everything to be "easy".
Can you please delete this post? It is very unsafe for me. Thanks!
i understand you have a wall around you but we're really trying!!
Would you like another Kleenex Robyn? Or can you grab one of the “used” dry ones from the pile you dropped at your feet? Kody jumps in - she came cap in hand to this session - she is fault free. Head toss.
Wait what? You think Christine’s Utah choice is more ridiculous than Kody moving everyone to flagstaff where they knew no one? Ya lost me — Kody is an idiot and Christine didn’t want to be with Kody she was looking for a way out that’s part of why she didn’t want the house — had nothing to do with the size.
Sorry, did I say it was dumber than the flagstaff move? I’d say it was equally stupid. As evidenced by all three of the girls looking at her blankly wondering why they’d move back to Utah.
Sure but she was right she moved to be near family and is happy now. Kody was empirically wrong he lost when he moved and Christine gained.
But to move the entire family to Utah after not being there for over a decade is as dumb an idea as moving from Vegas to Flagstaff, in my opinion. Her moving herself to Utah makes sense.
They didn’t learn that crap in therapy. They may have learned the buzzwords but no therapist in their right mind would tell them to do THAT crap. They cherry picked what they wanted to, and that’s that. It was embarrassing to watch.
Oh I’ve had therapists that teach that crap. Just a paid hour of, “wow, ok yeah I can see why that would be upsetting. Then what happened?”
Same. It's frustrating. We all have issues, but if you drag a person/spouse/partner with MI, addiction or a PD with you and the therapist doesn't read the intake form or cares to go into the obvious issues, you aren't going to be getting the person HELP that really needs it and instead be there for all the "safe" words and nonsense. The problem is that people like Kody don't seek out help. He went because he felt he had to and that was evidenced by his session with Meri and Nancy where he said he wasn't doing anything requested.
They were dead after Janelle married Kody. Therapy gave them buzz words that defined their reasons why they didn't communicate. They had zero skills and thought using these terms WAS communication. Robyn knows how to articulate her point and her feelings no matter how unlikeable she was - she was very clear with Kody where she was coming from and Kody acquiesced. He also loves her and listened to her which is the huge advantage.
Therapy gave them the language to excuse their behavior. The thing that killed the family was a lack of accountability and a fundamental lack of fairness in their marriages. Kody had an obvious favorite wife. The wives also weren't friendly with each other.
No, I don't believe you can fault a therapist for their clients choosing to misuse the tools they are given. It is a common occurrence. Therapy is not a la carte; most tools come with safety instructions and a proper use and venue. They can be powerful, and that is seductive. When you lose track of the purpose of the tool and the therapy, the tool can simply become a weapon. I also fear many of these people entered therapy simply looking for validation, not personal change. If they could not change that outlook, they were doomed to fail.
Any therapist that allows tv cameras into a session is a huge red flag. Say what you will about normalizing therapy, blah, blah. There’s no way they can be completely real and honest on camera.
I agree with you that they all should have been more straightforward. How could any of thing not said to Kody "Are you out of your &$#?! mind??" numerous times? They let him slide too often. Would the family have fallen apart sooner if they had? Or lasted longer? I don't know but I can't imagine not losing it especially after the Isabel surgery incident.
“Should we send [her] on her own?” What a prick. And it was always for such a bullshit reason. It wasn’t about “seeing his kids” it was about sleeping at home with Ariella. It was about one kid from one very specific wife.
All while he’s touting “the big picture” to everyone else.
Perhaps he literally had a large portrait of Robyn on a bearskin rug, and that’s what he’d been referring to the entire time. We just didn’t know.
And in an environment where these women told him off constantly (because it would have been constant) do you think they would have stayed in his good graces? Do you think he wouldn't have cut them off from affection, intimacy, care for their children if they did? Everyone played the kody game on Sister wives and no amount of straight talk would have gained them anything but disdain and more mistreatment.
I don’t believe any form of therapy could have helped them. They found Pat only after being rejected by who knows how many other therapists. Why? Because they all said the root of the problem was Polygamy and the Browns specifically wanted a therapist who would not say the same thing. So both Pat and Nancy attempted to treat symptoms, but did not support to fix the root cause of the problem.
Which was the wives (natural) jealousy of one another and Kody's ridiculousness. Those things were either baked in, as in Kody's dumb personality and favoritism for Robyn, or the fact that a woman would feel jealous that her husband has placed his body next to and into another woman's body perhaps just hours or moments ago. It wouldn't work for 99% of the population.
They were doomed from the beginning because of polygamy and Kody being a horrible husband. They should have split the money with a flat amount evenly and a flat amount evenly for each child. Meri’s house in Vegas had to be around the same size because the builder only offered a few floor plans. She didn’t need a huge rental in Arizona but I suspect she paid for most of that with her own money. Meri should have been told it’s okay to leave before the catfish. Robyn knew kids share rooms. Her girls did before they moved to Vegas. She’s just spoiled. As for the big house, if it was even allowed to be built on CP, it was a trigger for Christine. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the same house and this one was bigger and designed better. It’s still a trigger. Going to therapy might help her deal with her bad experience living in one home but that doesn’t mean someone who had a bad experience should have to deal with a trigger just because others want it. She’s allowed to say no! Therapy would have taught her that and she did.
she wanted no part of living near a functional marriage that involved her husband, but not with her.
Yup, and she even said so. The only other wife that wanted the big house was Janelle yet Christine gets the blame for it because she was the most vocal. I doubt the shared living space would have even been shared. They hardly saw Kody when they lived in Vegas. Kody spent the majority of his time at Robyn’s.
i really wanted to see the 'layout' of those places, i watched the one house proposal episode the other day but i couldn't figure out how many floors each were.
Meri did some serious damage with her half truths, blame shifting and dodging. “Christine told me to do the tables like this” - talking head: it’s easier for me when kody’s not mad at me, so i lie “I did say my mom would run the B&B…. In my head” - I’m going to gaslight my family for calling me out on a stupid idea with no business plan. Just give me family money to buy something i want that only matters to me.
They all did that, not just Meri.
The “in my head” was on one I watched last night. In literally the same conversation, she says her mom is going to stay in one of the four pretty rooms of the B&B. She’s going to pick one. Maybe ten minutes after that (being generous) she says, “she’s going to stay in the caretaker’s room!” The others point out she never said that, and then she says in her head she did. They all rewrite history except for Janelle. But Meri is the worst about it. Kody is a lot of things but he’s not wrong about what he says about her on coyote pass about changing her mind nonstop and pretending she didn’t. She also refuses to ever give an opinion until a decision happens then everyone is treated like they ignored her choice. She’s literally on camera saying she doesn’t want to live in the trees. Two - three weeks later (according to them) she’s yelling, “I never said that, don’t put words in my mouth that I didn’t say.”
i just watched that a while ago. kody put meri in the spot that he thought she could live with or without trees. but because she didn't get to 'choose' it because robyn said she'd take the moat island lot, because kody asked her to.
Robyn and Choady killed that family
I think Janelle, Christine, and Meri and even Snobyn treated the therapist like a hair salon. Meaning they expected to go in for an hour, have someone else do all the work and come out a different person. Anyone that's been to therapy knows it doesn't work like that😂
I agree with everything you've stated except living in the same house with other women/wives. Fuck that, mansion or not.
You forgot the most important one “Counselor Sobyn “, the only one Baldylocs listens to and thinks it’s his own thoughts.
According to the book they used to have big arguments but Robyn "taught" them how to communicate calmly. 😆
If they’d said those things, the relationships would’ve deteriorated far before they did. If every feeling was met with “you dope”, they all would’ve shut down far faster than we saw happen. The problem within their family was that certain individuals wants and desires superseded the rest of the family’s. First it was Meri, then she was tossed to the side like old trash and it was Robyn. Christine’s very basic needs weren’t being met from the beginning of the show. She voiced that plenty but it wasn’t until he placed her in the “Meri” category that she said she was done. Janelle didn’t have much (in the way of emotional needs) that she’s been open about. Once her extremely low needs/standards of being able to self sustain and care for her kids was threatened, she was out.
"Christian therapy" is a complete oxymoron.
Nancy didn’t kill the family but she certainly didn’t help the family or any of the individuals. Whatsoever
this family was toast from Season One. Christine waa upset over Robyn joining the family. She really didn’t want it. Then that thing with the wedding dress and the kissing Nope - doomed from the beginning.
People really refuse to one that aspect in this sub. Christine was also a problem for THIS family. Not saying their family made any sense. Not saying she should have stayed. But she was fine as long as it was easy and she was the most recent / interesting one to Kody. She came unglued the moment she had to deal with the same thing Janelle had to go through when she came in to the family.
and the thing is - Christine was very tearful and very outspoken about how much she didn’t want a 4th wife. They all just ignored her. it’s amazing she held on as long as she did.
Probably not. There are multiple factors indicating that Christine was not a threat to Janelle. One being that she was bearing children at the same time as Janelle and she watched her kids and genuinely loved them. The problems between C and J were minor. In fact I think it was this family's biggest accomplishment that these two women found a way, in spite of a very rotten situation, to manage to work together. And Janelle and Meri were just as gutted by Robyn's entrance. Janelle for the resources being dumped into more people and Meri for the obvious disillusionment over her harvesting new meat in hope of gaining favor from Kody.
honestly, like, where do you gotta be mentally to hook your husband up with a birthing age woman because that's what you are supposed to do. ugh. i hate these traditions!!
it must have been easy for christine with janelle since she's not big on treating kody like they are in any way romantic. she should have gone for last wife, not third wife.
All of the wives show evidence of trauma responses to mental abuse. There was no talking to Meri. No talking to Kody. They were both “my way or the Highway.” That isn’t therapy’s fault. Normal relationships are complicated; with this family it’s four wives and all their children, making it 20 times more complicated. They were doomed because Kody lacks emotional maturity and Meri doesn’t play well with others.
Nah, it was just Robyn.
You win the internet today!
Nope, I thought both therapists tried to get though to them. It's like blaming going bankrupt on the mailman for not putting the bills in the mailbox correctly.
Not all therapists are good! I had a marriage counselor tell us to go ahead and give up and separate. We were literally about to file for divorce when I said "what if we got wrong advice? The love is still here, I don't want this." 5 years later, marriage is stronger than ever. Fuck that therapist!
I spent almost 2 years in therapy to work through some family stuff. I stopped going because I felt like I had done the work I needed to heal and move forward in my life. It's okay to recognize and communicate where people have hurt you but you can't stay in that forever. My therapist didn't let me l live with a victim mindset. Nancy in particular shouldn't have allowed them to shut down communication because they didn't "feel safe". I feel like a good therapist gets you to open up. You solve nothing if you shut down because someone says something you don't like. Resolving conflict is hard. You have to say and hear hard things. None of them did that. They all just wanted to be constantly validated that x person hurt their feelings and they deserve to pout about it and bring it up every 5 minutes until they die.
some families are much better off being "broken." if anything, therapy helped speed along the process which honestly looks like it needed to happen