Kody Brown gave insight into his fractured relationship with daughter Aspyn Brown after he split from her mom, Christine Brown, in 2021.
During the Sunday, April 27, episode of Sister Wives, Kody, 56, revealed that he recently went to visit Christine’s girls in Utah and was surprised by his conversation with Aspyn, 30. (The episode was filmed in early 2024.)
“Aspyn and I had this long discussion,” Kody recalled to wife Robyn Brown during their Valentine’s Day dinner. “She said, ‘Dad, what is wrong? What did I do? Why don’t you like me, dad?’”
Kody noted that although Aspyn “confronted” him, he knew it was a positive for their relationship because it “meant something’s wrong” and she wanted a different father-daughter dynamic.
Aspyn is the eldest of Christine, 53, and Kody’s six children. The exes, who called it quits in November 2021 after more than 20 years together, also share son Paedon, 26, and daughters Mykelti, 28, Gwendlyn, 23, Ysabel, 21, and Truely, 15.
“Aspyn literally asked why I didn’t like her,” Kody told the cameras. “And I’m like, ‘Sweetheart, I love you. And I have, always have and always will.'”
He noted that after a “long discussion” he told Aspyn that he wanted to have “a relationship not filtered through my view of her mother or her mother’s view of me.”
Following Kody’s split from Christine, who was the first of his wives to leave him, he began distancing himself from his ex and their children. During Sunday’s episode, Kody recalled why he needed space at the time.
“What I explained to her was just, there’s this place of pain that I didn’t feel welcome to reach out to everybody,” Kody explained, saying that Aspyn insisted she never purposely made him feel like he couldn’t reach out. “What has happened in my life has made me feel unwelcome.”
Kody told Robyn, 46, that the chat with Aspyn “improved” their relationship immensely, but he was still confident that Christine was to blame for the strained bond her has with all their kids. (Kody insinuated that second wife Janelle Brown, whom he separated from in December 2022, did the same thing with their six children.)
“I got alienated from my children when the divorces happened,” Kody claimed. “I have an assumption that the exes just weren’t protecting the privacy of the breakup at all. They’re just like, ‘Your dad’s like this, your dad’s like this, your dad’s like this.’ And so I had all this relationship struggle with all of my kids.”
As a result of Christine and Janelle’s alleged meddling, Kody said, “I’m trying to establish this relationship where they’re no longer having me represented to them by my ex-wives.”
While Kody is also separated from his first wife, Meri Brown, with whom he shares one child, Leon, he didn’t appear to be speaking about her alienating him from their life.
“We haven’t had a lot of connection,” Kody said of his eldest children — he also shares three adopted kids and two biological children with Robyn — noting he was hopeful that would change.
Christine, meanwhile, claimed that Kody’s allegations of poisoning their kids against him were completely false.
“I don’t talk trash on Kody to my kids, ever,” she said on the episode. “I wish Kody would reach out to them more and I wish he had a better relationship with his kids. I’ve done everything that I can to facilitate that relationship.”
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
