Dear Christine,

I’ve just finished your second book, and gosh, I hope you’re extremely proud of what you’ve done. Your book is good – not good-for-a-reality-star’s-memoir good (although it is that), and not good-for-a-fundie-memoir good (although, ditto) – it’s poetic and funny and oddly chilling. It’s well-written. It is so much better written and more thought-out than it honestly needed to be to sell well. Kudos to you, Christine! And thank you very much for writing the brave and meditative recounting that many SW stans most wanted to read from you in this moment.

In “Sister Wife,” you mention specifically that you’ve never watched the honeymoon special from the first year you put your life on camera. You say it would be too painful. I get it. And, I hereby submit: it’s the most important episode of the show, and I think you should make yourself watch it. Because while your book courageously details the emotional cost of your marriage, that episode exposes the true motive behind it all.

Your husband hurt you not for spiritual reasons but for financial gains. Religion was just a mask for a long-running financial scheme.

I know this sounds extreme. Most Sister Wives viewers see Kody as selfish or stupid, not abusive. You probably feel the same way—after all, you chose this life, right? You weren’t some helpless victim. But that’s exactly how the system is designed to work. It makes abuse look like personal choice, makes cruelty look like religious devotion, and makes victims blame themselves for not being “spiritual enough” to handle it.

Much of your book details his unkindness. Sometimes you raise the word “gaslighting.” I notice, however, that you never use the word “abuse.” Perhaps this is out of protectiveness for your shared children, or for the show that continues to be your primary employment. (Which is to say, protectiveness toward yourself and your loved ones, which is valid and appropriate and, hey, we get it.)

I hope it is not because you reject out of hand the premise that your marriage was abusive. Because it most certainly was. It was on national television; we all saw it.

What audiences/wives usually dismiss as “men being idiots” or “rudeness” or “poor choices” is actually systematic abuse designed to look like something else.

Here are the items I believe you might notice most from watching that honeymoon episode:

·       Your ex-husband hated talking to you. Your new sister wife says he wasn’t going to call you for a few days, but she made him call you anyway.

·       Your ex-husband was open to humiliating you, if he thinks it’ll make him look good. Your ex-husband, with whom you’d just had a baby, speaking to a producer with a camera, told the nation that your new sister wife taught him it was “time to grow up” and essentially start being considerate to his other wives. His young, pretty new bride taught him that it was important to you that he call you when he’s out of town, and “little things like that.” Your new sister wife interrupts him to explain how helpful little kindnesses can be for the wives he doesn’t love, and he beams with pride at his bride’s magnanimous thoughtfulness.

·       Your ex-husband was so excited to share with his male producers how cool it was for him in mid-life to find a wife who shared his interests. That your new sister wife shared his interest in learning to surf was so exciting! (Interesting that production didn’t ask you if you’d ever wanted to surf, or if he’d ever asked you that.)

·       Your ex-husband doesn’t care about your feelings of jealousy and insecurity; they are yours and yours alone to carry. Within days of marriage, before which he only shared chaste kisses with his new bride out of “respect” for you, he is suddenly very comfortable holding her butt and picking her up and generally leaving little room for Jesus. He loves being filmed being intimate with his bride. He will never be this sensual with you, and he doesn’t care that your friends and family will see this difference on national television. Very demure, very mindful!

·       Your ex-husband did not want an equitable relationship with you. Though in later seasons we’ll see you rely on him for partial childcare when you’re out of town, you know enough about his parenting to mostly trust your older children to watch your smaller kids. When he’s away on honeymoon, your childcare duties do not increase; you are and have been, functionally, a single mother. He never mentions missing his children, and does not waste time during his eleven-day trip to call them. He calls you, and it’s a chore. He hurries you off the phone. To him, you are a chore.

·       Your ex-husband does not give a shit about what you think about how he conducts his life. Throughout this episode, you are either wearing your religious garments or else just sweating through two layers of shirts for modesty; he is bare-chested on the beach, lifting his bride in a swimsuit over his shoulders and giggling.

·       Your ex-husband, when asked by a producer what the best part of the trip is, says that it’s getting to be with his bride, “without worrying about when I need to be home.” Your ex-husband does not miss you. He never mentions missing you, or worrying about you, or thinking about what you’re doing, during any part of filming.

·       Your ex-husband’s system requires you to reject your own instincts and call them “ridiculous.” In one scene, you say how much you miss your husband and immediately call that feeling “ridiculous,” saying you wish you were more independent. Not that you deserve someone who wants to be around you—but that you should reject your feelings and become who he wishes you were. This is how the system works: women are so ashamed of their gut feelings that they debate whether it’s even okay to have “illogical” feelings, whether it’s okay to be “needy.” The cult teaches you that wanting basic consideration from your husband makes you weak.

·       Your ex-husband’s system parentifies the children, forcing them into adult responsibilities they can’t handle. You say of teenaged Logan: “We’ve got an almost adult male, and that’s how we treat him as well.” Janelle adds: “We treat our children very much as young adults.” Logan’s response is telling: “It’s almost too much power, I can’t handle it.” This isn’t about respecting children’s maturity—it’s about forcing kids to fill the roles that absent fathers should occupy, while those fathers pursue new wives and business opportunities.

This isn’t just unkindness. This is emotional abuse: a pattern of behaviors designed to control and diminish someone’s sense of self-worth. The key characteristics are that it’s intentional and systematic—it happens repeatedly over time, not just when someone’s having a bad day.

But here’s what makes your situation different from typical domestic abuse: your ex-husband didn’t have to develop these tactics on his own. The patriarchal system handed him a ready-made system designed to break down women’s resistance and independence.

Common tactics of emotional abuse that he used against you include dismissing your feelings as “being too sensitive,” using the silent treatment as punishment for “stepping out of line,” gaslighting to make you question your own memory or perception of reality, weaponizing your vulnerabilities against you, public humiliation, and what counselors call “triangulation”—constantly making comparisons to shut down your requests for better treatment (“Other wives don’t complain about this,” “You know comparing always gets you into trouble”). There’s also emotional blackmail, making you responsible for his feelings (“If you really loved me…” “You need to accept that our relationship will be less important to me than my relationship with my new wife before I can find you attractive”).

Your ex-husband was better able to abuse you because of the cult you both belonged to. Groups like the Apostolic United Brethren don’t just allow this abuse—they tend to actively require it. Here’s how the system worked against you:

Financial abuse was foundational to what happened to you. Research confirms that survivors of abuse within polygamous marriages often have little access to resources since their husbands control finances and access to information. Your financial dependency wasn’t accidental—it represents what scholars identify as coercive control, where multiple tactics work together to eliminate autonomy and sense of self.

A 2023 study applying coercive control frameworks to cult environments found that manipulation and financial exploitation occurred in almost all cases, with mandatory tithing, contributions to special funds, and the expectation that one man must financially support multiple wives and children—exactly the structure that systematically impoverished your family while enriching the organization.

The cult used “microregulation” to destroy your independent thinking. This meant control over what you wore, what you watched and read, the way you prepared meals, the activities you “chose” and when you “chose” them. What television audiences interpret as your “strict religious rules” actually represents the calculated system you were trapped in, where you were barraged with daily activities and overly-structured rules that had to be carried out in minute ways, with violations met with spiritual consequences rather than obvious punishment.

This explains why your situation felt so impossible: when every small decision required approval or adherence to group standards, you gradually lost confidence in your own judgment, creating perfect conditions for intimate partner abuse to flourish as the boundary between religious obedience and domestic submission became deliberately blurred.

The cult legitimized abuse through doctrine. Studies show exactly what Kody did to you: using patriarchal religious ideologies and interpretations of sacred texts to justify abusive behavior. In the high-control religious group you belonged to, doctrine was frequently used to elicit compliance from you, including justifying hypocrisy, deflecting conflicting messages, and dismissing abuse.

Speaking to a producer during the honeymoon special, your ex-husband said: “I have four wives. Nothing scares me but poverty.” He was about to star in his own TV show with a new wife and a new start-over family—but he could only keep the show and the money if he remained a polygamist. Which meant he had to keep playing the fundamentalist game of telling you you’re crazy and immoral for wanting an equal relationship with your patriarch.

Understanding what happened to you financially is essential for recognizing how these groups operate. When television audiences see you and the other wives “choosing” to remain in situations where you appeared to have no money, no independence, and no resources, they’re witnessing the end result of the systematic coercive control you experienced, not character failings or poor judgment. You stayed because you were enmeshed in a community of secondary abusers, and abuse was legitimized by written doctrine.

What happened to you reveals that these financial dynamics are sophisticated abuse tactics designed to eliminate women’s economic autonomy and create the very conditions that enable intimate partner violence to flourish unchecked.

You weren’t a person so much as you were a means to an end. You were raised in a financial cult. Your cult did, and continues, to hurt every family it touches. This is the nature of cults: cults perpetuate abuse and extract money. The abuse was the point, disguised as doctrine.

This matters beyond your personal story. Right now, there are women watching “Sister Wives” who recognize themselves in your experience. There are children in polygamous families learning that their needs don’t matter, that their instincts are wrong, that love is something to be earned through perfect compliance. There are viewers who still think this is about “lifestyle choices” (and debate how “smart” or “gross” those are) rather than systematic exploitation.

The AUB and groups like it will continue operating until we stop treating their abuse as religious practice. When we understand that the microregulation you experienced wasn’t spiritual discipline but psychological conditioning, that the financial control you endured wasn’t religious community but economic exploitation, that the emotional abuse you suffered wasn’t patriarchal tradition but calculated cruelty—only then can we demand real accountability.

This isn’t quirky reality TV about an unusual family. This is documented abuse happening in real time, broadcast for profit. Every viewer who laughs at Janelle’s “coldness” or Meri’s “bitterness” (or even Robyn’s “keep sweet” quality) is watching trauma responses and calling them entertainment.

Edit: Thanks for making a girl feel special – I’ve been a long-time lurker – love this community!! It’s so knowledgeable and thoughtful!! A comment is how I learned this book’s ghostwriter is Kelly Kennedy (kellykennedy.net) – listen to THIS: “An award-winning journalist, Kennedy embedded in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and served as Military Reporters & Editors’ first female president. She is the only American woman to have both served in combat in the U.S. military and covered U.S. combat as a civilian. She is the investigative reporter who broke the stories about the burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan that ultimately led to the PACT Act of 2022, which greatly broadened benefits veterans are eligible for due to toxic exposure.“