'Sister Wives' Star Kody Brown Agreed to 'Free' Robyn From Marriage If They Were No Longer in Love — Despite Stringing Meri Along for Years

Kody and Robyn Brown recently revealed they'd made a "sacred covenant" between them to end their relationship if they ever realized they no longer had romantic feelings for each other.

On the Sunday, December 10, episode of the Sister Wives: One on One special, the Brown family patriarch claimed his former wife Meri hadn't been happy when she heard about the promise.

"Robyn and I made an agreement that if we weren’t in love, that we wouldn’t drag each other out. That we would free each other," Kody explained. "I remember after Robyn and I had that agreement, then I went to the other wives, and said I have this agreement with Robyn."

"They even got frustrated by, like, anybody who wants to leave, you’re free to go," he added. "And that even made Meri mad."

Telling her side of the story, Meri revealed she'd felt disrespected by the agreement. The mother-of-one — who shares Leon, 28, with the father-of-18 — waited for years for Kody to be ready to tell her definitively if there was hope for reconciling their estranged marriage, despite being open about her own eagerness to rekindle.

"He’s sitting here telling Robyn, 'That’s the agreement that you and I made, that if I ever felt like that, then I wouldn’t hold you in this place.' Their agreement of, you know, their sacred covenant," she said. "I’m like, ‘Then why did you not respect me enough as a human being?’"

Last week's installment of Sister Wives, Christine dropped the bombshell that Kody melted down his wedding ring from his marriage to Meri "right around the same time" he was courting Robyn — though there was some discrepancy between the former wives on the exact timeline.

"He had told me that he did not want me to have claim on him. He didn’t think that it was fair that I had claim on him. And so his way of doing that was to melt down the wedding ring," Meri told the cameras, visibly emotional. "That was a symbol that was a sign of our marriage and our commitment, and he melted it down."

As OK! previously reported, the 52-year-old also revealed Kody told her he didn't want to be with her anymore on their wedding anniversary.

"'I have no desire, Meri, to have a relationship with you.' He said, 'Don't you understand, Meri? This is never going to happen. Your life is not one that I want to insert myself into,'" she recalled of the heartbreaking conversation. "I'll never forget those words. This is the first time he's ever said this to me. That was very, very painful for me."

Never miss a story — sign up for the OK! newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what OK! has to offer. It’s gossip too good to wait for!

Kody and Meri confirmed they'd ended their more than 30 year marriage once and for all in a joint statement shared in January.

"After more than a decade of working on our relationship in our own unique ways, we have made the decision to permanently terminate our marriage relationship," they wrote. "We are also committed to the continued healing of any and all relationships within the family so that we can move forward with forgiveness, grace and love."