- Kody Brown said on "Sister Wives" that he didn't want to help his wife Janelle build a house.
- "If you don't respect me, don't bother with the love," Kody said.
Tensions were running high between Kody Brown and his second wife Janelle Brown on Sunday's episode of "Sister Wives" because Kody refused to "break my back" for a wife he felt didn't "respect" him.
As documented in season 17, Janelle moved out of her home in Flagstaff, Arizona, into an RV on the Brown family's Coyote Pass property with her daughter Savanah Brown, 17. She hoped the rest of the family would start building homes there as they'd originally planned to do.
But living in the RV was harder than she anticipated, so Janelle shifted her plans and told Kody she now wanted to rent a home to live in until her house was built.
The couple argued multiple times throughout the episode because Kody wanted Janelle to buy his ex Christine's house (which was on the market at the time) so they could rent it out in the future. Janelle resisted because she said she couldn't afford the mortgage on both of the houses. She believed she could get her house on Coyote Pass built within a year.
In a solo interview, Janelle said the only reason Kody wanted to buy Christine's house was that he wanted to keep it in the family, as opposed to actually thinking of her needs. She said she'd feel "stuck" there and wasn't going to let Kody "steamroll" her into doing what he wanted to do.
In a scene late on Sunday's episode, Kody visited Janelle's RV to tell her that her plans to build the house had to be delayed while they built a subdivision on the property.
Janelle told cameras that Kody had a "hard summer" (presumably because Christine moved) and was now making the building issues on Coyote Pass "all my problem" and blaming her for "inconveniencing him." She called Kody's behavior "astounding."
Kody told cameras in an interview that he was resisting Janelle's idea because he felt "disrespected" by her during the COVID-19 pandemic. As viewers saw on season 16, Janelle traveled during the pandemic and even told Kody off for trying to make her feel bad about visiting her kids.
"I'm not going to break my back to work for you when you don't respect me, I'm just not. And Janelle needs somebody who will break their back to get this project done and that's not me right now," Kody said in his interview.
"Men don't feel love from women who don't respect them. I feel like Janelle struggles to respect me or show me respect," he added. "If you don't respect me, don't bother with the love."
New episodes of "Sister Wives" air Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.