Christine Brown says she "chose to be weaker" early in hermarriage to Kody.- She says she was the "constant" for the children and got "overwhelmed" putting everyone else first.
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"I chose to be weaker. I just did," she says of the Brown family dynamic back when Kody lived with Christine, who is his third wife, and his first and second wives, Meri and Janelle, respectively, in one house in Utah.
Christine, who announced her split from Kody in November, was the primary caregiver of most of the children Kody shared with all three wives at that time because Janelle worked outside the home. Christine said on past episodes of "Sister Wives" that she allowed Kody and Janelle to make most of the decisions for the family and went along with them without feeling like her opinion mattered much.
This isn't the first time Christine opened up about feeling like a "basement wife." She previously referenced it and explained the meaning of the term in a March episode of "Sister Wives," according to People, saying that in "the plural community, there is certainly a 'basement wife' mentality."
"If you have a situation where there's a wife that's a queen bee, well, the other wife goes in the basement, and she doesn't matter as much. And I've seen it enough. I've seen it a lot," she said last year.
Christine, who's the biological mom of six of Kody's children, tells the host Sukanya Krishnan in the clip that she wasn't aware of the term "basement wife" at the time it was happening to her but that the situation affected her personal identity. She often let the other Brown adults dictate her role to make life "easier," she says, adding: "But then in the end, I lose myself."
"The cost is me," Christine adds. "I put everybody first most of the time."
Christine says she tried to be whomever Kody needed her to be at any given time: "It's like, I can be the peacemaker here. What do you need? What does Janelle need? What does Meri need? What do all the kids need?"
She tells Krishnan that the dynamic left her "running on empty" and she even asked Kody for help, confessing to her husband at one point that she "can't do this anymore."
Christine says that when she told him how she felt, Kody called her out for changing the "agreements" the Brown adults had that she would be the "constant" for the kids but she felt "overwhelmed."
When Krishnan talks to Kody's second wife, Janelle, about Christine's feelings in the same preview of Sunday's tell-all episode, Janelle says she didn't know what her sister wife was feeling at the time because Christine "never said anything" about it to Janelle.
Janelle says she doesn't want to discount Christine's experience but adds, "I feel like she's coloring that experience with her perspective now."
"Sister Wives" fans have followed the Brown family's journey living in three states since the show premiered in 2010. They left Utah in 2011 when they were under investigation by the state. It was the only state where Kody's three wives (at the time) lived under the same roof in three connected apartments that Kody could walk between while indoors.
When the family settled in Las Vegas, they built four houses next to each other in a cul-de-sac for Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Kody's fourth wife, Robyn.
After living in Las Vegas for about six years, Kody convinced his wives to move the family to Flagstaff, Arizona. They bought a property on Coyote Pass, and Kody tried to convince his wives to agree to building one big home again.
Christine was adamant against the idea from the beginning, saying that if her sister wives liked the idea, she would make sure her voice was "louder" against it, and ultimately, the family kept its separate-houses structure. But her resistance to Kody's dream house because of her experience as a "basement wife" appears to have been the start of the newest rift in their marriage from which they never recovered.
Part two of "Sister Wives One on One" premieres on Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.