'Sister Wives' star Meri Brown says she and her husband, Kody, haven't been physically intimate in a decade

• Meri Brown said on Sunday's "Sister Wives" it'd been "a decade" since she and Kody were intimate.
• Kody said there was a "double standard" in plural marriage because he couldn't leave his wives.

In the first part of the "Sister Wives" season 16 tell-all special, Meri Brown shared just how long her marriage to Kody had been struggling.

Meri told the host Sukanya Krishnan on Sunday's "Sister Wives: One on One" that it'd been about "a decade" since she had been physically intimate with Kody.

"Sister Wives" began filming in August 2009 and premiered in fall 2010, so Meri's comments appear to suggest that the couple's relationship has struggled for almost as long as the Browns have allowed cameras to capture their lives for TLC.

Previously, many fans believed that Meri's 2015 catfishing scandal was what tore the couple apart. As shown on season 10 and subsequent seasons of the show, Meri, who is Kody's first of four wives, began talking on Twitter to a person she believed was a man named "Sam" in 2015, around the time of her legal divorce from Kody.

(The "Sister Wives" patriarch divorced Meri in 2015 to legally marry his fourth wife, Robyn, so he could adopt Robyn's children from a previous marriage but remained in a spiritual marriage with Meri.)

Meri initially believed "Sam" was a Chicago businessperson but later found out the person was a woman impersonating a man, People reported.

"During an emotional and vulnerable time earlier this year, I began speaking with someone online who turned out to be not who they said they were," Meri told People in 2015.

Meri said in a season-11 episode of "Sister Wives," presumably filmed in 2016, that she had "considered leaving" the family amid her scandal but that she never considered leaving Kody for "Sam."

Kody appeared to support Meri in the initial aftermath of her scandal, but in a season-11 episode of "Sister Wives," the couple told their therapist they'd had a difficult relationship for many years. But its nature significantly changed since the scandal broke.

On the 16th season of "Sister Wives," which aired this year, Meri indicated she was eventually left feeling like she wasn't in a marriage at all.

"Am I a sister wife when I don't have a husband?" Meri asked in a solo interview, saying she didn't feel like a part of her own family.

On Sunday's tell-all, Kody said that while Meri remained a part of the family, he never intended on thinking of her as anything more than a friend again. He said Meri was planning to leave his "ass" when she was initially talking to "Sam" and that he believed Meri thought she found a "better, richer man." He described her scandal as "an affair."

Kody said there was a "double standard" in plural marriage because his wives were able to leave him but he couldn't leave them.

"I'm not ever going to be in a conjugal relationship with her," he said. "Because I'm not going to go through that emotional torture ever again."

By contrast, Meri voiced "hope" for her marriage in the tell-all. "I'm still committed. I've made my choice. I'm still here," she said.

Part two of "Sister Wives: One on One" airs Sunday at 10 p.m. ET.