Sister Wives talk and interview with former AUB members Melanie and Cory from Notes to Self 444 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Psych Legal Pop Podcast

December 12, 2024 · 105 min read

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Episode: Sister Wives talk and interview with former AUB members Melanie and Cory from Notes to Self 444

Sister Wives talk and interview with former AUB members Melanie and Cory from Notes to Self 444

Author: Tess & Brooke Brigham
Duration: 01:44:27

Episode Shownotes

Melanie and Cory were raised in the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) church in polygamist families and later married after they both left the church. We discuss their childhoods and family history, their experience with members of the Brown family, and of course Sister Wives. This is a very insightful episode

and we thoroughly enjoyed them and their openness and honesty. You can find Melanie at Cory on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@NotestoSelf444TikTok and Instagram @notestoself444We have a PATREON! click on link below to check out the extra content:PatreonPlease SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and give us a 5-star rating and review.We are on Instagram and TikTok @psychlegalpopEmail: [email protected]#sisterwives #sisterwivesseason19 #notestoself444 #notestoself444melanieandcory #notestoself444melanie #notestoself444cory #apostolicunitedbrethren #apostolicunitedbrethrenchurch #aub #aubchurch #kodybrown #meribrown #janellebrown #christinebrown #davidwoolley #robynbrown #tlc #sisterwivestlc #realityTV #psychology #attorney #therapist #law #lawyer #popculture #popularculture #polygamy #coyotepass Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_08
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00:01:54 Speaker_04
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Psych Legal Pop podcast. This is a podcast where we talk about popular culture through the lens of an attorney and a therapist. I'm Brooke Brigham. I'm the attorney. And I'm Tess Brigham. I'm the therapist.

00:02:09 Speaker_04
And today we have a very special episode. We have two guests, Melanie and Corey. who are married and they have a very successful YouTube show. They go by the name Notes to Stealth 444 and they have a YouTube channel.

00:02:33 Speaker_04
They're also on TikTok and Instagram and they talk primarily about sister wives and about polygamy and about the AUB, the church that the Brown family came from and also Melanie and Corey came from the AUB. And so we're going to get into that.

00:02:52 Speaker_04
So welcome. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, one night I was scrolling through TikTok and a video came up and You started talking, Melanie, and you said, you know, my father is the current prophet of the AUB.

00:03:11 Speaker_04
And I grew up and I'm just like, what, what? And at the time, I think you had just started talking about this was not too long ago, like, I don't know, three, four months ago.

00:03:24 Speaker_04
And so I watched all of your TikTok videos, and then you started the YouTube channel. And you guys have a lot of content on there you do live, you know, after the episode, you do you do you do it while the episode is airing?

00:03:42 Speaker_03
You watch it on the YouTube? No, I have done that twice recently. But before it was just we would do it the next day.

00:03:50 Speaker_04
Okay yeah so you go through the episodes the next day and then sometimes you just talk about a certain topic and then people tons of people are asking you questions writing in questions and you answer people's questions so it's just really great.

00:04:07 Speaker_04
So if you could both just maybe you know introduce yourselves like how how you grew up and, you know, your story and being in the church and then no longer being in the church. Just kind of give us an idea of your history.

00:04:24 Speaker_03
So yeah, I guess I'll go first. I, yeah, I actually started my podcast on YouTube first. And my children told me, Mom, you got to get on TikTok and do shorter form content so people know who you are, and then tell little clip stories.

00:04:39 Speaker_03
And so that's kind of how I got on TikTok. And then TikTok blew up. But yeah, we were I was born and raised in AUB.

00:04:45 Speaker_03
My parents were both converted by the original prophet of the AUB or the original leader of the AUB, which was Christine Brown's grandfather. Um, and so he's the one who converted my dad. Um, and so, yeah, I grew up born and raised.

00:04:59 Speaker_03
I'm my mother's first child and I'm my dad's, I'm my father's third child. So, um, he, my mom's the second wife and we had, my mom had 11 children. I grew up with four mothers and 34 siblings.

00:05:14 Speaker_03
Um, so there was quite a lot of us, uh, he's since had a lot more wives since then, but that's what I grew up with. That was the general gist of it.

00:05:23 Speaker_03
Um, I am the oldest of, you know, there's three older grandchildren older than me, but I'm was like the oldest girl basically, um, out of about 350 grandchildren, um, in the polygamous community. So yeah, it was tough.

00:05:38 Speaker_03
It was a, it was a tough way to grow up for sure. I got married a week after I turned 17. and had my first baby nine months later. So I was a very young mom. And then I ended up leaving the AUB at 22 years old, to almost 23. And then I had a sick baby.

00:05:57 Speaker_03
And I ran back, I thought God was punishing me. And I ran back to the AUB at 23. And so only I was only gone for about a year, and then ran back to there and stayed until I was about 25. And left for good at 25.

00:06:11 Speaker_04
Is this in Montana or Utah?

00:06:13 Speaker_03
I was born and raised in Utah. So it was definitely a long journey of being married 10 years in an abusive relationship in the AUB, for sure.

00:06:27 Speaker_03
Um, we dated and courted a couple of girls, but never actually became a sister wife, um, just went through the dating process. So that's, I mean, in a nutshell, there's my life. And then Corey and I got married. Uh, I left the AUB permanently at 25.

00:06:41 Speaker_03
Corey and I got together, uh, when I, we got married when I was 27. So we've been together 25 years now. Wow. And you have kids together? We do. I had three children when we got married and then we have two together. So we have five total.

00:06:56 Speaker_04
Wow.

00:06:57 Speaker_03
And two grandchildren.

00:06:58 Speaker_04
Congratulations.

00:06:59 Speaker_03
Yeah, thanks. They're the life of love of our lives. We absolutely adore them. adopt two other grandchildren. I basically raised my little brother, too, and his two little kids call us call us grandparents, too. So we have the four that we claim. Yeah.

00:07:17 Speaker_03
Yeah, it's really fun. So go ahead.

00:07:19 Speaker_07
I was very similar. My mom was the second wife. I was the first born of the second wife. I have two older brothers from a previous marriage. We moved up to Montana when I was a kid, probably four or five years old.

00:07:38 Speaker_07
I'd probably well, probably around that time. And my dad had nine wives and 39 kids in one great big house. And then they had a smaller house right next door. So I was raised in Oh, my gosh, we called it the compound or the ranch up in Montana.

00:07:58 Speaker_07
And so yeah, I'm the oldest of my mom's kids. And My dad's third of my dad's kids too. So 39 kids is what he raised all in one house or two houses. But we all did dinner together.

00:08:21 Speaker_07
And yeah, I left the I left and came down here to Utah, left the AUB at 18. And then I was excommunicated a little bit later. So, um, and haven't been back. I wasn't going to date anybody within the AUB. And then, uh, I wound him.

00:08:45 Speaker_07
And, uh, so, so I just, uh, we made an agreement that I wasn't going back. We weren't going back to the AUB. We weren't going to be polygamists. And so after that agreement, we got married. So, yeah.

00:08:59 Speaker_09
Growing up, what was the feeling that you had about what was happening around you, for example, because at 17, when you got married, Melanie, were you thinking, Oh, this is great. I'm getting married. I'm an adult. I'm starting my life.

00:09:14 Speaker_09
Or were you like, what am what's happening? Yeah, it was more that was like, so. So inside, did you always feel like there's something I don't know if this is for me? I don't know.

00:09:24 Speaker_03
Yeah, it was the circumstances around why I got married were, my dad had doubled up, we'd always lived in our own homes, each wife had their own home. And then when I on my 16th birthday, he doubled us all up. And there just wasn't space.

00:09:38 Speaker_03
There were 17 children in a 2000 square foot house and there just wasn't space for me. I didn't have a bed. I didn't have a dresser. I didn't have anywhere to sleep.

00:09:48 Speaker_03
I slept on the floor quite often for a year before I got married because it was on my 16th birthday. that we moved in. And I had purchased a car when I was 16 and a half, and that's where I kept my clothes mostly. And I just didn't have anywhere to be.

00:10:04 Speaker_03
There was no space for me. So this man came along and you know, my parents were very concerned about a relationship that I had started forming with another boy, and they did not approve of that boy.

00:10:18 Speaker_03
So this other, you know, my ex husband came along, and he was approvable. And it was like, Hey, here you go, there's just really no space for you here. So get married and let someone else take care of you.

00:10:28 Speaker_03
And so that was more the circumstances behind why I got married so young.

00:10:32 Speaker_04
Oh, that sounds terrifying. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine like, Wow. Sorry. Oh, I was going to say, Corey, so you say you got excommunicated.

00:10:46 Speaker_04
What was the reason for that is because just because you didn't follow along with the program or I didn't follow any of the rules of the AUB.

00:10:54 Speaker_07
I was disobedient in every way. It's interesting, the ranch is owned by the AUB. I was leaving anyhow. I had a job down here in Utah. We were starting a company. I was packing up my bags, and so they basically did the excommunication.

00:11:17 Speaker_07
And in the excommunication, it was like, you're no longer allowed on priesthood property. Never come back. And I've disobeyed that, too. I go up and see my family. I've disobeyed everything that I was taught growing up.

00:11:34 Speaker_07
I was frustrated with the way that I was raised and the double standard on everything, and so I disobeyed a lot. I wasn't a very good older son. They expected me to be, because I was the firstborn into the principle.

00:11:52 Speaker_07
I was supposed to follow all the rules, get many wives. Growing up with nine women in the same house, I didn't ever want to get married.

00:12:05 Speaker_04
You saw what was in your future.

00:12:09 Speaker_07
When I got out, I didn't want a relationship. I didn't want to get married. And so I was very stubborn and didn't get married until I was 29.

00:12:20 Speaker_03
So you were 30 when we got married. Yeah, he was 30 when we got married.

00:12:24 Speaker_07
I was not, I had no I don't know. I had no plans on getting married and having kids. I was just done with the noise. And I liked being alone. I liked the quietness of my own space.

00:12:41 Speaker_04
So yeah. Did you guys meet? Because of the AUB or did you meet randomly?

00:12:47 Speaker_03
Yeah, what's funny is that we grew up, we had so many mutual friends, but we never knew each other until after I had left the AUB. And he was, so my best friend was married to his brother.

00:13:02 Speaker_03
And so we, my ex-husband and I, we owned a houseboat down in Lake Powell, which is a big lake here in Utah. So we owned a houseboat and we invited my best friend and her husband and they said, Hey, can we bring some of our brothers?

00:13:16 Speaker_03
So they brought some of their brothers, which was Corey and a couple of the other boys. And that's when I met him and we just became good friends because I was married with children. I had no intention. I didn't think I was ever going to get divorced.

00:13:27 Speaker_03
And so we just became really good friends. And I just liked him as a person and I was safe. So he could be like his regular self because I was safe because I was married. And so he could just banter and we could get along really, really well.

00:13:41 Speaker_03
So it wasn't until that's really when we met and I had already left the AUB. This is during the year that I had left the AUB. And so that's when we that's when we met. And then I

00:13:52 Speaker_03
Um, so we, so we only saw each other once a year for three years while he would come down to our, like our houseboat once a year for the, you know, three years. And then that's just, yeah. And then when I got divorced, I.

00:14:05 Speaker_03
and got it called him and said, Hey, you want to want to go out? And he was like, what? So he was stunned, because he was like, wait, but we had so many mutual friends growing up. And we just never crossed paths.

00:14:18 Speaker_03
We just never saw the ABS got about 10,000 members in it. And so there's a lot of people that I don't know, I know of, or I know, you know, I'm acquaintances with them, but there's a lot of people in there that makes it easy to not know.

00:14:32 Speaker_03
And where I got young, I got married so young, I was off the market. And so I just, I was wrapped up in my children. I wasn't wrapped up in anything else. So, so yeah.

00:14:42 Speaker_09
I'm curious about your siblings growing up. Were the two of you, did both of you feel a little bit like outliers? Or was it no, there was a good chunk of the kids that were not happy or would complain and So I would, yeah. What was the makeup?

00:14:59 Speaker_09
Do you think like half of the kids weren't happy or is it, and then there was like maybe one or two that were going along with the program?

00:15:07 Speaker_07
Out of 39 children that my dad and the mothers raised, three of them are still a part of the family. Wow, wow. 36 of them have left there. And I had an older brother that had left too. And, but when we left, We, we built a home down here.

00:15:29 Speaker_07
And so anytime anybody wanted to leave the AUB, they could come and stay with us. There were three of us brothers that had a home down here in Utah.

00:15:40 Speaker_07
We had brothers coming down, sisters, they were all leaving, they were, they were exhausted of the environment. Especially the environment of the compound up there. If you watch Big Love, you've got the city. We were the compound on Big Love.

00:16:01 Speaker_03
And that comes with a whole different social structure there. Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. And out of our 34 kids, only five of them I think are still a part of it or have anything.

00:16:13 Speaker_03
Now, when you're young and you're growing up, then so many of them married into that, but they didn't stay. They left. And so that's same with my, in Corey's family.

00:16:23 Speaker_03
He had quite a few sisters marry that way because they out of obligation thought they had to whatever, and then they left afterwards. And kind of like I did.

00:16:33 Speaker_03
So back in the day, I tell this on one of my podcasts, you know, out of the 350 grandchildren, no one had left before. And there was no it just you just didn't do that. You didn't get married that way.

00:16:44 Speaker_03
Now there had been kids who had rebelled and never gotten married that way. But there, I was the first one to leave to have gotten married in the polygamist church. I never legally got married, I only got married in the church.

00:16:59 Speaker_03
And then I was the first one to leave. Wow.

00:17:02 Speaker_04
So what happened after like, what was your the reaction of your parents?

00:17:07 Speaker_03
Oh, it was brutal. It was really hard. My grandma was probably the worst to me out of everyone. She was really, really harsh on me.

00:17:16 Speaker_03
And because I was now setting an example, and it kind of gave an unspoken permission for a lot of other people to leave too. And so, um, Yeah, I got treated very, very poorly.

00:17:27 Speaker_03
And what's interesting to me is some of the people who treated me the most poorly have now left the AUB and have TV shows. And so it's just funny to watch. Sometimes I'll yell at the TV like really? Are you kidding me?

00:17:41 Speaker_03
So so that's interesting to me sometimes when I watch And I know we all have to evolve and come to our own, you know, conclusions when we get there. But yeah, it was hard. I was not. I was treated extremely poorly.

00:17:58 Speaker_09
So and then when you came back after that year, how was it then? Were they were they nice? Was it nice again? Or were you still like, Oh, well, you left?

00:18:07 Speaker_03
Yeah, that a lot of that there's, I do a podcast on an S versus them mentality and cold. And it was very much, I was an us, and then I became a them.

00:18:16 Speaker_03
And then when I came back, I was welcomed back, but I was always welcomed back just at an arm's length, because now I was like, not quite one of them, but not quite one of us either.

00:18:30 Speaker_04
So how, how does one become the prophet? How did your father get that position? What is the process of that? Who decides that?

00:18:39 Speaker_03
So they have, you start, you know, with, you start at, You know, there's different positions, bishops, 70s, and you just kind of work your way up eventually.

00:18:50 Speaker_03
So when I was 19, my dad was put on the leadership, and there's 12 apostles, that's built very much the same as the LDS church. There's 12 apostles, and then one prophet. And it's supposed to go seniority.

00:19:03 Speaker_03
But the AUB makes up their rules as they go along, it depends on what your last name is. And my dad just worked his way up in seniority. The last prophet died, and my dad was the next in line.

00:19:15 Speaker_09
Okay, so how are you? How is your family treated differently? Since he's the prophet? Was there a real distinction of how you your family, you and your family versus other families?

00:19:25 Speaker_03
Um, well, I haven't been around the AUB since he has been the prophet. He's okay for about three years. Oh, and so that's why people started speaking out publicly.

00:19:35 Speaker_03
Some of my siblings, that was a huge wake up call for my siblings, where I kind of went through that at 19. When he was put on the leadership, and I was like, Wait, what? you know, I grew up with this man, how is he? How is he a leader?

00:19:47 Speaker_03
And so, um, and he is very much a leader. And I'm not trying to, you know, just from a child's perspective, and it was hard to watch him be put in a leadership position for me.

00:19:57 Speaker_03
So I went through a lot of that deconstruction stuff, or, you know, crisis of faith stuff way back then, whereas that now my siblings are like, Wait, what? How is he? So a lot of my siblings are now just coming to that.

00:20:09 Speaker_03
So they started speaking out publicly. And which motivated me to speak out publicly because I felt like some of them got misrepresented. And so that's why I started speaking out publicly about it.

00:20:20 Speaker_03
So I had no intention of ever speaking publicly about it. But when I watched a couple of my siblings be you know, interviewed and stuff like that. It felt like a huge misrepresentation.

00:20:35 Speaker_03
So, yeah, so I just decided to start my own thing and start talking about it. People tell us all the time, you guys need to write books, like you need to talk about your childhood.

00:20:43 Speaker_03
And my daughter says just the other day, you guys need to do funny stories about dad growing up. I'm like, little girl, they're not funny. Dad tries to make them funny, so that they're dramatic as we as we share them.

00:20:56 Speaker_04
Yeah, you know, I think what what is so interesting about you guys, and why so many people are, you know, just hungry for information from you is because the Sister Wives television show has not been honest. You know, it's just been a lie.

00:21:12 Speaker_04
We've, we've come to find out this has just been a lie from day one. And they're just now starting to, you know, be honest about some things. And so to hear you talk about how it really was.

00:21:25 Speaker_04
It's like, yes, you know, and, and, and, like you said, you know, now all these people who they've all left to because, and they probably would have left a lot sooner if they weren't on this TV show, because they weren't happy.

00:21:39 Speaker_11
Right.

00:21:40 Speaker_04
Um, so that's what's so just, I think, fascinating that you're, you're able to willing and able to talk about this so openly, and honestly, oh, we try to dump some humor into it.

00:21:55 Speaker_09
But there definitely seems to be an atmosphere, and we've talked about this on our show about Sister Wives, where, you know, not necessarily lying, but not representing yourself authentically seems to be something, right?

00:22:10 Speaker_09
there's lies, you know, everyone has these sort of family myths and lies, right. But it felt like one of the things with sister wives was they didn't, in some ways, I think they didn't even recognize how much they were lying to us.

00:22:23 Speaker_09
Because I think that they this is what their lives have always been.

00:22:27 Speaker_09
I mean, Christine being a great example of how she speaks about her childhood versus how her mom speaks about her childhood, you know, and when Annie left the family, like what that was like and, you know, the way she describes it is very different than what it seems like the reality was.

00:22:44 Speaker_03
And we were always taught to do that. You know, our, our kids, it's funny, one of our daughter's friends, she said, you, these guys are crazy. They hate each other with a smile on their face.

00:22:54 Speaker_03
And we were always taught that we were, and you don't, I did not realize how dishonest I was. I didn't even realize, I always thought I was an integrable person. until I started to leave.

00:23:06 Speaker_03
And then I realized, oh my gosh, I didn't even know what the word integrity actually meant. And so because we were taught to cover things up, to be sweet, hide your true feelings, you know, you're always in the refiner's fire.

00:23:19 Speaker_03
And so you're constantly, you know, suppressing all the time. And so I don't think that it was a, it was a conscious, I'm going to lie or mislead. It's more of a suppression of emotion, because we always want to do what's best for the family.

00:23:34 Speaker_03
We always want to make the family first, we always want to make the gospel first religion first, that's what matters the most. And we don't want to misrepresent that.

00:23:43 Speaker_03
So put a smile on your face and get out there and show the world how wonderful this is. And it's just not true.

00:23:50 Speaker_07
And if you tell your truth or how you're feeling, or point out the discrepancies in their teachings and stuff like that, you're labeled rebellious, you're labeled.

00:24:05 Speaker_07
And so and then you get chastised over and over again about your rebellious nature and stuff like that, to the point where you just shut up and, and try to live your life

00:24:18 Speaker_07
a lot of times, I just tried to live my life, because I knew as soon as I turned 18, I could leave.

00:24:24 Speaker_04
Yeah. And I know, Melanie, I've heard you say several times in your videos that, that it is a cult. It is. Yeah. And, you know, and I think, you know, not all religions are cool. But, you know, from your perspective, it is. Yeah.

00:24:39 Speaker_04
So there's like all this mind control. And yeah, and just kidding, that's how they keep people keep people there until they can't take it anymore. Yeah.

00:24:51 Speaker_09
Well, and kids are very vulnerable, right? Because kids, we know this, that

00:24:56 Speaker_09
kids need and they need their parents love and approval that's survival you know we have we have to be loved and accepted by our parents because that's how we're able to live it's such an innate instinct and this is why we see people who even if they've their parents have abused them or there's been issues that there's this you know desire to want to go back and go back with the with their parents or have their parents love and approval so i can't imagine what it's like to

00:25:23 Speaker_09
at, you know, 16, set right, start to rebel, or not maybe start there, but you had been to really have different ideas. Because that's your survival. Absolutely.

00:25:35 Speaker_03
And Corey makes himself sound like a rebel, but we were very good kids. We did what we were supposed to do. We really did. I just asked questions. We just asked a lot of questions. And that was considered rebellious.

00:25:47 Speaker_03
But we always tried to conform and do what we were supposed to do. I did, you know, there was times where I did try to go against what my parents said, and I got smacked into line real quick.

00:25:59 Speaker_03
And so I, you know, we were both I would say we, we were the two that would people would least expect to get up and publicly talk about things because we did we did fall in line. We did try to make our parents proud of us and happy.

00:26:13 Speaker_03
I mean, I literally didn't stand up to my dad till I was 26 was first time I told my dad no. And that was to date Corey. Yeah, it's like, excuse me.

00:26:26 Speaker_10
I'm 26.

00:26:27 Speaker_03
Yeah, yeah. And so I'm six years old, and he sold Corey, no, you stay away from her. She's going to take her three small children. My baby was one.

00:26:36 Speaker_03
And she's going to marry somebody who already has an established family and wives that can just take care of her and her kids. I'm like, I don't want I don't want my life to just be taken care of by someone else. I I'm okay to do that on my own.

00:26:50 Speaker_03
So that was the first time I ever And my dad was angry. He was furious at me. He's like, What did you say to me, young lady, when I told him no, I said, I said, I'll date him if I want to date him.

00:27:01 Speaker_03
And so that was really like he got aggressive, like he got big and aggressive at me. And I was I was terrified. I hadn't been lived in the home for 10 years. And I was still felt that way. So

00:27:14 Speaker_03
deconstructing, deconstructing those types of beliefs that you are literally born with are it's not an easy task to do. It's a lifetime task.

00:27:23 Speaker_04
No. Yeah.

00:27:23 Speaker_03
Did you guys?

00:27:24 Speaker_04
Did you guys ever go to therapy? Or like, how did you do well?

00:27:32 Speaker_03
So yeah, yeah, we really did. And then about four years ago, we started to do some plant medicine. So we've done ayahuasca, a couple of different things like that, I feel like that's prepared us to be able to speak about it publicly.

00:27:44 Speaker_03
Because we knew we were going to get backlash from family members, we knew we were going to have people come back at us for that we love. You know, and we don't in our goal is not to hurt our family.

00:27:55 Speaker_03
And so we were trying to decide how do we talk about this and not hurt the people that we love. And, and so I feel like some of those avenues of healing have helped us get to that point where we're solid in who we are.

00:28:08 Speaker_03
And so we can talk about what we've been through.

00:28:11 Speaker_09
Do either of you do you follow Brene Brown? Yes, I love her. Did you did you read Braving the Wilderness? Yes. Yeah. And that's what when you both of you it reminds me of that book, which is and I recommend it to clients all the time.

00:28:23 Speaker_09
It's you know, it's an easy read. It's like 175 pages, but it's very much about this idea of what does it mean to go out on a limb?

00:28:31 Speaker_09
What does it mean to declare and go out on a limb and be and how incredibly difficult and lonely it is to get out on that limb and, and do it, do it on your own. And it's, it's very easy.

00:28:47 Speaker_09
when to look at someone when they've got a bunch of people behind them, but it all starts from that first moment of going out on that limb. I can't imagine what it was like for both of you.

00:28:58 Speaker_09
It sounds like for the females, the next step in life is always marriage and children. For men, was it either you're going to get married and have children and have multiple wives or you're out? you're out of the group. Is that it is?

00:29:15 Speaker_09
Is there any other avenue to go besides getting married and having a bunch of kids? Is there? Is there any encouragement of going to college or starting a business or? Yeah.

00:29:25 Speaker_07
Not when we were growing up. Interesting part. So when I grew up in Pinesdale, I was homeschooled. I, I graduated with packets, I was homeschooled. my younger siblings, because my dad was in the military, and so they get

00:29:49 Speaker_07
I didn't know that at the time, but any of his kids could go to college. All of my younger siblings have gone and got their college degrees.

00:30:02 Speaker_07
I've got a lot of siblings that are very, very educated and in college, but us older ones, I was never given that opportunity. I was never told. I had to be homeschooled. And then I was supposed to go out and work and get a career going.

00:30:23 Speaker_07
And then, yes, they offered marriage. And I was like, nope, I don't want to get married. If I get married, it's going to be to one wife that I love. And I was recommended that I get a wife. And I was like, absolutely not.

00:30:43 Speaker_07
So that I was very, I was rebellious on that, that I was only going to marry somebody that I loved and not obligated to not obligated to.

00:30:53 Speaker_04
And yeah, that takes a lot of courage, too.

00:30:56 Speaker_07
Because a lot of a lot of people did marry a lot of It's interesting, I would love to analyze polygamous marriages, because a lot of the kids, people my age, the men my age that did get married, have all gone through divorces.

00:31:14 Speaker_07
And I'm not saying anything, I've been divorced, we were divorced also.

00:31:18 Speaker_03
And then got back together, we got divorced, we were divorced, we got back together.

00:31:23 Speaker_09
Oh, that's a good story.

00:31:24 Speaker_07
I I would probably say divorce, probably in, I think it's 50% here in America. I would honestly say in AUB, it's probably closer to 60. I'd say even higher, 75% where they'll marry. and then find out it's not going to work.

00:31:52 Speaker_07
And then they'll marry somebody else within the group or stuff like that.

00:31:56 Speaker_03
So, yeah, it's very true. Out of my dad's eight wives, only three of them were originally married to him. The other five have been married to someone else previously. So divorce rate is very, very high in the, I would agree with that.

00:32:10 Speaker_03
They just stay within most of them just stay within the AUB and then they just marry amongst themselves again.

00:32:16 Speaker_04
Wow. Psych legal pop. We'll be right back after these messages.

00:32:23 Speaker_01
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00:33:07 Speaker_08
Bada, bada boom, sold. Huh? Just sold my car on Carvana. Dropping it off and getting paid today.

00:33:14 Speaker_05
Already?

00:33:14 Speaker_08
What, you still haven't sold yours? You told me about it months ago. I just... Is the offer good?

00:33:19 Speaker_05
Oh, the offer's great.

00:33:20 Speaker_08
Don't have another car yet?

00:33:22 Speaker_05
I could trade it in for this car I love.

00:33:24 Speaker_08
Come on, what are we waiting for?

00:33:26 Speaker_05
Ah, you're right.

00:33:28 Speaker_06
Let's go. Whether you're looking to sell your car right now or just whenever feels right, go to carvana.com and sell your car the convenient way. Terms and conditions apply.

00:33:41 Speaker_04
Did you go to public school, Melanie, or were you homeschooled too?

00:33:45 Speaker_03
I did. I went through public school most of the time, but sorry, my hair is a little sick. I did go through public school most of the time, but because I was the oldest, I was pulled out of school a lot.

00:33:56 Speaker_03
So I was not very educated at all, because my mom needed help, or I needed to be at home to help. I failed the third grade completely, because I had, well, I got chicken pox, I mean, but then I was home a lot to help with other babies.

00:34:11 Speaker_03
And so my mom got cancer when I was 10, and she had pretty severe cancer. So I missed a whole lot of school because of it. not very educated person. I mean, now that I'm older, I've educated myself. But I wasn't at the time. No.

00:34:28 Speaker_09
Oh, so is there anyone? This might seem like a strange question. But is there anyone that you know, that's happy? Like, you feel like genuinely happy?

00:34:37 Speaker_09
Like, what situation in all of this is, you know, I would think maybe being the head, one of the apostles, are those people like, happy and living their best lives is is because it doesn't seem like this really works. Yeah.

00:34:53 Speaker_03
No, I don't think the goal is to be happy. The goal is to be you're in the refiner's fire all the time so that you can have a better life in the in the afterlife. So your goal is not to be happy. Your goal is to do the work of God.

00:35:07 Speaker_03
That's what your goal is.

00:35:08 Speaker_09
That Puritan. Yeah.

00:35:10 Speaker_07
It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be miserable. Those are what define that's what they tell you. That's what defines that you're doing the work. Yeah. And you'll be happy in the afterlife. You'll have that bliss in the afterlife.

00:35:27 Speaker_03
So yeah, did you really, really believe that? No, I didn't. But no. Obviously, we didn't because we were like, No, we don't want to do that. We want to, you know, we want to live our best lives now. And I feel like we've taught that to our children.

00:35:41 Speaker_03
And we see the success in our children now. And we are, we know we did a good job breaking them away from that because of of their lives now and where they're at. And they've never had to experience anything close to what we did.

00:35:56 Speaker_03
And so, and they are, they have the opportunities that our children have now are things we never, we, they were impossible for us. And so, and, and so I love to watch our children take those big, huge leaps and do those big, huge things that

00:36:11 Speaker_03
were like, Oh, my gosh, that would never have never been in my realm of possibility if I had to broken away from it. So and expose myself to opportunity, just because you just don't have opportunity at all in the AAB.

00:36:24 Speaker_03
There's just really nothing there's a select few that go to medical school select few that go to, you know, and there's a dentist and a couple things like that. And those people are given opportunity.

00:36:34 Speaker_03
But not everyone has that opportunity, nor do they know that they that opportunity is even available.

00:36:41 Speaker_04
Yeah, because they're isolated on these compounds. Would you say that the membership of the church is going down or remained pretty steady?

00:36:53 Speaker_03
The last prophet was so controversial that they lost a huge amount of membership. I know that they did when he came into position.

00:37:02 Speaker_03
And so I'm not sure, I think they did lose quite a few members, but I think that they've been pulling a few members back in too. And so I've always been told the numbers roughly around 10,000.

00:37:12 Speaker_03
And it's just always kind of been that way my whole life, because they have them from, you know, members from Canada to Mexico, some in England. So it's very diverse in you know, geographical areas of where they're cover.

00:37:25 Speaker_03
So there's a lot of, I would say that there's a lot more that do independent thinking than they ever have. I would say that is definitely on the rise. And, but the membership, I think, is kind of wavered up and down here and there throughout the years.

00:37:43 Speaker_03
But I think I think they're still pretty strong. Yeah.

00:37:46 Speaker_09
So on the show, we hear I'm just thinking of Janelle and finite resources. So what is that what it felt like?

00:37:55 Speaker_09
Was it because we've seen this a lot on the show of just there's not enough money to go around because there's so many people are so many wives and how do you do this? So did it feel that way when you were younger?

00:38:06 Speaker_09
Did it feel or was it or is it more of no people take on as many wives and children as they can financially take on? Yeah.

00:38:14 Speaker_03
No, we were poor. We were so poor. Because we lived in the city. Like I think Corey tells me about his upbringing. And I'm like, you guys were rich. You guys ate good food. Like we didn't have food most of the time. And we lived off potatoes.

00:38:30 Speaker_07
So did we, but we, we grew up on a farm. And so we raised chickens, we raised turkeys, we had 13 acres of, we raised our food, put food storage away. So probably the best I've ever eaten in my life was when I was a

00:38:52 Speaker_07
a kid, a youth, because we had just farm grown food. And then my dad and his first wife were both retired military. And then there was two other mothers that had, we called them grandmothers, but they both were professionals and had pensions.

00:39:15 Speaker_07
And so it wasn't like, I mean, we weren't rich, means were there, but we worked. I mean, I worked from a young age running the farm doing which I, I, I wish my kids had had done some of that.

00:39:33 Speaker_07
But I, my brother and I worked since the minute we could start working the farm, changing pipes, doing all that stuff, we worked from a very young age and got a good, and put in the food. So we always had food.

00:39:51 Speaker_09
Was this issue of, because what we're seeing a lot of in this most recent season of Sister Wives is just about money and who gets the money and who doesn't and who's in charge.

00:40:01 Speaker_09
So I'm assuming that it's always probably the father, the male that's in charge.

00:40:07 Speaker_09
is that very common to does each household sort of split up money in different ways or this sort of idea of like did does everyone get the same amount or i could imagine you probably saw too people must have favorite wives some of these men must right and did you see a bit of like what's happening now you're using the term some every

00:40:31 Speaker_09
didn't want to assume.

00:40:34 Speaker_03
Every family has a favorite wife. It's not. It's nothing that and it's funny to watch the episodes with our mothers because they get so angry.

00:40:44 Speaker_03
And they're like, you know, my mom is very, you know, she's always been very straight laced, but you get her in front of an episode of Sister Wife and she's swearing at the TV. She's yelling because it's just so it's frustrating to watch that.

00:40:57 Speaker_03
But there is finance, especially this year with the finances.

00:41:00 Speaker_03
So season, because unfortunately, that is what happens a lot of times is that all the finances, you get one or two women who are like, Yeah, we're all about the family, what can we give to the family, all of our financial resources go into the family.

00:41:16 Speaker_03
And then you've got the one who says, What can the family give me? And And there's always one or two of those. And they literally milk dry the entire family funds. And it's disgusting to watch. And it happens all the time.

00:41:31 Speaker_04
In one of your videos, you talk about, you called it the entitled wife. And of course, immediately Robin came to mind. The way that you described that she's not a contributor. Yeah, she's in it for like, what can I get out of this?

00:41:49 Speaker_04
I got babysitters, I got nannies, house cleaners, whatever. So yeah, so that's a type of type of life, right?

00:42:02 Speaker_09
Go ahead. Is does the, and I assume those are always the favorite wives, because you couldn't get away with that unless you were the favorite, right? And it sounds like the men did not do a very good job of hiding it at all, of who was the favorite.

00:42:17 Speaker_09
And was that accepted? Like that? Yeah, someone's always gonna have a favorite. And that's just how it is.

00:42:23 Speaker_03
The women fought against it. But what does it do them? Yeah.

00:42:27 Speaker_03
And what's funny about that video that I made about wife types, we were driving, when I made it, I was like, you know, I think I'm gonna make a video, I actually described my dad's wives, I didn't describe and I wasn't even talking about the Browns, I was talking about all my dad's wives, I just went in order.

00:42:41 Speaker_03
And so what are the other types?

00:42:45 Speaker_04
other than the entitled way.

00:42:46 Speaker_03
Put me on the spot. Got the professional or the worker wife. Yeah. And the ticket wife who she doesn't really even care if she's married to him. She just needs a man to get her into heaven because women can't get themselves into heaven.

00:43:00 Speaker_03
And so she just, you know, my dad's last wife was that way. She just, she passed, she only married him just to get herself into heaven. And then she passed away. And so he never even really had a relationship with her.

00:43:14 Speaker_03
Um, and then you've got that entitled wife. And a lot of times you'll have some wives have two or three of these personalities, you know, but then the first wife is always that one who holds the most control over the man.

00:43:27 Speaker_03
I think emotionally because he's, she's his first intimate experience typically. And so if she crosses him, Yeah, he's the meanest to her, because he feels the most betrayed by her because, you know, he gave her this part of himself.

00:43:44 Speaker_03
And now she's betrayed that. So I'm trying to think what the other wives were. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because, sorry, you put me on the spot. So I'm like, Oh, but yeah, the scriptural person. So one that knows the gospel, she knows how to live the gospel.

00:43:58 Speaker_03
She knows how to everybody else. Yeah, she's going to tell everyone else how to live the gospel. So I just kind of went in my dad's wife's order. I probably shouldn't say that because if they ever see this, they're going to be like, which one am I?

00:44:13 Speaker_07
Yeah, no.

00:44:14 Speaker_03
Oh, they know they don't. Yeah, they don't need to be told. But yeah, it's really it's interesting. And sometimes they, you know, my dad had a favorite wife for a really long time.

00:44:23 Speaker_03
And then the new one came in, and she was the cute one and the young one and everything. And she became the favorite wife. And now she's kind of maintained that position for the last 2530 years, she's maintained that position.

00:44:35 Speaker_03
And a couple of wives have tried to give her some good run for her money, but she she knows how to for some reason, you know, take control over my dad again and get her own way. So it's hard to watch. It's hard to watch as an adult child.

00:44:49 Speaker_03
It was hard to experience as a child because a lot of times we suffered the consequences of those actions. We're the ones who got the lectures and the beatings and the whatever because we weren't because we would see what would happen. Now as an adult,

00:45:04 Speaker_03
It's really hard to watch our parents go through things like that. I would tell my mom, mom, get your name on something financially, get your name on something.

00:45:13 Speaker_03
Mom, you know, when I, when I went into real estate 25 years ago is when I started to realize the ramifications of that. I didn't, we didn't know that. We were never taught anything like that.

00:45:23 Speaker_03
And so, and I would get this little pat on the head, like, you don't understand, we're doing what's best for the family. And but what she didn't understand is, if she's no longer a part of that family, she's not entitled to those resources.

00:45:36 Speaker_04
Yeah, do you think that do you think that because, you know, I'm really shocked at how little like, on the show, like how Janelle and Merrick, well, all of them, but especially Janelle, like didn't protect themselves with any of this money stuff. And

00:45:53 Speaker_04
You know, I guess that do you think that was her attitude that, because Mary seems to have the attitude, oh, Cody would never screw me over that way. And I guess Janelle had the same attitude. Now she doesn't.

00:46:07 Speaker_04
But yeah, it's really, you know, the considering how Janelle so proud of herself for being like the worker bee and, you know, the financial person and this and that. It's like, well, not really, you know, not Didn't protect yourself at all.

00:46:26 Speaker_03
Because you're taught to you trust this man.

00:46:28 Speaker_07
He's the righteous head. Yeah, you're supposed he, he would no longer be righteous if he became this person, and he's supposed to be the righteous head. And so then when he changes to who he is now, then they're like, dang it, we, we messed up.

00:46:50 Speaker_07
Yeah, you did. And your kids are telling you 20 years ago to get things in order so that if that ever happened, if he just wanted that one wife, that you would be protected too, after putting everything into this family for 50 years.

00:47:10 Speaker_03
But that's just so hard for to even comprehend. Hard to even it's like, because you're taught these are eternal families, these are eternal relationships. I never thought that I would ever get divorced.

00:47:23 Speaker_03
I remember going and buying items with my ex-husband and they're like, do you want to be on title? And I'm like, Oh, I don't think it matters. I didn't care.

00:47:30 Speaker_03
Fortunately, when we bought our first home, the, the loan officer that I used was a woman who insisted that I be on the title. I wasn't on the loan, but she insisted that I be on the title. Good for her. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah, I was 19 years old.

00:47:45 Speaker_03
I had no idea how I had no clue. And so she really like walked me through the I did the I did the loan. My husband just showed up with the check.

00:47:55 Speaker_03
But I went through the whole loan process and she made sure and she hadn't have he would have sold that home out from underneath me. I would have had nothing when I got divorced. He literally liquidated all of our assets.

00:48:06 Speaker_03
He turned into Cody Cody is who he is now is very common for these men when they get divorced. That's what they turn into. And my ex husband was I would say he's about 10 steps worse than Cody is.

00:48:18 Speaker_03
And he liquidated everything and he couldn't liquidate the home. So that was the only thing that I got.

00:48:24 Speaker_04
Because because Cody is really Yeah, he he really is trying to screw them over. you know, after all, after all these years of talking about, you know, the family, the family, this and that, I mean, it's, it's really, he's really changed.

00:48:42 Speaker_04
I mean, do you do you think that he feels, I don't know, like emasculated by all of this? Or do you think that he's relieved? Do you think he really is happy to just be with Robin? Or do you think that he still has that in him that

00:48:59 Speaker_04
you know, he was the man and these women should have stayed with him and served him and all that.

00:49:04 Speaker_03
Yeah, I definitely think these. Yeah, Corey, probably I could let Corey answer that. I definitely think he's emasculated by it. Honestly, it's something that and I did a video on this recently.

00:49:17 Speaker_03
When you're left when you are in such a controlling religion that all your decisions are made for you. And then you leave that and you're left to your own devices, you find out who you really are.

00:49:28 Speaker_03
And we're seeing who Cody really is because the wives no longer had a leader to run to to tell on him to put him in his place.

00:49:37 Speaker_03
And so I think that's one of the reasons why he has such an anger towards the leadership of the AUB is because they were the people who would put him in his place when he misbehaved and the wives could go tell on him.

00:49:48 Speaker_04
Really? That happens? Like the wives go and they complain about their husband and then someone has a talking to?

00:49:53 Speaker_03
Oh, yeah, all the time. Wow. So that was my first concern when I got divorced, or when I left the AUB at 22. I was in a panic. Who am I going to go tell to make my husband behave himself now because he doesn't behave

00:50:07 Speaker_03
And so when we went back, I remember that sense of relief, like, okay, if he doesn't behave himself, now I can go tell the prophet, and the prophet can come and give him as you know, reeducate him, re-educate.

00:50:21 Speaker_03
And so these men are left to their own devices and their own character. When there's no one else to say, this is what you're supposed to do, or you're going to go to hell. When there's no one standing over them in a parental type

00:50:35 Speaker_03
situation or leadership type, you know, relationship, these men are, we find out who these men really are. And that and that's sad. It's sad to see how Cody's turned out to be.

00:50:47 Speaker_04
So do you think that that's what was happening with, like with Mary and Christine that you know, he wouldn't that well, especially with Mary, the whole thing about, you know, waiting for her to leave and you think someone was telling him

00:51:03 Speaker_04
you know, you need to stay with her because she's, did she grow up in the AUB? She did.

00:51:09 Speaker_03
Yeah, we were friends growing up.

00:51:10 Speaker_09
Okay. So, but is that common what we saw with Mary of someone just letting someone just hang on until they, and is it, would it not be okay for Cody to turn to Mary 10 years ago and say, hey, this isn't working?

00:51:27 Speaker_03
It would have been he could leave whenever he he can, he can ask for a release whenever he wants to. Okay. And he that's a very, like he, he misconstrues that on TV, in my opinion, is that he he's absolutely allowed to ask for that release.

00:51:41 Speaker_03
But if they didn't have such a public show, then yes, I can name a dozen marriages right now where that's currently happening. And they're just hanging on because they can't get out of it.

00:51:52 Speaker_03
They don't know how to leave, they can't leave, and he's not going to kick them out because then he's considered, you know, it's one of the worst things that you can do next to adultery, next to murder, is abandonment.

00:52:05 Speaker_03
That's like the worst thing you can do.

00:52:08 Speaker_09
And that's why Cody was so pissed when he got that phone call from the leadership saying you abandoned her, or that was the reason why the marriage ended, the release happened, was abandonment.

00:52:21 Speaker_07
So yeah, it's hit a hit to his ego. He is a priesthood holder, that is supposed to have this what wives underneath of him this kingdom that he's created. And he at any time, hey, in their belief system, you're only supposed to have sex to reproduce.

00:52:49 Speaker_07
And so at any time, he could say, Okay, we're not going to have children anymore. I don't be intimate, be intimate with you. I will go over here for, I'll just still be kind. I'll be the husband. You know what I mean?

00:53:04 Speaker_03
And we've done our duty.

00:53:05 Speaker_07
We've done our duty. Children, you're just over here now. And So he was, again, I'm only speaking for what I saw growing up. I don't know what their situation was, but he was basically telling... Mary? No. Yeah. And Christine. Oh, Christine.

00:53:27 Speaker_07
Christine, hey, I'm not going to be intimate with you guys anymore. You can sit over here, we can still have family, we'll do family functions.

00:53:35 Speaker_07
But I'm not, I'm going to be spending the time with my wife, that is having kids that kids, and you're just kind of going to be set over here as a older mother that can help at times and everything. And they will

00:53:51 Speaker_07
Christine was like, Nope, that's not happening. I'm out of here. And that's why he was so wounded. That's a knife in his kidney that He had suffered through getting married.

00:54:02 Speaker_09
Through being a terrible sister wife, just terrible.

00:54:04 Speaker_07
Yeah, and that's the interesting part, too.

00:54:08 Speaker_04
Well, this is fascinating. Yeah, it is. Because I just assumed it was just Cody, you know, A-hole. But it sounds like these are tenants of the religion that this is common. And what about the, like, I never loved these women thing?

00:54:23 Speaker_04
Like, is that sort of part of the Same kind of reasoning, or you have to love them at some point.

00:54:32 Speaker_07
He loved them on a level of, hey, they're the mother of my children. Robin's his soulmate. She's the one that he deeply made this oath or covenant to. Sacred covenant. Well, he made that to all four of the wives.

00:54:52 Speaker_07
and but he didn't he he might have he might have loved a certain way through it but now he's found his soul mate and they should just kind of appreciate that and so he never probably what he meant to say is he never loved them to the level of Robin.

00:55:12 Speaker_07
He loved them as the mother of his children, or what have you. But, and that's where... His tickets to heaven.

00:55:20 Speaker_04
His tickets to heaven.

00:55:22 Speaker_07
They were all taught that they were expected to get married and create a family and create things, and it was going to be hard. It was going to be miserable. and how he found the love of his life. And so they should just accept that.

00:55:37 Speaker_09
So, but Cody, you know, we, as we all know, right, he went off to a mission, and then he comes back from the mission and finds out his family's converted.

00:55:47 Speaker_09
So for someone like him, right, he's kind of interesting, because he had great, he was raised LDS, and then now the family's converted, and then oh, he and then he marries Mary, and he goes into the deep end. So do you

00:56:03 Speaker_09
Do you see a difference between how Cody is because he was raised on both sides because he wasn't in the AUB versus someone else who born bred AUB?

00:56:13 Speaker_09
Whereas Cody acting like exactly like how any of these husbands would act whether he was raised in a little kinder.

00:56:21 Speaker_03
And that says a lot, because Cody might be a little kinder during this whole process than other men are. And we see how kind he is.

00:56:29 Speaker_03
So yeah, that would be the only thing I would say, you know, I met the day that the first day Cody ever came into the AUB, I met him that day. And everybody thought he was so amazing and such a charismatic, such a nice, fun guy.

00:56:45 Speaker_03
And yeah, he married these women out of obligation to some degree. And when you're in this situation, you think you have choice.

00:56:57 Speaker_03
we always say that I'm at choice, I can choose to come, I can choose to leave, I can choose who I marry, you think you are.

00:57:03 Speaker_03
And in the in with the limited amount of knowledge that you have and exposure that you have, you really fully believe that you're at choice. I fully believed I was at choice when I got married seven days, eight days into 17.

00:57:15 Speaker_03
And yet, now that I now that I'm away from it, and I can see things I was not at choice. I was at expectation.

00:57:24 Speaker_07
And so that's expected to

00:57:27 Speaker_03
Yeah. So I think Cody has a level of resentment because he went into these relationships with the expectations he was supposed this is what he was supposed to do. And he was going to love them as much as he genuinely knew how to at that time.

00:57:41 Speaker_03
And now that he has someone else that he goes, Oh, this is what real love is. I didn't know that for the last 20 years. Now this is what I truly want, not this.

00:57:51 Speaker_03
And now he's angry and he's resentful that he ever got into obligatory relationships in the first place. And that's just my, that's just what that makes.

00:58:00 Speaker_04
That makes complete sense with what he's saying. Because when he's saying all this stuff, we're just going, huh? What? Yeah. Because you have been on TV for 15 years. He's been trying to, he's been trying to convince himself, I think more than anything.

00:58:17 Speaker_04
And I was watching a video, Melanie, that you said, that when he came back from his mission, he had kind of lost the sense of self. And that the joining the AUB sort of gave him a purpose because his decisions were kind of being made for him.

00:58:34 Speaker_04
He was being told, you know, do these things. And that's why he got so angry. I think when his children started getting older, and they wouldn't do what he told them to do. And they were all just like, no. And that's why he was

00:58:50 Speaker_04
So Matt, and then Robin is feeding into this, feeding it all, you know, she's stoking the fire. And I think you said that Robin is really the leader of the family.

00:59:00 Speaker_03
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I said that. I'm sorry, but she absolutely is. My dad has one wife who absolutely is she controls what happens in the family. And he'll make an agreement with my mom. And then he'll go get his real opinion.

00:59:18 Speaker_03
And then he'll come back and he'll say, Well, we're not going to do that. I've, you know, I've worked something else out or whatever. My mom's like, What are you talking about? This is what we agreed upon. And so that's what happens.

00:59:29 Speaker_03
And she's very sly, the way that she does it. Um, it's, she asks a lot of questions, leading questions that lead him to a different answer than what he already had given. Are you sure that, are you sure that the boys are being safe with COVID?

00:59:44 Speaker_03
Are you sure that, you know, is that really what you want? Are you sure that's what you really want? And so she does leading questions that cause doubt. And that's where you, that's where you lose yourself.

00:59:56 Speaker_03
Um, and so it, when you constantly live in a state of doubt all the time, I mean, I know that we're always curious, but curiosity and doubt are two totally different, you know, it's one thing to be curious about an answer.

01:00:09 Speaker_03
It's another thing to be doubtful of yourself when you're making a decision. Totally.

01:00:13 Speaker_04
Yeah, because he's being manipulated. And yeah, and speaking of Robin, so Corey, you actually, you grew up on the same street as Robin, and you were best friends with her brother, right?

01:00:26 Speaker_10
Yeah.

01:00:28 Speaker_04
So what I mean, I don't know how much contact you had with her. Or I don't know if there's any not not to like. gossip about her. But I mean, like, just what what do you know about her? Like, what was she like?

01:00:39 Speaker_07
So when I when we, we were little kids, we moved from Salt Lake, Murray, up to Pinesdale. And when people were moving into Pinesdale, the priesthood property, they had a trailer court there. And just a bunch of trailers all in this

01:01:02 Speaker_07
trailer court and you would usually when you're coming up on the property live in the trailer court while you're building your home and so our family three wives and eight children and my dad lived in a two-bedroom trailer

01:01:23 Speaker_07
trailer while the house was being built. And yeah, they were, um, I was, so I was best friend, my best friend in that trailer court, um, was my friend and, She, her family, her biological father and mother lived in that trailer court also.

01:01:51 Speaker_07
So, but I'm quite a bit, I don't know how much older, but I, I knew her mother and her dad more than I knew her. I knew her when they're running around. But I was friends with my best friend and

01:02:12 Speaker_07
Her mother ended up, once her biological dad got another wife, so now he had two wives living in two different trailers there. She got a release from him and married my friend's dad.

01:02:25 Speaker_03
So Robin's mom left. So he knew her when she was in a with her biological father. And then his best friend was Robin's stepdad. So yeah, that's kind of that.

01:02:38 Speaker_04
So Robin didn't really, you know, live polygamy, right? Because if her parents basically split up after he took a second wife, right, I always thought she said her mom was the second wife.

01:02:52 Speaker_07
Second wife to

01:02:54 Speaker_04
Oh, to the stepfather. That's the one we saw on the show that was there during the birth and all that. Okay.

01:03:07 Speaker_03
That's not normal. That was my next question. I know absolutely no one who has ever done that. That's not I was stunned when I saw that my mom was stunned when she saw it. She was like, What in the heck? So that's not something that is regular occurrence.

01:03:22 Speaker_04
And they did the same thing. Like when Maddie had her baby, her first baby, and I was just like, what is going on here? Yeah, I

01:03:34 Speaker_07
I don't know.

01:03:37 Speaker_09
Well, so Robin, you know, Robin perplexes me, because she, she's brilliant. She's not, like, education wise, some of the things she says, you're kind of like, but

01:03:52 Speaker_09
It seems to me that this woman was in it for the long con, like she played the long game. Because you can see in those early seasons, she very intentionally did.

01:04:04 Speaker_09
And you can see it on one level being like, what a kind person, what a kind wife, but you're like, hmm. hold on a second here, you know, this is in direct contrast to these other women.

01:04:14 Speaker_09
And the reality is, you know, I've been married 21 years now, the reality is, as married a long time, you know, like, anyone you've been married to a long time, it's like, Oh, God, you again, you know, someone new is always exciting, right?

01:04:26 Speaker_09
Anyone new that comes in. So I can understand that initial excitement, but it sounds like she really thought through What does this man want? What does he want? What kind of wife does he want? And how do I fit myself into that category?

01:04:44 Speaker_09
And so that's why when they talk about being soulmates, I'm always a little skeptical. I'm like, but do you even know each other? Are either of you real, real? in with each other with each other.

01:04:56 Speaker_09
If from day one, she has been right as opposed to the other wives who've just kind of been, you know, living their lives and write your husband comes home. Yeah, great. Hi, how nice to see you. Bye.

01:05:08 Speaker_09
And then versus her who like, you know, everything stopped when Cody came over, it sounds like and everything was focused on him. right?

01:05:17 Speaker_09
Is that do you see that a lot where someone comes in and kind of gets the person's number real quickly and like molds themselves to do being that person?

01:05:27 Speaker_03
Yeah, my one my dad's favorite wife that's kind of controlled and ruled our family for the last 30 years. She did that very much. So she'd already been married a few times before she met my dad.

01:05:39 Speaker_03
And so, and she came in with three little kids and she, yeah, I mean, but she did that at the expense of her children. And so her children were extremely neglected and abused because everything stopped when you know, dad came home.

01:05:56 Speaker_03
And so she catered to his every need. And what's funny is interesting is, I can always tell who my dad's talking to on the phone based on the tone of his voice.

01:06:06 Speaker_03
And he would talk to her in a very childlike, like very, you know, she would, I'm like, Who are you talking to? Is she like three? And so, yeah, And that's how we would talk to her. And so because that was her emotional capacity, probably.

01:06:22 Speaker_03
I think that's really Yeah, these women

01:06:26 Speaker_03
And we were trained to really, honestly, I grew up going, I hate women, we were really trained to not love other women, because they were always going to come in and steal what was yours, they were always going to come in and abuse you and use you and discard you.

01:06:46 Speaker_03
And so they want to talk about this beautiful sister wife relationship, which I quite frankly, think is bullshit.

01:06:52 Speaker_07
And that's good for the cameras. But behind the scenes, there's always conflict.

01:06:59 Speaker_04
Do you think that was the issue with Mary and Janelle? Yes. Yeah, because Janelle did not grow up in this, you know, she converted, she just converted. And Mary was coming from that mentality of this woman's coming in to take something from me.

01:07:19 Speaker_04
And then she has a child right away and all that.

01:07:22 Speaker_03
So that makes sense. And that's what's so frustrating for these women is because Janelle came in going, Oh my gosh, we're going to make this whole, you know, in my assumptions, just based on what I've seen, we're going to make this whole family.

01:07:33 Speaker_03
This is going to be amazing. This is going to be wonderful. And Mary looked at her instantly as she's a threat. She's going to take what's mine. She's going to do all of these different things.

01:07:43 Speaker_03
And it's funny because my mom was converted and Corey's mom was converted in. And it's interesting because, you know, my dad's favorite wife for the longest time, she was raised in it. And so she knew all the right answers. My mom knew nothing.

01:07:58 Speaker_03
But my mom came into it going, I want the betterment of the family. I want what, you know, what do we all have to do to be cohesive and grow and learn together, where this, you know, hit this other wife was like, terror.

01:08:11 Speaker_03
She terrorized the family for a long time. And yet nobody knew that. But then when my mom would get sick of it, she would leave. And my dad came to her and he's like, you need to get your attitude together.

01:08:23 Speaker_03
You need to fix this because people are going to think this is my fault and her fault when you're the problem. And so there's a lot of that stuff going on.

01:08:31 Speaker_03
So I'm sure Janelle got one or a dozen talkings to like, you need to, you need to conform, because you're going to be the problem if you don't.

01:08:40 Speaker_03
And then you've got Yeah, it's it there's so many different layers of dynamics with so many of the different personalities. But yeah, Mary, you know, I'm friends with a lot of Mary siblings from other families.

01:08:53 Speaker_03
And, you know, Mary's mom was the favorite wife there. She just was learned from her mom. And, you know, and then you've got then Robin comes in and tries to take that over. And yeah, I'll bet those two women never speak to each other again.

01:09:09 Speaker_03
There's no point in it.

01:09:10 Speaker_09
There's no reason to, though. Do you think Mary was the before Robin came into the family? Do you get a sense of Do you think Mary was the favorite? Because it seemed before Robin showed up that things felt very equal in that way. No, maybe not.

01:09:24 Speaker_07
No. No, I wouldn't say. I don't know. Growing up in our family, there were there was a point where everybody was trying to be cohesive. And I'm just getting this from my mother talking to other where they're trying to be cohesive.

01:09:41 Speaker_07
So she called it more along the lines of a squeaky wheel. Somebody be wanting more nagging or whatever it was. And so they were, but they were trying to work together as a family.

01:09:57 Speaker_07
He, he was trying to, to run this family, but then that fight favorite wife comes in and tends to more control. So I don't, I wouldn't know if I, I didn't get to really see their back life, just the beginning as this fourth wife's coming on. Um,

01:10:21 Speaker_04
happy. I thought, you know, they seemed to me what do we know now? Yeah, I don't know. But they they see. But I mean, like, they would kiss and hug and smile.

01:10:30 Speaker_07
And that's what he's supposed to do. That's what.

01:10:33 Speaker_04
So yeah, maybe that was just an act.

01:10:35 Speaker_03
Maybe it was. Yeah, I don't think it was an act so much as it was just what they knew.

01:10:41 Speaker_07
That's how we grew up. That's what that's what we faction was. Yeah. Nothing ever went deeper. Yeah. And to me growing up as a kid, I that is what it looks what you aspire to have as a relationship.

01:10:58 Speaker_03
So I wouldn't say Mary was the favorite wife, I'd say Mary was the squeaky will. And so that's why she got more of the attention. And I don't think there was a favorite wife until Robin came in. Mary just was the squeakier will.

01:11:10 Speaker_03
So she got more when she was the legal got more stuff.

01:11:13 Speaker_04
Yeah. bigger house.

01:11:15 Speaker_03
Right.

01:11:16 Speaker_04
Right. Like legal pop, we'll be back after these messages.

01:11:23 Speaker_08
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01:11:26 Speaker_02
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01:11:28 Speaker_08
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01:11:31 Speaker_02
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01:11:36 Speaker_08
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01:11:40 Speaker_02
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01:13:29 Speaker_09
Um, I have so many questions.

01:13:31 Speaker_04
I know. We've kept you for I know we kept you waiting. Ask questions for eight hours.

01:13:39 Speaker_07
They all lived inside the same house when they first started. Yeah, they were actually all three living as what they would consider in the AUB sister wives. And Robin never lived with any of them. Yes, always had her own separate separate.

01:14:02 Speaker_07
That's why when Christine goes, Okay, now I've had a taste of living separate from I'm not going back to the house thing. That's no more. That won't happen. Where Robin has never lived that way. But she's aspiring. I want one big house without bowl.

01:14:25 Speaker_03
one little side tidbit that you might not know is when Cody married Mary, he actually went and spent their honeymoon at Corey's house in Montana.

01:14:34 Speaker_03
And so that they could see what a cohesive family that lived all together with all the wives what we were supposed to like, and then we all had to be on.

01:14:42 Speaker_07
I wasn't there, but they all had to be on the best behavior to show other people coming in. So not that we're on TV, but we look like we're on TV. None of the wives fought anything like that.

01:14:54 Speaker_04
Yeah. Wow. Well, what was the connection? How someone just did, you know, them at all, or his dad and Corey's dad were really good friends.

01:15:04 Speaker_03
Okay. Oh, yeah. So a lot of the younger siblings, Corey's younger siblings went to the ranch in Wyoming. So, okay. Yeah. And so that's and Cody, because he knew nothing about polygamy hadn't been born and raised in it.

01:15:16 Speaker_03
He, when he married Mary, and they decided they were going to build their family together. That's when they packed up and went to

01:15:23 Speaker_03
Montana, they were, his mom was saying they were gone for most of the day doing activities or whatever, but then they'd come back at night and see how the family would eat dinner together, or what they would do and to see how a cohesive polygamous family, although, you know, could try to create it.

01:15:38 Speaker_03
Yeah, although Corey's got some stories that I'm like these, you know, his mom's almost killed each other numerous times, people literally had to physically come in and remove.

01:15:47 Speaker_03
So it's just put on your best face, make it look like no, we all love each other. Look how well we do dinner together every night, or we do whatever. And then really behind the cameras are off. Yeah.

01:16:00 Speaker_04
And there was 39 kids or whatever. It's like, There's no way that it's gonna be.

01:16:07 Speaker_09
Yeah, just peace and love all the time. And if you're always bringing in because it sounds like there's always this bringing in new wives, having more kids bringing in new wives. It's this constant chaos, right?

01:16:19 Speaker_09
It sounds like there were times where there was a good equilibrium, things were working well, like, you know, we're good just like this. And I think maybe that's what we saw with the Browns for a long, right?

01:16:28 Speaker_09
Like, this combination like this is good enough. I mean, again, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes.

01:16:34 Speaker_09
But if you're constantly adding in new ingredients, new ingredients, new ingredients, it's your life does become or feels like a constant, you know, oh, it's a new year. And it's a whole new, new setup or new people or new things to deal with.

01:16:50 Speaker_09
I'm very curious when when for both of you, but especially you, Melanie, when you left the church, this idea of it sounds like You have an image of what you show in the church. It sounds like it teaches you, right?

01:17:04 Speaker_09
Outwardly, you are kind and nice and this is how you present yourself. And you should be feeling this way inside, but we all know that you can't. It's not natural. It's not how we operate. So what is it?

01:17:17 Speaker_09
What was it like for you when you just started like meeting other new women? Were you sort of like, kind of like always get competitive with new women? Or was it like, you know what I mean?

01:17:27 Speaker_09
Just how do you make that shift in your mind of wait, I can authentically tell you what I'm feeling. That is the truth.

01:17:34 Speaker_03
And I'm safe to do that. Um, I would say that I just turned 50 this year. And I don't think I'm I don't think I'm there. completely, to be totally honest. And that's something that I'll have to work on for a long time.

01:17:47 Speaker_03
And so, um, and I was very competitive by nature. I'm, I'm six, two, I'm very tall. I was very competitive by nature with the boys. I've always had men, like boys have always been more friends with me. I've always gotten along.

01:18:02 Speaker_03
I have, I don't get along with girls very, I would say that. Yeah, he calls me the most sexist person he knows. And I'm very, and I would say that that I mean, that's something that I've had, I've really struggled with.

01:18:16 Speaker_03
And I have two daughters, and I didn't want them to struggle with it at the level that I struggled with it.

01:18:20 Speaker_03
And unfortunately, a lot of that unconsciousness, subconsciousness has has trickled down to my girls, and they don't have as many girlfriends either. Because women were just unsafe. they just, they have always been unsafe.

01:18:34 Speaker_03
And I hate using that word in the context of like me now, because I feel like the Browns have ruined that word. But, but it's true. And so I'm 50 years old, I don't think I found that quite yet.

01:18:45 Speaker_03
To be honest, it is something that I work on regularly, I feel safe with my own sisters to some degree. You know, my mom had seven girls and my dad out of the kids, my dad had 13 girls total.

01:18:56 Speaker_03
And so it's, it's something that I've really struggled with, for sure. So

01:19:02 Speaker_09
Yeah. And what about the, like, do you remember the time in which you told someone how you really felt in that moment, and they accepted it?

01:19:10 Speaker_09
I mean, I, I can't imagine because it sounds like every time you share what you really are thinking, growing up, it was, right, you know, you get a lecture or worse. Yeah.

01:19:20 Speaker_09
So I'm just curious of like, for both of you that moment in time where you're like, Oh, wow, I can, oh, I said the truth, and they're not freaked out, or they're not angry, or they're not hurting me. Gosh.

01:19:29 Speaker_03
I'd probably be when you and I were together, is what I would say. That's, I mean, I don't remember a time in my life where I felt that way before Corey and I got together. Oh, but I don't know.

01:19:41 Speaker_03
I mean, well, when I told Well, I guess when I told my dad, no, that I would be dating Corey. And, but I thought he was gonna physically, like, he got aggressive.

01:19:51 Speaker_07
So what's the question again? Sorry? Is it us?

01:19:55 Speaker_09
I guess I'm just curious if you have any awareness or memories of those times when you were sharing, you know, saying what your what the truth was to you. Because it just sounds like you

01:20:09 Speaker_09
you grow up with this idea of, okay, there's only one right answer, you know, all the time for all of these things. But you are feeling something inside, right, this disconnect.

01:20:19 Speaker_09
And it sounds like the two of you very much were aware of like, there's something, you know, even though outwardly, people are telling me this one thing, I know inside of myself that this isn't quite right.

01:20:29 Speaker_09
I'm just curious, I just think about some of these things of, You know, I just think about my own life and, and the way in which Brooke and I grew up, which is like this very Northern California little, our parents say they're not hippies.

01:20:41 Speaker_09
They're not. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it was very, you know, we lived in an environment where we could share what we thought with our parents. that we could say that. So I innately, you know, taught that to my son and Brooke taught that to her daughter.

01:20:55 Speaker_09
And we grew, you know, and so when I got into the workplace, it wasn't scary to say to somebody, Hey, I'm, I don't want, you know, set a boundary or I don't want to do that or whatever.

01:21:05 Speaker_09
So I'm just so curious of what that's like when you leave all of that and you're like, Oh, wait a second. The the world the world is so different like this is I can be myself right and that's okay and I'm okay.

01:21:19 Speaker_07
Yeah. So growing up.

01:21:21 Speaker_09
Maybe that's not a question. No, no. I just find it fascinating, right? That I can't imagine what that's like when you enter into a world that's so radically different, very different than what you're taught. Yeah.

01:21:34 Speaker_09
You know, what that's like when, like the first work experience you had where you felt like, I got to stand up to this person. And, you know, not even and that they heard me and they accept it and they apologized. Right. You know what that's like.

01:21:48 Speaker_09
of like, Oh, wow, okay, this can be really, this could be good. Yeah. You know?

01:21:53 Speaker_07
Yeah. So I had an older brother. And he's 14 years older than me. And I felt like that as a kid, I could be honest with him, I could talk to him.

01:22:07 Speaker_07
Also, my, my siblings, my younger siblings, those people were safe that I could have those conversations with, of how I actually felt, I didn't feel like I could take that to my parents. Because I would be told no, you're wrong, disciplined.

01:22:24 Speaker_07
But though, my older brother really was a place where I could ask him questions. He there was honesty there. So And it was when I, and then as I started doing that, I would ask my dad questions, he'd get frustrated.

01:22:46 Speaker_07
But when he was suggesting that I do certain things, I'm like, I'm not, I refuse to go. I refused to do, get married. I refused to go through your guys' temple. There's things that I don't agree with at all. And so I refused to do that.

01:23:04 Speaker_07
And he was disappointed in me, but he's like, I think he had the attitude that I'd come back, that I just needed to grow up more and I'd come back. And so, and I had some powerful women in my life. I have a grandmother and two aunts.

01:23:23 Speaker_07
that were not a part of it. And they, and a grandfather, and they, those were people that I could be honest with, too, and have a conversation.

01:23:33 Speaker_07
So I thought I felt like that I was kind of, and then it was later on in life that I could have that honest conversation with my dad, we didn't always agree. And I feel like that I have those conversations with my mother now, too.

01:23:48 Speaker_07
We don't always agree. Yeah. But But yeah, it was hard growing up when it was. It was, it was difficult. I can't even.

01:24:03 Speaker_09
And you sound, can I, it sounds like Corey, you're very introverted.

01:24:08 Speaker_07
Yeah.

01:24:09 Speaker_09
And, and so because my son is the ultimate introvert, and I think about, okay, I watched the Browns, I'm like my kid, and I think about that, right? Like, not every kid, like there's some kids where they're born in that family, and it works for them.

01:24:21 Speaker_09
It's their personality, and they like it, and they like all that. But there are, you know, you don't know what kind of kid you're going to get until they come out. And my husband and I are both very extroverted, and we get this very

01:24:31 Speaker_09
for a kid that's like got a lot of anxiety. And, and so, you know, I often think about and I feel for whatever that kid is in that family, that is like this doesn't work for them. And there is

01:24:46 Speaker_09
no way to even really give you the space that you need, or this awareness that they could, or you should, you know, all of those things.

01:24:55 Speaker_09
And I think, I can't imagine how hard that is, because I see my son and just how hard lots of, you know, the social interactions and all this stuff, but we give him, you know, he's an only child, you know, but he has a tremendous amount of space to recharge and to feel right, to have that time for himself.

01:25:12 Speaker_07
There was no space like that in the,

01:25:15 Speaker_09
That must have been so hard.

01:25:17 Speaker_07
So hard. And yeah, there was there was zero space. I probably when I was an infant, but my younger brother is 18 months younger than me. And we shared a room. So yeah. Yeah, it's, I would escape. I loved reading books, I'd escape.

01:25:41 Speaker_07
And, but there's no place to escape to with nine women. And if you weren't working, you were in trouble, even if I was, I need time to go here. So I need time to get away. But yeah, I felt like I grew up on eggshells all the time.

01:26:02 Speaker_07
We have a son, he likes to go to his room and have that peace and quiet and I understand it. When we have family come over, it's overwhelming. So there's even she'll be like, there's family out there and I'm in there.

01:26:20 Speaker_03
Okay, I'll be right there. Well, we're both the oldest and we'll get parties here and we'll have 50 people. And that's very common minimum of 50 people or whatever. And everyone will be like, Where's Corey? And I'll walk in a minute, I'll be right out.

01:26:38 Speaker_03
And at first, I used to get really frustrated. I'm like, that's your family out there. What are you doing? And so now that we're getting, you know, now that we understand each other a little bit more. And

01:26:49 Speaker_03
Now I'm like, okay, go take 10 minutes in the bedroom and then come back out when you're ready.

01:26:52 Speaker_07
I open up when when certain parts of my brothers when they come in. It's great. We can sit and talk and have fun and stuff like that. But yeah,

01:27:04 Speaker_09
So would you always say, oh, I'm going to work on the fence way out here, right? Like, if you always have to be working, I would take a book and a hammer and be like, I'm going to work on the fence. I'm working over here.

01:27:13 Speaker_09
And just like, if anyone walks by, just bang the hammer a bunch of times.

01:27:17 Speaker_07
That's Cory to a T. That's me. I'm going clearing on something out in my garage, in the yard, doing something where it's just, where the world can calm down and be quiet for a minute.

01:27:29 Speaker_04
Yeah. Well, and I think it's very special that you guys ended up together, you know, because you have this shared experience, you can understand the other person better.

01:27:39 Speaker_04
You know, it's just, and obviously, you know, you guys work together, you're very comfortable together. So that's just really, it's really nice to see. And I well, it sounds like you met each other. Sorry.

01:27:52 Speaker_09
It sounds like you met each other. at the right time. Because it sounds like if you had met each other when you were 17, 18, it wouldn't have worked. It was almost like the two of you met each other at the perfect time to allow this. Yeah, he will.

01:28:09 Speaker_09
And that's the Yeah, that's the other thing about life that's fascinating is how you know, it's that Steve Jobs quote, we can only connect the dots looking back. But you know, all these things happen to you. And then you realize like, Oh, that's right.

01:28:22 Speaker_09
I could not have met this person, then I needed to go through these things in order to be able to meet this person now. And now this Oh, it all makes sense.

01:28:30 Speaker_03
Right. Well, it's funny, my ex husband grew up the street, grew up down the street from Corey.

01:28:36 Speaker_03
And so, um, I mean, I was in Montana all the time, we always were around each other, we always saw each other, you know, and then Corey dated his little sister for a long time. And so we saw each other all the time, but we just never connected.

01:28:49 Speaker_03
And it wasn't until but the first time I did see Corey, It was on that houseboat in Lake Powell, and I was sitting on the couch, and he comes walking in, and I literally saw this wave of energy come at me. And I was like, Oh my gosh, who is this?

01:29:04 Speaker_03
And that's the first time I actually saw him. you know, having met him half a dozen times before that, but I just never bothered to look at him.

01:29:13 Speaker_03
And so I was a mom raising little kids, you know, and then he came onto our houseboat and was wonderful with my children and my children adored him. And I had a two year old and a four year old at the time, and they just absolutely adored him.

01:29:28 Speaker_03
And so then when we decided to date, I had a one year old when we got to when I got divorced, and I had a five year old and a seven year old.

01:29:35 Speaker_03
And when we decided to date, I asked Corey, I'm we, you know, we're here, we were dating for a while, and he's sitting on the floor playing with my at the time two year old. And I was like, life doesn't get any better than this.

01:29:49 Speaker_03
This is exactly where this is exactly what I want is a man involved with my children and cares about what's happening with my children. And I was so worried about that evil stepfather scenario.

01:30:00 Speaker_03
And so then I'm watching him play on the floor with my little two year old. And I'm like, Do you want to get married? And he's like, absolutely.

01:30:09 Speaker_03
So that's how we ended up getting married when my baby was well, he was about two months away from being three.

01:30:14 Speaker_00
Wow.

01:30:15 Speaker_03
Yeah. Yeah. So we just Yeah, we didn't see each other. And now you know, and then we ended up getting married. We were married for post shoot 15 years, and then we got divorced for two years.

01:30:26 Speaker_03
And then kind of it's kind of one of those situations where we were able to find our way back to each other, where we were just like, you know, it's you don't know how good you have it until it's gone. Unfortunately, we were able to

01:30:41 Speaker_03
be as respectful as we could during that whole divorce process. The kids always came first in a lot of things. And so we were able to find our way back to each other in that.

01:30:49 Speaker_03
And now I feel like we've learned to see each other at a level that we never even knew was possible in our first marriage. And he tells me all the time, I love this second marriage way better than

01:31:00 Speaker_09
Oh, well, and I think married couples, I mean, this idea, this is why there's so much divorce is it's hard.

01:31:06 Speaker_09
It's hard over length of time, like the spark, you know, that initial whatever, excitement, you've heard all their stories, you can't stand the way they choose sometimes, you know, all of those things. And I do think that it's

01:31:18 Speaker_09
you know, I think having a long distance relationship is hard long term, but I do think it's good for people to get away for a while and have merit marriage vacations or whatever it is so that you can go and, you know, do other things and have other experiences.

01:31:33 Speaker_09
And yeah, if if there was enough there there, you're going to come back together.

01:31:37 Speaker_09
Yeah, you know, with that there, but it is, um, I think a lot I it's, it's interesting, just in my work, how many people realize afterwards, like, God, I shouldn't have divorced that, like, we should have just kind of like, push through or found some other solution or something like that.

01:31:54 Speaker_09
Because it's a choice, you wake up every day, and you're like, do I choose to love this person or be annoyed? you know, which one I choose is the is kind of like how it's going to be, right? And am I going to choose to be responsible for myself?

01:32:07 Speaker_09
Or am I going to blame them for everything? You know, all of that. Yeah, amazing.

01:32:11 Speaker_04
Yeah, story.

01:32:12 Speaker_09
It is. I don't I feel bad taking up any more, of course, especially Corey Stein.

01:32:19 Speaker_03
We're taking our grandbabies to see Christmas lights tonight. Oh, and I'd forgotten that that was on the same day. So we know we have at least another 20 minutes or so. But whenever you guys are ready. Yeah.

01:32:33 Speaker_09
So yeah, I'm very curious about Mary. These are all the notes that I had to write down. So I didn't forget. I'm very curious about Mary and Mary not being able to have

01:32:42 Speaker_09
a lot of children, what happens, because we've talked about this on the show around what that must be like for Mary in this environment where you grow up and, you know, having children is your most valuable skill.

01:32:58 Speaker_09
I'm sure, though, you must have seen women that couldn't. I mean, not all women can. So there must have been. And so are those women seen in a different way? Yeah. very much.

01:33:11 Speaker_03
Unfortunately, there are and you know, my mom owned a health food store here locally.

01:33:17 Speaker_03
And so people from all walks of polygamy, all different groups, FLDS, mostly, and you know, the Kingston group, all of these different polygamous groups would come into her store to try to find ways if they if they were infertile and couldn't have babies.

01:33:33 Speaker_03
How could they, you know, a polygamous family can't do IVF. I mean, that's so out of their reach. Any sort of medical assisted births, they can't, they can't afford to do that.

01:33:44 Speaker_03
And so the women that would come in there and the stories that I would hear are horrific. They are, and my mom would do her best with everything that she had available.

01:33:54 Speaker_03
You know, and it turned, it resulted into some women having children that had, I mean, one woman went 10 years and never could have a child. And then all of a sudden she had five.

01:34:03 Speaker_03
And so not to say that, you know, not to, I'm not trying to promote holistic stuff like that, but I'm just saying there were ways that they could do things that they just didn't know about before. And so she would tell me some of the stories.

01:34:15 Speaker_03
I even sat in on a couple of the stories of the way that these women are treated. If they're not allowed, you know, one woman I, I remember particularly, she was from the FLDS and

01:34:26 Speaker_03
Her sister wife had told her that she must have been an eyesore to God in the preexistence, and that's why God punished her so that she couldn't have children. And so it's very much seen as what did you do wrong that God won't give you a child?

01:34:41 Speaker_03
What did you do wrong? What are you currently doing wrong? What did you do wrong in the preexistence for God not to bless you to be a mother?

01:34:50 Speaker_03
And so it is very, and it's unfortunate, because I know a lot of women that come from the AUB that aren't able to have children or only able to have one or two.

01:34:58 Speaker_03
And it is it's very, it's, it's tragic to see the shame and the guilt that's placed on these women, because of something that is out of their control. But it's very, I this is where I relate to like the,

01:35:12 Speaker_03
way back in the day, the witchcrafty days, like, Oh, you did something you you pissed off the gods. And so now you can't have children, you know, very much. That's where the AB takes a step back in time.

01:35:25 Speaker_07
And it's not necessarily said out loud. It's just it can be just implied, just implied that, yeah, it's the snarky little things that they'll say to each other.

01:35:36 Speaker_09
Yeah.

01:35:37 Speaker_07
So

01:35:37 Speaker_09
Mary, we don't know Mary before the show, but I would think that a lot of Mary's anger, a lot of the things that maybe we're seeing is this wrestling with her own disappointment, because it sounds like she wanted to have a lot of children.

01:35:53 Speaker_09
It was like her own personal disappointment, but also on top of that, the fact that she must feel all this disappointment by all these people around her, even if maybe they're not saying it directly.

01:36:05 Speaker_09
um i do wonder if that contributes to a lot of sort of what we're you know the mary that's you know and she's evolving she's worthing up but she's um but that's you know that she you know kind of angry person maybe this is when she made a stand you know maybe that for

01:36:25 Speaker_09
maybe that anger made her dig in and be the squeaky wheel. I don't, I don't know. I don't know exactly, but, um, I can imagine. I can't, I mean, I cannot imagine for Mary seeing like Janelle getting pregnant and then Christine gets pregnant.

01:36:39 Speaker_09
I mean, all of it. Yeah. How hard that must be.

01:36:42 Speaker_03
Yeah. It's gotta be a big slap in the face every time another wife ends up pregnant. You know, and, um, You know, when Robin offered to be a surrogate for Mary, um, I was really disgusted by that scene.

01:36:55 Speaker_03
I didn't think that it was genuine at by any means at all. And Mary was 42. Like she is not I mean, she doesn't want to start her family over. That was a homemade for TV section. Oh, yeah, for sure.

01:37:08 Speaker_03
And, you know, she's over here, like, I'm about to have a kid go to college, I don't want to start over. And so, um, that, you know, I talked about that Robin being one of Robin's long games, I'm gonna do this.

01:37:23 Speaker_03
And I know you're not going to take me up on it. But eventually, you're going to have to offer me this in the future, because I did this for you. You know, even though I like the divorce, right? That's exactly what I said in one of our videos.

01:37:38 Speaker_03
And when the divorce situation came up, it was like, remember when I was going to give you a child? Well, now you can give my children a father. Yeah.

01:37:45 Speaker_03
And so it's very, this is why I have trust issues with women, because it's very manipulative like that. There's a, there's a, you know, I know you'll never use this offer, but I'm going to give it to you.

01:37:56 Speaker_03
And do I think Robin was genuine in that moment? Absolutely. She had, she was flooded with dopamine from just having a baby. Yeah. And so she had all this love in her heart. And she very much meant it.

01:38:06 Speaker_03
But I almost guarantee you 30 minutes later, when that dopamine rush comes off, that goes, Oh, shit, what did I just do? Like, you know, What did I just offer? And so, yeah, those are some of the tactics that you'll see.

01:38:20 Speaker_03
And unfortunately, women in Mary's position that can't have children will fall for these tactics so much easier because they want to be accepted. They want to belong. It's a natural instinct to want to belong.

01:38:34 Speaker_07
They want to mother those children. Right. That mother has control.

01:38:37 Speaker_03
Yeah.

01:38:39 Speaker_07
Control over how much she gets to see those other children.

01:38:42 Speaker_03
Right. And so I, unfortunately, Mary, you know, women who can't have children or have a lot of children are very abused, very abused, very manipulated.

01:38:53 Speaker_04
Yeah, yeah, because they did kind of, you know, they played up this thing with, you know, that Mary had the special relationship with Robin's kids. But then, you know, there were scenes where she wanted to spend time with him and Robin said no.

01:39:10 Speaker_04
Yeah, so it's not, I think so much of that was just made up and trying to make, you know, Robin look magnanimous. And I think that surrogacy offer was totally planned and yeah, she had no intention of doing it.

01:39:28 Speaker_07
It's a level of control to dangle those kids.

01:39:31 Speaker_10
Yeah.

01:39:34 Speaker_07
way. If you're doing this, or if you follow these rules, then you can, if you created a safe space, then you can do this.

01:39:42 Speaker_03
So then you can hang out with my children. But until then, yeah, it's a very manipulative. And that's why I say in a lot of my videos, I know a lot of women who have the same energy type that Robin has. because very manipulative energy.

01:39:57 Speaker_03
And she probably doesn't even realize the level of her manipulation, because she grew up with it's what she saw. I mean, my sisters and I are always trying to correct each other. You know, love my mom to death. She might listen to this one day.

01:40:12 Speaker_03
She listens to most everything we do. And 99% of it, but she was the worst guilt tripper ever. Nothing ever came out of that woman's mouth that didn't have a guilt trip associated with it.

01:40:24 Speaker_03
And so one of the things that we girls do with each other is we'll catch each other, hey, that that sounded just like something mom would have said, or, you know, do I need to pack a bag? Am I about to go on a guilt trip? All the time?

01:40:39 Speaker_03
Yeah, I haven't heard that one before.

01:40:41 Speaker_09
Use that again.

01:40:42 Speaker_03
Yeah, we're always saying that. And so a lot of times, and so, but we don't see it in each other, or we don't, I don't know, we see it in myself, because we're trained with, we grew up seeing all the time.

01:40:55 Speaker_07
And then all of a sudden, well, whoa, whoa, sorry, that was Yeah, I didn't mean it that way.

01:41:00 Speaker_04
Yeah. Well, I think it's a it's a normal reaction when there's scarcity, right? Because there's scarcity of time, resources, everything. So yeah, you have to

01:41:11 Speaker_09
get what you can get. Right? But yeah, it feels like your whole life is just about lack. Like, it's just not enough. You know, there's, you're always lacking.

01:41:20 Speaker_09
And it's very hard to, you know, if I'm not talking, you know, I'm not gonna get into like manifesting or anything, that's a whole other ball of wax. But there is this this concept or this idea of how do you think about your life?

01:41:32 Speaker_09
And if your life is all about lack, lack, lack, it's not enough, it's not enough, because it isn't enough. It isn't like, you know, you're, you're, that it isn't true, it's hard to ever feel like you have enough and to ever feel a calm and a peace.

01:41:46 Speaker_09
And Corey, when you said walking on eggshells, this is, I hear this a lot from clients who grow up in families where they have parents who are addicts or mental illness or anything like that. And with kids, you know, kids need

01:41:59 Speaker_09
kids need schedules, kids need to know that this is how it's going to be, this is what it is, and that what ultimately happens is you grow up and you realize like, oh my god, this pit in my stomach shouldn't be here. Right.

01:42:13 Speaker_09
You know, that evolution of realizing like, oh wow, yeah, every day I was worried or scared or off balance in some way, shape, or form.

01:42:23 Speaker_09
And so that's why I was just very curious of what like, when you're sort of in that evolution, we start therapy of just like, Whoa, you know, wow.

01:42:31 Speaker_03
Well, our nervous systems growing up, we're always in fight or flight. And we didn't learn how to calm ourselves and heal our nervous system so that we could even see something different.

01:42:44 Speaker_03
And so we didn't even know that there was other opportunities available for us to be happy or to be calm or to be anything because our nervous systems were so hot, you know, and so now that's one of the biggest things we've tried to gift our children is, hey, you don't live in fight or flight, your nervous system can relax, you can calm down, you can be here.

01:43:05 Speaker_03
And so we tried to create that with our children, knowing full well, you know, and it's funny, we've had a lot of kids come live in and out of our house, we've housed a lot of like, you know, foreign exchange students, that kind of stuff.

01:43:17 Speaker_03
And, and so it's just funny, I they they will leave and they'll say that to us. That's one of the biggest things that I learned living in your home is my nervous system calm down.

01:43:27 Speaker_03
And so I'm so appreciative of that, because that has been one of our goals as parents is to create that environment where our children are functioning from, you know, a desire to live life, not a flight or fight or flight moment all the time.

01:43:44 Speaker_03
So their nervous system is constantly in desire to achieve a goal or to find something, you know, it's that it's that passion and love for life, not that fear of life. And I think that's the biggest gift we've probably consciously given to our kids.

01:44:00 Speaker_09
Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, you're breaking the cycle, right? You know, you're breaking the cycle.

01:44:04 Speaker_09
And one of the things about being a therapist that I enjoy the most is when I'm able to work with someone and I'm able to see right because they grew up in a certain environment, or, you know, they've had this certain relationship with their parents and just seeing this evolution of watching them realize like, Oh my god, my life could be so much better.

01:44:21 Speaker_09
Oh, my, you know, of of what it could be. And, and then they always fear I'm going to pass, you know, what if I pass this along to my kids, and this is the piece of it is like being able to say no, you won't, you won't, right?

01:44:34 Speaker_09
Because now you know, like, you're, this is your you are changing things for everyone for everyone behind, you know, after you, right? This is how these things really evolve and change. And so your children will evolve even more. You know what I mean?

01:44:50 Speaker_09
That's like, what that looks like. I mean, that's the goal, right to do that.

01:44:56 Speaker_04
Right. Okay, well, we are going to wrap this up. We could go on and on forever. But you know, I so want to thank you for coming on. I hope you can come back and we can, I want to recap Sister Wives.

01:45:08 Speaker_04
Let's recap an episode with you too, if you're willing to come back. Yes, that would be so much fun. And I thank you so much just for your honesty and willingness to to talk about your lives, your lives are fascinating.

01:45:22 Speaker_04
And you guys, again, it's I think it's so great that you're together and you're doing so well, and you have broken the cycle. It's just Yeah, very inspiring. Thank you. So I want you to plug everything.

01:45:36 Speaker_04
I think you do you have you said you had a podcast also in addition to your YouTube channel?

01:45:43 Speaker_03
Well, the YouTube channel is where I pro where I process or posted my podcast at the very beginning. And then we just kind of got wrapped up in doing lives, but we're actually going to go back to a podcast style, more of a podcast style.

01:45:56 Speaker_03
We just, the lives kind of took off for the last six weeks. And so that's what we were doing. Yeah.

01:46:02 Speaker_09
Cause of the season.

01:46:03 Speaker_03
Yeah. Well, you guys must get tons of questions. I think on one of our lives, we had 1400 questions. So yeah, so we do get a lot and we'd love answering them. We this is something we can talk about all day, every day.

01:46:16 Speaker_03
But we definitely want to do this more pod style. So it'll it will be on our YouTube channel. And we'll be doing more sit down where we do, you know, more of the podcast style instead of the quick q&a.

01:46:29 Speaker_04
Yeah. And so we'll put this in the show notes, but it's notes to self for for for on YouTube and also on TikTok and Instagram. Yes. And yeah, we'll have to have you back to talk about an episode or just talk about this season. And it's a good season.

01:46:47 Speaker_04
Yeah, happening.

01:46:49 Speaker_03
Yeah, we'd love to. We'd love to.

01:46:51 Speaker_07
I'd love to.

01:46:52 Speaker_03
Yeah. You mentioned this one, you had mentioned earlier about manifestation. So that's why notes to self is because they were the notes that I made to myself growing up of how what

01:47:01 Speaker_03
I wanted to be or how I wanted to, you know, I'd watch one woman treat another woman a certain way. And I didn't want to be that type. So I'd make these, I would literally make physical notes all over and post them.

01:47:12 Speaker_03
And then 444 is for transformation or manifest. So that's why I picked those numbers as well.

01:47:17 Speaker_09
Yeah, I had a feeling because I, you know, I'm a little woo woo in my own way. But, you know, I was grew up primarily in Berkeley, California. So, but I'm always fascinated by the numbers and why we see certain numbers.

01:47:31 Speaker_09
There's times where you see 1111 and 111 a lot. Like every time you look up, you're like, how does this happen every time? So I'm always fascinated by that. And I think there's so much misinformation about what exactly manifestation is.

01:47:43 Speaker_09
What does that mean? You know, people think that you just kind of like think about a car and it's going to show up, but it's, it's really about, you know, what you're talking about. It's like, how do I want to live? How do I want to feel every day?

01:47:54 Speaker_09
And what choices do I make when I feel that doesn't mean that you're not feeling your feelings or that you're denying your feelings, but that you, you know, you have control over you and how you decide to show up every day.

01:48:07 Speaker_03
Yep. you make a conscious choice of who, what kind of self you want to create.

01:48:11 Speaker_09
And so, which is about, this is what I always teach my clients, which is, you know, because they're paying, I'll talk to parents and parents will come to me and say, well, I want my kid to do this and that and blah, blah, blah.

01:48:22 Speaker_09
And it's like, but they have to figure that out. I work with a lot of young people. They have to figure that out. They have to figure out what is the right combination, whether it's a person or a job or the city or whatever, that works for them.

01:48:34 Speaker_09
And that is so unique to each of us. So unique.

01:48:38 Speaker_09
So this idea of there's only, you know, when you grow up in this religion where there's only one way to be or one way to think, or there's only one, you know, it's, I can't imagine what it's like to have all these different feelings inside of you that go against that.

01:48:52 Speaker_09
And, but that's it. It's each of us, you know, we,

01:48:55 Speaker_04
each of us has our own preferences and so we have to build our lives based on that not based on right you know someone else's vision of it right amen yep okay we'll end there on that note melanie and cory thank you so much thank you everyone for listening um to this great episode and um

01:49:17 Speaker_04
Please support the podcast by subscribing or leaving a rating and review. We also have a Patreon you can join for more content and all that information is in the show notes. Happy holidays, guys. Thank you so much for coming on. Bye.

Psych Legal Pop Podcast episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog​

Episode: Sister Wives talk and interview with former AUB members Melanie and Cory from Notes to Self 444​

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Psych Legal Pop Podcast episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: Sister Wives talk and interview with former AUB members Melanie and Cory from Notes to Self 444

Episode Shownotes

Full Transcript