Meri Brown is done with plural marriage, but that doesn’t mean she’s given up hope that she will find her happy ending one day.
“I look forward to having my person come into my world and having that relationship,” she tells TODAY.com.
The “Sister Wives” star made headlines in January 2023 when she and her ex-husband Kody Brown revealed that they were “permanently terminating” their marriage after over three decades together.
After leaving Kody, Meri relocated to Utahand took a breather before jumping back into the dating game.
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“I did take some time to just process it and was, like, ‘OK, whoa, this is done. Like it’s done, done, done. It’s over and it’s weird.’ And now I’m moving on and it’s been good,” she says.
Meri says she is currently dating, but “not anybody exclusively.”
“I just figure it’ll happen when it happens and when it’s meant to happen — when I find the right person and he’s ready for me and I’m ready for him,” she says.
As she looks ahead to the future, Meri hopes to find a partner who differs from her ex in at least one way.
“I probably won’t want to find somebody named Kody. Now that I’ve put that into the universe, it’ll probably happen. So maybe as long as he spells his name with a ‘c,’ it’d be OK,” she teases.
Meri does have a good idea of the type of man she’d like to walk into her life.
“My ideal person is somebody who is confident and takes control and encourages me to be the best person that I can be. He allows me to do all the things that I want to do, but also encourages me and meets my energy. He’s got to meet my energy,” she says.
Meri and Kody married in 1990 and later welcomed three other women — Janelle, Christine and Robyn — into their plural marriage. Christine and Kody announced their breakup in 2021. The following year, Janelle and Kody said they also had separated. Christine has since remarried.
For nearly a decade at the end of their relationship, Meri and Kody were separated. During that time, Meri expressed a desire to repair her marriage, while Kody seemed content with leaving his wife in limbo.
The TLC star says that it’s been “a process” to find out what she wants in her next relationship, given her past one.
“I definitely am very conscious about working through any of the old issues or trauma or situations because I don’t think that’s fair to bring into a relationship moving forward,” she says.
To that end, Meri has been working on herself to ensure that she’s emotionally ready for love when it comes knocking.
“I don’t want to bring in past garbage and I don’t want my future (guy) to bring in past garbage. So therapy is a good thing,” she says.
In January 2024, the reality star announced she was dating someone. One month later, she revealed that the relationship had come to an end.
Going public with her first relationship post-plural marriage was a nerve-wracking for Meri, but she says it’s all par for the course as she navigates this phase of her life.
“Just having had the experience of dating somebody exclusively for a time was exciting,” she says.
For now, Meri is enjoying simply dating around.