Do you think Meri Brown has ever had a good time being a sister wife?
Because it kind of doesn't seem like it, does it?
Even back on the very first season of Sister Wives, Meri struggled with sharing Kody with Janelle and Christine, and -- surprise! -- things didn't exactly get easier with the addition of Robyn.
As the years went on, she just seemed to get more and more miserable, and that's how the whole catfish catastrophe came about.
It's been a few years since then, of course, and they don't talk about it as much as they did, but Meri reached out to someone else because she was unhappy, and ... she's still unhappy.
So unhappy that she apparently doesn't even feel like her family really loves her.
This revelation came out in a sneak peek for this week's episode -- remember, last week Meri was struggling with a landlord who wasn't loving the fact that Meri is a somewhat controversial reality star.
She ended up moving back to Las Vegas for a bit before finding another rental in Flagstaff, and that's where this new episode picks up.
As Robyn explains in the beginning of the teaser, "Meri lives in this house built up the side of a mountain. So she has these huge stairs all the way up the side of her house, and every time I walk up those stairs, I about faint."
Then we cut to all the wives sitting down together, and Meri tells Robyn "I mean, to me, that's kind of what family does."
"Well, I know," Robyn admits, "but those stairs at your house are insane. I feel like we're gonna hurt your stuff if we're going up and down those stairs."
Robyn really seems to have strong feelings about those stairs, huh?
Over in a confessional, Meri tells the camera "I don't want to hire somebody. I do not want to hire somebody. I want to have family around."
She starts tearing up as she says "I'd rather have my family help me put my stupid bed together than pay somebody to do it because that would mean I would have some family interaction, which I think is really important."
At this point, she's pretty much just crying -- "What the hell, why am I crying over this?" she asks herself.
"I'm hearing Janelle and Christine talk about how they're feeling isolated and alone," she continued, "and yet Janelle hires somebody to come do work that if we're altogether, we could do together."
Back at the sister wives sit-down, Robyn suggests that Meri just hire someone to move her bigger furniture in her new house, and then, as Janelle says, they could have a "move-in/unpack party" where they help her organize things.
"This isn't like a big deal," Robyn complains in her own confessional. "Like it's just ... hire some people to help you with the big stuff, we'll come over and help you with the smaller stuff."
"It's no big deal at all. It's a no-brainer. She just needs to let us know."
In the conversation with anyone, Meri seems to be getting a little worked up about it all because "I don't have the option of Dayton or Kody ..."
But Robyn wasn't having it, because she cut her off with "You do have the option if you just say something and we figure it out."
As she explained to the camera later, "Kody is a very busy person, he has a lot of demands on him. It's nothing personal that Kody's not like right there whenever she needs him 'cause he's not for any of us, and that's just what it is to be a plural wife."
Christine popped up in yet another confessional and said that two of her older daughters told Meri they could help her anytime after school and to just call them and let them know when to come, but she never called and asked.
At the end of the conversation (or at least the part of it we see in this sneak peek), the other wives were all pretty firm in not wanting to move furniture up her hellish stairs, but they told her several times they would be happy to help her unpack and take care of things once they were inside.
"I get what they're saying," Meri said, "nobody wants to move. But at the same time, I'm feeling like their love and caring for me is conditional."
"'We'll love you if we can do something fun, but not if you need something done.'"
It must be tough to feel that way about your own family, but we can see their point -- if the stairs are really that bad and you could afford to hire some help, why not just get the help?
And if you have family willing to help whenever you call ... why not just call?
We would say that hopefully Meri starts to feel a little better about things, but as we said in the beginning, she's never really seemed to feel good about her situation in the first place, so she probably won't start now.
Will you be watching the madness unfold in this new episode?
