Working it out. Teddi Mellencamp opened up about how she and husband Edwin Arroyave nearly got divorced and how they overcame their struggles.
“When we first started, I remember my first day honestly it was like ‘F–ck, at what point do I tell everybody that I’m getting a divorce? Like when do I do this?’” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 41, said on the Monday, March 27, episode of her and Tamra Judge’s “Two Ts In A Pod” podcast.
Both Arroyave, 45, and Tamra’s husband, Eddie Judge, were guests on the episode alongside Emily Simpson. “We are at our worst absolute phase, because truthfully, for us, it was really about a power struggle,” Mellencamp said of their marital struggles.
The fitness coach, for her part, explained she was in a “weaker position” when she and Arroyave, 45, joined the Bravo franchise in 2017 during the eighth season of RHOBH. The twosome tied the knot in 2011 and share daughters Slate, 10, and Dove, 3, and son Cruz, 7. The Celebrity Big Brother alum is also stepmother to daughter Isabella, 13, whom the businessman shares from a previous marriage.
“We were always kind of equals when we were together. I rode horses, I was competitive and I was all these things. Then I couldn’t get pregnant naturally, I did all these IVFs.” she explained. “Then, all of a sudden, he was in charge of our finances, and I had never been that. I never not had my own money, I had been working since I was 17. Then I just started hating him.”
The Indiana native went on to explain that her resentment toward the Skyline Security Management founder began to grow and anything he did would set her off. Eventually, she learned that she needed to work on herself in order to be a better partner.
“Once I started loving myself again, we could start loving each other because when I don’t love myself we don’t love each other,” Mellencamp reflected.
Arroyave, for his part, admitted that the reality series ended up bringing him and his wife closer together rather than straining their marriage, unlike some other reality TV couples.
“Everybody said the show is going to divide you, instead it actually united us,” he confessed. “It’s the importance of when you actually work on your marriage you’ll remember how much you love it. For a long time, you’ll start to dislike it … I didn’t work on my marriage for a while so I was starting to dislike it and the show made me work on it.”
