‘RHOBH’ Recap: Erika Jayne Reveals The Real Reason Why She Divorced Tom Girardi
Erika reunited with the ladies for the first time since filing for divorce, and she had a lot to say.
The June 23 episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills revealed a lot of information about Erika Jayne‘s divorce from Tom Girardi. Whether or not you choose to believe it, though, is up to you.
The episode started with Erika reuniting with the ladies for the first time since filing for divorce. Sutton Stracke was hosting some sort of Paris-themed lunch or dinner party, and everyone attended. And after a few side conversations that brought on a few laughs, Erika was finally ready to “discuss the elephant in the room“.
As Kyle Richards slowly slurped up some delicious caviar — because why not? — Erika started: “So my life drastically changed this week. I let go of my Lamborghini. I let go of my 16,000 square foot home. I let go of my marriage. I let go of everything. I literally made a decision that I had to.”
Erika then took to her confessional to further explain, “I left because he pushed me further and further out. The conversations that I used to have were now reduced down to a sentence or two. I just kept walking around that house knowing that this marriage was heading down a really s***ty path. I had to make a choice to do what was right for me. I couldn’t live that way anymore.”
Erika told the ladies that she didn’t tell anyone anything about her split “on purpose” because it would have put them “in a bad situation”. Furthermore, she said she “struggled for a long time” knowing that she had to leave her marriage. “But once I made my decision,” she said, “I spent a good 30 days closing out certain parts of my life. I cried every day. This was the end of a massive part of my life and stepping into, basically, a void.”
“I thought about this and tried and tried and tried to talk and tried to work it out and tried, and I was met with such resistance. Such resistance,” Erika further told the ladies before taking to her confessional: “My marriage was never conventional. He was successful, and 33 years older. [I was] the cocktail waitress that made good with the young son. In my marriage, if I wanted to open up and say, ‘You, Tom, have hurt my feelings’, there was none of that. It was always dismissed.”
Erika told the women, “I can’t do this by myself. I can not convince someone of anything. And so I said, ‘Okay, well, I have to take this step on my own.'” Erika said that she was always expected to feel grateful for the “perfect” life Tom provided her, and if she were to ever complain about anything, Tom would dismiss it.
Erika said she filed for divorce on election day, hoping the news would get “buried” beneath coverage of the most important election in modern times. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t the case. As many fans are well aware, her divorce from Tom has been highly publicized in the media — especially amidst the ongoing legal accusations against them, as well as the recently released Hulu documentary, The Housewife and the Hustler.
Erika didn’t reveal too much more at Sutton’s party, but she did hint that there’d be more to come. “Timing is everything. As soon as I get a handle on what’s come for me — and it will be coming for me,” she said without fully finishing her thought. However, if you’ve been following along, it certainly sounds like she might have been alluding to her legal troubles amidst the split.
Once Lisa Rinna and the other ladies told Erika they’d be there for her no matter what, she said, “I did not see it ending this way. I was going to hold that man’s hand until he died.”
She then told everyone they’d be “welcome” to come see the new “baby doll house” she rented in West Hollywood — a house that’s only an eighth of the size of her Pasadena mansion. The new house still needs some furniture, but Erika admitted to stealing “a sofa and two chairs” from the home she shared with Tom. She also admitted to not feeling super sad about leaving the Pasadena house since she was “the third wife” of Tom’s to have lived there. “It wasn’t my house to begin with,” she said.
“After finding a place to go to, I dropped Tom off at work, I went home and moved out,” Erika later revealed in a private confessional amidst a scene that showed her, her longtime stylist Mikey Minden, and her assistant Laia, making plans for her new house.
The “uncertainty” and “instability” of her future is “frightening,” Erika revealed, but she also knows that “getting the courage to leave is a big deal”. Especially because — as she describes it — her marriage wasn’t as glamorous as it appeared to be. She said, “I’ll never forget one time when I was joining Tom and five other guys for dinner. I said, ‘I’m sorry I’m late. I was in traffic,’ and one of them said, ‘Well, if you were married to a better man, traffic would be no problem.’ And Tom straight looked at him across the table and said, ‘Well, if you think you can afford her, then you can have her.’ And it flew right out of his mouth, like it was [nothing].”
So why is she revealing this now? Well, Erika said she kept quiet because he was supporting her. She felt “underlying pressure to please” him since he was “providing” for her. “I felt I should shut up and be grateful to an extent. She openly admitted that her life with Tom was “great” — at least as far as what that life provided for her — but she said it came at a “cost”. And that seemed to be her happiness.
At this point, Erika said she imagines Tom didn’t think twice about her leaving. The last time she saw him — when she dropped him off at work — she told him she loved him and he responded by saying, “Thanks… like I was an employee”, she tearfully revealed during a private conversation with Lisa towards the end of the episode.
Later, Garcelle Beauvais offered to set Erika up with her new dating coach, but Erika said she’s not even ready for that. And to be honest, we don’t blame her.
Want more drama? New episodes of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills air Wednesdays at 8pm on Bravo.