Bethenny Frankel is finally spilling all about her contentious divorce from Jason Hoppy.
After finally putting an end to her nearly 10-year court battle over both her daughter, 11-year-old Bryn, and her finances, the former Real Housewives of New York City star took to her podcast, where she described her split from Jason as “torture” before explaining why she initially didn’t want a prenup and looking back on her first marriage to Peter Sussman.
“I have had a horrific, hall of fame, nightmare divorce and I have been struggling with talking about this for years,” Bethenny began on the December 14 episode of her podcast, Just B With Bethenny Frankel. “There’s nothing in my life that has affected me as a mother, a woman, a human being, emotionally, physically, mentally… There’s nothing that I’m more of an expert on in the world than divorce.”
“It was torture… I’ve been through hell. I’ve been to hell and back. I can’t express to you how bad my experience has been,” she continued.
Looking back on the moments leading up to her saying, “I do,” to Jason, the RHONY alum said that when she decided to marry her now-ex, she felt he was a regular person “who seemed like [he] could handle all of what was going on with me,” including her reality career.
“I was sort of proud of myself for just marrying someone who had a simple life and they didn’t come from much and so they would never want anything from me because this is just not the way that it goes,” she admitted.
Because Bethenny felt that Jason would never want anything from her, she was put off by the idea of a prenup.
“I had a lawyer that said to me about my prenup, ‘It’s terrible,’ and, ‘I wouldn’t let you sign this,’ and of course I said, ‘No. No one’s taking anything from me, and I’m trusting and I don’t want to deal with this,’” she recalled. “And it was embarrassing. The word ‘prenup’ is embarrassing to me. It’s an uncomfortable, awkward concept.”
But after spending “millions of dollars” and “millions of tears,” Bethenny, who ultimately did sign a prenup with her now-ex, said she was “totally, totally wrong.”
“If I had known that getting into marriage is the same thing as getting into business together with a business partner, my eyes would have been more open… I misjudged,” she confessed.
According to Bethenny, her divorce ended up being “the biggest struggle, obstacle, fight, emotionally tormenting experience I’ve ever been through in my entire life,” especially due to the way it impacted her daughter.
“You have to put the child first. You have to find a way, no matter how angry you are, you have to find a way to make your child’s well-being more important than your anger for the other person,” she explained. “I’ve been the victim of anger trumping the benefits of a child.”
Also during the podcast episode, Bethenny looked back on her seven-month marriage to Peter.
“I got married in my twenties to a nice man who, I loved his family… I was kind of marrying him and them because I didn’t have my own family,” she shared. “And it didn’t work out.”
Following the split, Bethenny said she returned her ring and a pair of earrings she’d received from his parents while he returned a watch that she had purchased for him.
“I didn’t have anything. It was just… we were divorced and there’s no money needed to change hands, no one [needed] to give me anything,” she revealed. “I was 26 years old. He came from a wealthy family, and there was never a conversation that I would take anything from him.”
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