RHOC’s Dr. Jen Armstrong Opens Up About Marital Struggles With Ryne, Accuses Noella of Making “Blatant Lies” About Her and Suggests She Has “Agenda” on Show, Plus Biggest Lesson

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RHOC's Dr. Jen Armstrong Opens Up About Marital Struggles With Ryne, Accuses Noella of Making “Blatant Lies” About Her and Suggests She Has “Agenda” on Show, Plus Biggest Lesson

Dr. Jen Armstrong has witnessed a wild season 16 of Real Housewives of Orange County.

She’s seen the best and the worst of several castmates and allowed viewers to see her marital struggles.

According to a video chat with ET, Jen felt uncomfortable around certain castmates, because “you don’t want something used back against you.”

She stated, “I didn’t feel as comfortable with Emily [Simpson]. I remember the first night when we were filming at Heather’s party, the sushi party — the big party with the lawsuit — and she got information on Nicole James, and she goes, ‘Let’s go get her!’ And I remember hearing that and being like, ‘I need to be cautious around this one.'”

Jen was also uncomfortable around fellow newbie Noella Bergener. “People are like, ‘Why can’t you form a relationship with Noella?’” she said. “Because it’s here, it’s over here. It doesn’t exist,” she explained, and she moved her limbs around to make the point. “I didn’t even hardly know this woman before the show.”

In a past interview, Noella said Jen put words in her mouth (off-camera) regarding a topic that Noella kept secret.

“I’m calling bulls**t [on that]” Jen said to ET. “I don’t even know what she’s talking about, so I can’t comment on it.”

She went on to say, “The issue that I had with Noella is that she was making up blatant, false statements about me without even knowing me… You can have your opinion of me, you can think that I’m ugly, or thirsty or whatever she’s called me — she’s called me all these names — but there’s things that you can’t do: You can’t make up blatant, false lies about myself, my practice, my family.”

“Three times on film, she said, ‘Yes, I made up blatant lies about you, and I apologize,'” added the doctor. “The [rest of the group] came against me saying I’m so insensitive, and I’m like, ‘No. No, I’m not buying what this girl is selling.’…  So it came full circle in the end, like, ‘Oh, you’re right.'”

Jen expressed that Noella “just seems very confused… She doesn’t really have an idea of what’s actually going on in the room in front of her.”

It became noticeable that Noella “had an agenda on the show… The cameras would turn off and she’d be like, ‘Wasn’t that so good? The fans are going to love it!'”

In a midseason trailer, Heather Dubrow yells at Noella on vacation in Aspen, saying, “You are a liar and a thirsty girl and I am done.”

Jen addressed this upcoming scene: “I don’t want to spoil anything, but just like she was making up lies about me, that will probably translate to making up lies about other cast members… And I don’t tolerate that. There’s plenty of interesting things in truth.”

The star also discussed her marital problems with Ryne Holliday. “I think it’s very cathartic to be on the show,” said the doc. “It’s almost like it puts this magnifying glass on things in your life … and it’s an opportunity to fix it and address it. So it got worse with Ryne before it got better, but in the end it did actually help. It was more healing.”

In a recent episode, Ryne walked away from a conversation Jen was trying to have. Jen commented about it to ET: “I mean, verbatim — we obviously talked about [him walking away from me] afterwards — and he said, ‘You and I have a hard time talking about stressful situations… He has a hard time supporting me in a way that I accept it, and he felt very uncomfortable. He’s like, ‘On camera, they would just watch us fail.’ I’m like, ‘Well, walking out is like even more of a failure.'”

“But he told me that he didn’t want to fail in supporting me on camera, which is kind of ironic, because the whole season he’s failing to support me on camera,” she added. “He was just like, ‘I’m not going to be able to help you in this situation…’ and he just ran. It was very emotional for me. I was embarrassed. It was a betrayal. I actually did need him.”

The star addressed another future scene when she tells her mom she’s “tired of being in this relationship.”

“When you’re trying so hard, you just keep trying and you keep trying and you’re not moving forward, at some point you’re like, ‘It would be so much easier to just have a new relationship,'” said Jen. “It’s like you’re spinning your wheel, spinning your wheel, and I’m not going anywhere on this hamster wheel. So it’s very frustrating.”

She and her husband tried a month of separation, but they eventually decided to reconcile. “He came back to me and was just very kind and genuine and open, which I don’t get a lot of from him typically,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, this is the husband I wanted.’ This is how it’s going to be, then open arms. Let’s work on it.”

“I think that that was an eye-opener on maybe what we were losing if we did actually separate,” she explained. “And so we’ve come back with more gratitude for each other, more appreciation for each other, and for the first time I feel like it’s very genuine. We genuinely want to be together and we’re working on it, where before it was going through the motions.”

However, she said “the next event that I take [Ryne] to, I get very nervous about bringing him, and I basically am inebriated. So that will be fun to look forward to [watching], like my college days all over again!”

Dr. Jen learned a big lesson during her first season. “I would insert myself more on conversations,” she revealed. “I’m used to being in a professional environment. When someone’s talking, you don’t talk over them. Someone’s screaming, you call security. So it was a whole new world for me. I’m sitting there, like, ‘Do we call security? What do I do here?'”

The answer, she eventually discovered, is to “scream right back.”

Photos Credit: Charles Sykes/Bravo