Gina Kirschenheiter is looking back on her messy encounter with Noella Bergener in Mexico.
Following a dinner party dispute on Wednesday’s episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Gina shaded Noella for her lack of accountability and inability to resolve issues as Noella clapped back by suggesting they have a one-sided friendship due to Gina’s close relationship with Heather Dubrow.
“I kind of went into game night saying, ‘I’m not going to bring anything up, I’m just going to let it all go. We’re going to have fun,’” Gina recalled on the February 9 episode of the RHOC: After Show. “I have good intentions. I want things to go good. I’m perfectly fine accepting with responsibility for what I did. Can you please accept responsibility for what you did? And Noella has a hard time accepting responsibility for her part in anything.”
According to Gina, Noella isn’t a “bad person.” However, because of her past issues, she is often unable to close the door on certain issues.
“I think she deals with probably a lot of her past ways of dealing with problems and then when she’s confronted with somebody who just really wants to get resolve, it’s hard for her,” Gina explained.
As for Noella, she shared the real reason she was upset with Gina had to do with feeling like Gina was more loyal to Heather than to her. After noting their dinner chat “wasn’t a productive conversation,” Noella said she began to connect the dots when it came to Gina and Heather’s closeness and the impact their relationship was having on her own friendship with Gina.
“She had said things that I told her, really in confidence, she went and told that to Heather. [And] where was that reciprocated to me?” Noella wondered. “Could you have maybe been a friend to me and reciprocated, ‘Oh by the way, she thinks you gave her child p**nography.’ If you are going to do one for one friendship, you need to apply that to my friendship with you as well. So at this point it was very crystal, like, ‘Okay, it’s a one-sided relationship and anything that I say or do with you is going to go back to Heather to kind of maybe be weaponized against me so the trust was gone at that point.”
Although Noella said that she isn’t holding her breath for a reconciliation with Gina and noted that “maybe we are not going to be at that level” of friendship any longer, Gina insisted she had gone “out of [her] way to be a good friend to Noella” before being triggered by her verbal attack in Mexico.
“I was trying everything I could to be a good friend to Noella and she was being so mean. And she’s insecure. She was trying to make it like I was doing something wrong to her and I knew I wasn’t but I didn’t know how to explain that,” Gina shared. “And then I just got overwhelmed.”
Looking back, Noella said her drama with Gina has made her realize that certain friendships aren’t meant to be “deep.”
“Maybe this was the friendships in those categories, where I wasn’t in a safe place to go so deep so fast with because they hadn’t reciprocated the trust and respect that I gave to them. And I think going forward I need to be more protective of myself,” she concluded.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 16 airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.