Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne opened up about her controversial divorce on Wednesday’s episode.
As the remainder of the RHOBH cast waited at Sutton Stracke’s Paris-themed event, Erika made her big, dramatic entrance. This was the first time her friends saw her since her shocking divorce.
When the women sat down to eat, Erika surprised her friends as she was willing to address “the elephant in the room.”
Erika got vulnerable, surprising her friends and viewers alike, by revealing the gritty details of her divorce.
“My life drastically changed this week,” Erika shared. “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 said that she tried to work it out with Tom but every time she brought up the issues in their marriage, she was “dismissed” and “met with such resistance.”
“I left because he pushed me further and further out,” she explained during a confessional interview. “The conversations that I used to have were now reduced down to a sentence or two. I just kept walking around that house and knowing that this marriage was headed 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.”
She also shared how the divorce impacted her emotionally.
“I cried every day,” she admitted to the women. “This was the end of a massive part of my life, stepping into basically a void.”
Erika shares why she filed for divorce
During a one-on-one conversation with Lisa Rinna, Erika essentially gave a play-by-play on how she served Tom the divorce papers.
Lisa was shocked when Erika revealed that she left him without having any conversation about it or even leaving a note.
Erika described the moment that made her realize her marriage was over.
“I drove him to work and I told him I loved him. And he said, ‘Thanks, hun,’ like I was an employee,” she shared.
“I went home and started putting everything in the moving van,” she told Lisa. “I drove off, went to my new place, spent the night there and he was served the next morning.”
She also got vulnerable about how hard it was to uproot her life and find a new place to call home.
Why Erika hadn’t opened up about her marriage struggles to the RHOBH
Erika has been known for being stoic and keeping her secrets close to her so all this vulnerability is definitely a big shift for her.
Even though she doesn’t usually open up to her friends, they found her divorce extra shocking because she had been gushing about Tom days before.
She revealed why she had been secretive about what was going on behind close doors.
In addition to putting on a brave face for the public, she wanted to keep her friends out of the messy legal drama that she and Tom are involved in.
“It also doesn’t serve me to talk a lot about what is happening legally or will happen legally because I am married to somebody who’s very good in that area,” she admitted.
Even though her marital problems seemingly came out of nowhere, Erika stated during a confessional that she had “struggled for a long time” and had been working on the process of preparing to divorce Tom for the past 30 days.
Additionally, she shared that she had been hesitant to bash Tom and their marriage because of how he provided for her financially.
“There’s always that underlying pressure of wanting to please someone that’s provided for you,” she said. “And I felt always that I should shut up and be grateful to an extent.”
Viewers will have to tune in to see how Erika copes with her divorce throughout the course of the RHOBH season.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.