Credit: Instagram
Monique Samuels opened up about her divorce from Chris Samuels on Instagram earlier this week.
Months after the Real Housewives of Potomac alum, 39, filed for divorce, Monique took to her Instagram page, where she spoke about the moments leading up to her split from the former NFL player, 45, the moment she realized her marriage wasn’t going to work, and explained how her children impacted the decision.
“I was in therapy, and my counselor asked me, ‘What is it that you want? If you could have the ideal marriage, if you could have everything you want from a marriage, what is it that you want?’ And she told me to write those things down,” Monique recalled, via PEOPLE. “Then, she told me, ‘If he is unable to do those things for you, and he is the same that he is now and he never changes, are you able to live life with him for the rest of your life?’”
According to Monique, she spent two weeks writing down the pros and cons of her relationship before realizing she was “miserable.”
“I just got to the point where I was in a place where I was so miserable,” she admitted.
But she doesn’t put the full responsibility for that on Chris.
“It was also just with myself, dealing with my own issues and trauma, understanding myself and why I respond and react the ways I do, going through my childhood,” she explained. “I’ve been doing some work, and it wasn’t easy. It’s not easy to look at the things about yourself that you don’t like, and you don’t love and say, ‘You know what, I’m going to love the bad parts of me, I’m going to love the good parts, which is easier. But even the things that I don’t like about myself, I have to really embrace that and love that … It has been quite a ride.”
As Monique grew individually and began to set boundaries, she realized she was no longer the person she was when she and Chris married 11 years ago.
“And that’s what led me to the point where I was like, ‘You know what, I think [this] is what will be best,’” she continued, noting that she was well aware that the toxicity of her relationship with Chris could impact their kids.
“I was thinking like most people, ‘Okay, we’re going to stay together for the kids.’ But that never works because staying together for the kids means that you’re giving them a terrible example of what a relationship should be like,” she noted.
Monique made it clear to her online audience that she was not going to paint Chris, who appeared with her on Love & Marriage: D.C. last year, in a negative light and said that he will refrain from doing the same to her.
Also on Instagram, via The Shade Room, Samuel said that while her separation was reported in October of last year, she filed for divorce on April 14.
“We had a mediator throughout this whole process, and when we felt like we got to a point where it was like, ‘Okay, we’re pretty much on the same page with moving forward with things,’ I did go to the courthouse and file,” she revealed. “The process is very stressful. It’s like going through death in so many ways. Chris and I have been together for 17 years. We’ve been married for 11 years.”
Although some have claimed she and Chris appeared on Love & Marriage to set up a divorce, she insisted that they had no plans to call it quits on the marriage during their time on the show.
“Just because we were going through it last year, which we were, last year was very rough, when we were going through our emotions, and we were trying to figure things out, the goal was not to get divorced,” she clarified. “That wasn’t where we were last year… Chris and I were trying every which way to figure out how do we get that connection back, how do we bring it back together, so even at that time, it wasn’t true. We weren’t seeking a divorce.”
In addition to realizing that she had grown apart from Chris, Monique said her three kids weighed heavily on her decision to split.
“We have three children who are watching us, our actions and how we interact with each other, how we run our household, that is literally an example for our children of how they’re gonna live their life, and I don’t want our children to ever be in a relationship where they feel like they’re not being heard, whether that’s on my side or Chris’ side, talking at each other, the marriage becomes like a battlefield,” she shared.
“If you get to a point where you’re like, ‘We have grown so far apart that it may be best that we focus on ourselves, individually, and then focus on the three important people in our lives, which is our children. And that’s what we decided to do,” she added.
The Real Housewives of Potomac season eight is currently in production and expected to begin airing on Bravo sometime later this year.