“I want to be happy.”
During the final installment of The Real Housewives of New Jersey‘s reunion on Wednesday night, Teresa Giudice flipped the script instead of a table: She’s ready for life without her husband, Joe Giudice, who is set to be deported back to Italy after he is released from prison.
“I’m not doing a long-distance relationship,” the 46-year-old reality star told Andy Cohen, surprising the host and her cast members, including sister-in-law Melissa Gorga.
It’s easy to see why they were shocked by Teresa’s statement, given her long history and loyalty to Joe, 46.
“I’ve known him my whole life. Our parents were friends and so we’ve known each other our whole lives,” Teresa once detailed of the couple’s past. “Our first date was when I was 17. I would say when I started driving, that’s when our first date was. We didn’t start [seriously] dating until I was 23.”
But now, over 20 years later, the couple is on the verge of going their separate ways as Joe’s deportation date nears.
“I hope that’s not a decision I have to make, but just to pick up my children and just move to another country, I don’t think that would be good for my children. No, I probably wouldn’t,” she said when asked if she would move to Italy with Joe, before going on to say she’s had conversations with some of the couple’s daughters—Gia, 18, Gabriella, 15, Milania, 13, and Audriana, 10—about the situation.
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“Unless my kids say, ‘Mommy, I want to move to Italy,’ but Gia is going to college this year, I haven’t spoken to Milania or Audriana about it,” she explained. “We haven’t gotten there yet and Gabriella already voiced her opinion to me. She was like, ‘That would be so hard for me, mommy.’ She doesn’t speak the language. That would kill me even more. It’s like starting a whole new life and they’ve been through so much already.”
And she’s also thinking of herself and what she needs from a relationship, saying, “I want somebody who’s with me every single day. I’m sure he’ll be with other women. You know, it happens. If we do the long-distance thing, it’s not going to work. It’ll be like, ‘Bye-bye.'”
In the past, Teresa has said she would stick by Joe, who she married in 1999 and has known basically her entire life, and denied any talk of divorce.
“I am not getting divorced. The truth is I miss my husband and cannot wait for him to come home,” she once told Bravo’s The Daily Dish. “We talk every day on the phone and I go and see him a few times per month. My daughters miss their daddy just as much as I do. We all love him very much.”
But since completing her own prison sentence in 2015, the reality star has been leaving a trail of tiny bread crumbs, both on and off the show, hinting that she was slowly readying herself and family for life without Joe, who began his 41-month prison sentence in March 2016.
AKM-GSI
While Teresa was in prison, Joe was accused of having an affair, though he denied the allegations.
But once she came home, there was clearly tension the couple before he went to prison, mostly stemming from his drinking.
In one RHONJ episode leading up to his departure, Joe told Teresa she “better stop being so f–king tired at night” or “You’re going to be out of the door when I come out.” And after Teresa compared him to his father for his aggressive behavior while drinking, he shouted, “Don’t bring my dad up or I’ll smack your head up against the wall! Shut the f–k up, please!” The argument ended with Joe telling Teresa, “I can’t wait to leave! The only thing I’m going to miss are my kids!”
But even his kids were concerned with his behavior, with the couple’s oldest daughter Gia telling her mom, “He needs to go. It would be good for him. I think he just needs to realize what he has, so he can get his s–t together.”
In an interview with E! News to promote her memoir, Standing Strong, Teresa said, “Joe never mistreated me because if he mistreated me I definitely wouldn’t be with him.”
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But during Wednesday’s reunion episode, Teresa once again expressed her anger towards Joe, saying, “Of course I’m angry with him. I went to jail…of course I’m angry. I have a small family…I’m angry that I came home, eight months later, I lost my mom.”
After filing for bankruptcy in 2009, both Joe and Teresa were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, bank fraud, making false statements on loan applications and bankruptcy fraud, were later indicted on charges of bank fraud and loan application fraud, and then pleaded guilty to financial fraud in March 2014. While in court, the couple admitted hiding assets from bankruptcy creditors and submitting false loan applications to obtain about $5 million in mortgages and construction loans. (Joe also pleaded guilty to failing to pay taxes.) The Giudices were then sentenced to their respective prison sentences in October 2014.
Teresa said they haven’t technically fought over Joe’s actions, she admitted, “I do throw it in his face when I get mad. I’m like, ‘You shouldn’t have screwed up.’ He has tremendous guilt.”
As of now, Teresa visits Joe once a month, while their daughters usually see him twice a month. And Teresa and Joe’s big discussion about what will happen to their relationship if he is deported happened over the phone, with no tears and no yelling.
“Believe it or not, we’ve only talked about it once, but he said it too,” she told Andy during the reunion. “He said, ‘Obviously, if that happens, I’m going to move on with my life. You’re going to move on with your life.’ And that’s what’s going to happen.”
In January 2018, Teresa made headlines when she was spotted grabbing dinner with divorce attorney Loren La Forge-Kyriakoulis and talked about getting “great advice” in the caption of an Instagram photo of the two of them before going on to change it.
“I changed the caption because everybody’s like, ‘Oh, you’re getting a divorce?'” Teresa later explained on Watch What Happens Live, clearly annoyed by the speculation. “It’s like, c’mon. It’s, like, everybody always thinks the worst!”
YouTube
And in an interview with E! News, she also clarified the dinner, saying, “The divorce lawyer is my friend and I knew exactly what I was putting out there and if I was getting a divorce, you think I would put it out on social media that way? It’s so funny to me how people take something and run with it. It’s crazy! I basically did that to promote my friend. She is an amazing divorce attorney so if you are getting divorced, she’s the person to call.”
But that wasn’t the only time Teresa seemed to be trying to seek legal advice on the sly.
When she attended The Real Housewives of New York City star Luann de Lessep‘s cabaret show, she asked a pretty telling question during an informal Q&A, inquiring about going through a divorce in the public eye.
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