Entertainment

Why Did Bethenny Frankel & Jason Hoppy Divorce?

by Emily Lackey

When a couple gets divorced, it’s always hard to know for sure what really happened between them. But, when you’re a reality star like Bethenny Frankel and a good chunk of your adult life has been caught on camera, what led to the dissolution of your marriage may be a bit more public. And that’s exactly what happened between Jason Hoppy and Bethenny Frankel after their spin-off show Bethenny Ever After was cancelled. The show only captured the beginning of their marital issues, but it revealed enough to lead to the question: Why did Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy get divorced?

To answer it frankly: It seemed from the show like she and Hoppy had a lot of difficulties from the start. In many of the episodes, their fights would devolve in tense silence, or end with one of them walking away. I’m sure having cameras filming everything didn’t make communicating clearly any easier.

In addition to their visible tension on the show, they were also depicting spending a good deal of time in couples’ counseling trying to work through their problems. On one episode, the two join their therapist on a couples’ therapy retreat on a boat in the middle of the ocean. But rough waters were ahead for the couple, even in the middle of therapy. The boat’s GPS system went out and the crew was forced to call the Coast Guard to come to their rescue.

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There’s some serious metaphorical weight there, but what remained after that episode was clear tension between the couple.

Whatever happened between the couple after the show went off the air isn’t entirely clear, but Frankel has been vocal about what was wrong about their marriage from the beginning. "Later on, your Mom likes them, your friends are all getting married, your head gets involved, you love having sex with a person, that's your heart [or something else] getting involved," she said at the NYU Alumni Association’s Speakers on the Square event. "That's why I wrote the book I Suck at Relationships So You Don't Have To – because I wasn't making a decision out of truth, I was making a decision out of fear."

For his part, Hoppy has not commented on their divorce publically.

Whatever really went down between them, it seems their divorce proceedings are almost complete — so, thankfully, the two can soon move on with their lives.