Welcome to Character Study: my column where we do pop culture deep dives (and the occasional book deep dive) on the headlines we can’t stop reading and the personalities at the center of them.
If you’re a fellow reality TV aficionado, you’ve probably seen the breakout season of Real Housewives of Rhode Island. Its season one accomplished what many unscripted series no longer can: it brought together a group of ladies, multiple of which had the uniquely binge-able combination of genuine history with one another and absolutely feral, uncensored energy.
Between fights about family history, house square footage, and sugar daddy allegations, rumors of an affair kept plaguing Real Housewife Rulla Pontarelli. Her costar Jo-Ellen Tiberi was like a dog with a bone, constantly warning Rulla that her husband, Brian, was having an ongoing affair. Rulla denied it all season and even withdrew from the cast’s social events because of it. Ultimately, though, the evidence was both abundant and damning. By the end of the season, Rulla was forced to admit to the affair—although she was consistent in reinforcing that the affair was over, Brian had moved on, and the mistress was simply taking desperate measures to receive attention and ruin the Pontarellis’ lives.
Even at the season 1 reunion, Rulla doubled down on this. Both she and Brian stated that, because of a lawsuit, they couldn’t speak about the affair. And they continued to say that the affair had long been over, even when Jo-Ellen once again brought forth proof that the affair was longer and more intense than Rulla was willing to admit.
Each interaction was fascinating to watch. Not because I enjoyed seeing a woman in pain; on the contrary, Rulla’s clear coping-by-way-of-denial was painful to see. But because said form of coping seemed so obvious… to everyone but Rulla herself.
From the comfort of any given couch, it’s easy to tell a woman (or a man, for that matter) to leave a relationship after infidelity. We watch from the sidelines, completely removed from not just the implications of a breakup (or divorce) itself, but also from the love that initially served as the foundation of that relationship. That same love, as frayed or fractured as it may be, that at times complicates a scorned lover’s decision-making. It’s easy for me to give grace to Rulla, or anyone else going through a similar situation, for that reason. Situations are rarely as black and white as they seem to those of us who aren’t in it.
But where Rulla loses me, and seemingly large swaths of the RHORI audience, is in her determination to blame the mistress instead of Brian himself. She has blasted the mistress on social media, even going so far as to post her take on the Netflix documentary trend, in which she takes a jab at the mistress and calls her “an ugly side chick.”
I’m not the social media police. And I’m the first person to stand up and say that if we were all judged by our worst moments and had them aired publicly, there would be very few people on this earth who wouldn’t upset at least a handful of people with their misdeeds. And even fewer people who could walk away completely and totally unscathed from public perception and scrutiny. So my gripe isn’t with the concept of a one-off (or even two-off) mistake.
My issue is that Rulla continues to poke at her husband’s mistress, without acknowledging that her blame is completely misplaced.
If Rulla wants to stay with Brian, it’s completely her right. Whether that’s because of love for Brian, commitment to a nuclear family, cultural pressure, financial entanglement, or any one of the other common reasons people choose to stay after infidelity or separation, I’m all for it. None of us know what the best decision for her is.
What I think we can say, however, is that the best decision is not rolling around in the mud and going jab for jab with another woman while pretending your husband wasn’t complicit in a sordid and public affair.
Does that mean I think Rulla should be dragging Brian’s name through the mud every chance she gets? Absolutely not. Quite frankly, I think Rulla should stop talking about it at all. Stop talking about the mistress. Stop talking about Brian. Stop talking about anything you don’t want others talking about. And, on that note, perhaps remove herself from the Bravo universe entirely. Because if her goal is to let the details of the affair go quietly into the night and protect the reputation of her husband, being a Real Housewife and subjecting yourself to public scrutiny is likely going to accomplish the opposite.
And if Rulla does want to stay on Real Housewives of Rhode Island? It could all be so simple. All she has to do is be honest:
“I know what Brian did with the mistress sucks. It has hurt our marriage. We’re trying to work on it, although the future of our relationship is still to be determined. I would appreciate everyone giving us some space to figure that out, as I’d like to save my marriage by any means necessary and some grace would go a long way in accomplishing that.”
Boom. Done.
I’m not saying that she’d stop receiving scrutiny. But even a little acknowledgment of reconciliation being her goal over honesty, truth, or properly directed blame would go a long way—if for no other reason than having a reason [beyond pure denial] to shut down talk of the affair by her castmates.
Most viewers seem to think it’s icky Rulla is blaming the mistress over the person with whom she exchanged vows. But I’d like to think most viewers would respect a woman owning her anguish, her desire to remain married, and the clear uncertainty on whether or not that will happen.
And you know what? I think that’d be a beautiful way forward even if Rulla decided she didn’t want to be a part of RHORI anymore.
After all, humans rally against people who act like monsters. But we always rally for people who act like humans.