Forgive and forget. Real Housewives of New Jersey star Jennifer Aydin reflected on her marriage to husband Bill Aydin after his past affair became public.
“I’m glad I stayed … and forgave,” the Bravo star, 44, wrote via Instagram on Thursday, February 3, alongside a throwback photo of her family.
During the Tuesday, February 1, premiere of RHONJ, costar Margaret Josephs revealed that she knew about Bill’s previous infidelity. Ahead of season 12, Jennifer exclusively told Us Weekly that she kept the information under wraps for “the greater good” of her family — and that she has “no idea” how it was uncovered.
“I thought nobody would ever find out. … I never told anybody,” Jennifer explained. “Nobody knew — [not] my mother, my sister, my best friend, my cousin. Like, when I say I was taking it to the grave, I kept that secret inside.”
The couple met in 2001 and tied the knot one year later. They share five children: son Justin, daughter Gabby, son Jacob, son Christian and daughter Olivia. Jennifer confessed that she learned about Bill’s infidelity “days” before Christian, now 11, was born and decided to keep the secret for the benefit of her kids.
“I wanted to go through the motions of playing this game of life, so to speak, to try to put on a brave face for my children,” she told Us, adding that her kids have since been made aware of the plastic surgeon’s affair. “Because I wasn’t nasty towards him and we were playing the role of this happy family life — and of course, he was so remorseful and, you know, always petting me, trying to kiss [and] care [for] me — after a while I was just like, ‘You know what? Let’s just pretend this never happened.’ And that’s what I did.”
Since Jennifer joined the Real Housewives franchise in 2018, she and Bill have dealt with a great deal of speculation about their relationship. During a January 2019 episode, Margaret, 54, alleged that her costar’s marriage was on the rocks and that Bill was “sleeping in the pool house.”
At the time, Jennifer fired back, “My husband doesn’t sleep in the pool house, honey. I’m secure in my marriage, so it doesn’t bother me where the f–k he sleeps.”
The Macbeth Collection designer, for her part, explained earlier this month that she didn’t want to hurt her castmate by outing Bill’s affair. Instead, she simply wanted to point out Jennifer’s “hypocrisy” on the show.
“I was like, ‘You’re not honest and you’re not honest with everybody.’ And it’s bad. And I think that’s why I had said it,” Margaret told Page Six on Thursday. “Listen, I didn’t want to cut her to the core, and I did not want to hurt Bill. That’s not what the intention was.”
The Real Housewives of New Jersey airs on Bravo Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.