Side-by-side splits! Tina Louise opened up about how Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim’s breakup influenced her decision to end things with Brett Oppenheim.
“We’re still friends. It got to the point where I wanted to take the next step in the relationship and he wasn’t quite there yet,” the 40-year-old star recently told TMZ after news broke on December 21 that she and the Selling Sunset star, 44, split after eight months together. (Stause, 40, and Jason, also 44, confirmed their split a few hours earlier that day.)
The Australia native noted that she “wasn’t sure” if she wanted kids ahead of her breakup with Brett, but explained that he, like his brother, doesn’t want to be a dad. Brett and Jason’s aversion to becoming parents influenced both Stause and Tina Louise’s choice to walk away from their respective relationships.
“I think, maybe, the relationship with Chrishell and Jason may have prompted me to ask similar questions with Brett and that sort of ended the relationship,” Tina Louise told the outlet in an interview published on Monday, December 27.
The Sugar Taco owner explained that she and Brett called it quits a few weeks before the news broke earlier this month. When it comes to mending her broken heart, Tina Louise added that she and the Days of Our Lives star have grieved differently.
“I tend to remove myself a little bit and give myself some space and distance to figure out where I am. Kind of work on my growth,” she said of her own healing process. The Los Angeles resident added that the Kentucky native and the real estate mogul haven’t had as much distance since they parted ways.
“I think Chrishell and Jason remained friends and continue to remain friends. They were friends before they got together. They’re always going to be friends,” Tina Louise noted. “They still love each other every much but [the] circumstance’s where she wants one thing and he wants another.”
The restauranteur has also seemingly taken the friend approach to her relationship with Brett post-split, telling the outlet that they were still spending Christmas together.
“I’m going to visit his family. We’re still very close,” she said, adding that they are strictly platonic at this point. “There [are] certain things I want, certain things he can’t give me. I’m friends with all my exes.”
Brett and Tina Louise made their relationship public in April, with the model confirmed earlier this month that he was officially her ex. “We remain very good friends,” she wrote via her Instagram Story at the time.
The realtor briefly addressed the split as well on December 21 via his Instagram Story. After a fan asked whether Brett was single, he replied, “As of very recently, actually, yes.”
Earlier that day, Jason commented on his split from Stause, who he started dating privately in May.
“While Chrishell and I are no longer together, we remain best friends we will always love and support one another,” Jason wrote via his Instagram Story at the time. “She was the most amazing girlfriend I’ve ever had, and it was the happiest and most fulfilling relationship of my life.”
The All My Children alum further explained the reasoning behind her and Jason’s breakup in her own social media post, pointing to their differing views on having a family as the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Jason was and is my best friend, and other than our ideas for family ultimately not being aligned, the amount of respect and love we have for each other will not change going forward,” Stause wrote. “Men have the luxury of time that women don’t and that’s just the way it goes. All of that being said, navigating this public terrain is difficult and I am just trying my best.”