Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesVanderpump Rules star Scheana Marie has been going through a difficult time in the first year of her marriage to husband Michael Shay.
Last week, it was revealed that Shay has struggles with an addiction to pills, and now Scheana is opening up to E! News about how it's affected their marriage…so much so, she almost left him.
"As far as I know it was just the problem with the pills, it wasn't a problem with everything. So once he cut that out, he cut back on drinking," she reveals. "We know he's doing what works for him. I don't think he needs rehab. He doesn't think he needs rehab. If he wants to go to a couple meetings, if he wants to stop drinking, he will 100-percent have my full support. I'm not even a big drinker anymore. I'm 30, we're married. My ideal night out is a night in on the couch, with my remote control, snuggled up with him. I would much rather do that."
However, she does admit that she questioned whether she could stay with him upon discovering his addiction.
"There was a split second, I'm not going to lie, that in my head I was like, ‘I can't be married to an addict. Are you kidding me? No. I'm out. I'm done' if he continued that lifestyle. There was never a point where I'm like, ‘OK, if you stop I'm still going to leave you.'"
Essentially, she forced him to choose between his addiction and her. "Not that I was being unsupportive. I just felt like he needed some tough love…I want him to know that this ends now, so it's either me or this, and he chose me."
She also expressed how she's doing her part, too. She's made sure to do more research on addiction and become aware of the signs to look out for in the future.
But it hasn't been easy dealing with her marital struggles on reality television.
"The most annoying thing was people saying this was our scripted story like…It's not about having a storyline, it's about what's going on in our lives right now, and this is what was going on in our life," she says. "It wasn't my first choice to be like, ‘Oh my God, we should totally film all this terrible stuff happening.' But at the same time, that's our reality."
Though it's been hard, she believes their story might be helpful to their viewers. "I think it's a very serious topic that has never been discussed on our show, especially, but on a lot of reality TV. It's a lot of surface level drama, and who's-sleeping-with who petty B.S."
Meanwhile, to add more drama to Scheana's life, it was also recently revealed that Stassi Schroeder will be returning to Vanderpump Rules—something Scheana admits wasn't welcomed by anyone with open arms.
"At first, none of us wanted anything to do with her coming back," she explains. "It was annoying because we were halfway through filming. We had all of these things going on, Katie just got engaged, and it was just such a happy time. To have such a dark cloud come back over that happy time, it was not welcomed very nicely."
However, Scheana admits she wasn't all that taken back by Stassi's decision. "At first I was surprised, but then I thought about who she was, and I was like, ‘Why would I be surprised?' She has an opportunity to make something about her. I think she just didn't have anything else to do. "
So is there a chance for them to rekindle a friendship in the future?
"I mean, I've tried. I really have. I feel like we're two people who aren't really supposed to be friends. We've tried, we want to be friends. But it just never really works out. I don't know if it's like a competitive thing. But I'll always have love for her. She's always someone I'll care about. I just don't know that we'll ever be as close as we were before."
(E! News and Bravo are both part of the NBC family).