A reality TV romance gone wrong.
Raquel Leviss is opening up about her split from ex-fiancée James Kennedy, which left all of their Vanderpump Rules co-stars in shock.
"It was kind of at Thanksgiving where I realized that I didn't want to be in this relationship anymore," Raquel admitted during the Scheananigans with Scheana Shay podcast on Friday, Jan. 7.
However, Raquel didn't tell James this at the time, as she and her mom were both worried "he wasn't going to have a good reaction," based on his "history of acting out and being angry."
Plus, as Raquel explained on the podcast, James was already having a tough time getting along with her family.
"It was getting to the point where my family and him were not meshing well, and the future of Thanksgivings and Christmases and holidays was looking like it was going to be either James or my family," she said. "Especially like if we had a baby."
"Foreseeing this future and what it was all coming down to and I was like...I don't want that," Raquel added.
Eventually, Raquel found the courage to break things off while they were watching this season of Vanderpump Rules. James had apparently complained that he didn't have a funny storyline, prompting Raquel to point out that he had been too busy "not supporting me emotionally the way that I needed to be supported."
"He was like 'Oh, I didn't know that you felt that way,' and the conversation just kept going...and it was like word vomit," Raquel recalled. "It was like, 'This is how I've been feeling, and I can't keep it in any longer because I'm not being an honest person and I'm lying to you and I don't feel comfortable with this.'"
She continued, "So I just told him that my heart isn't in it anymore. 'I don't appreciate the way that you treat other people; it's not how I treat other people. And a piece of me dies inside each time you mistreat somebody.'"
James supposedly asked for another chance, to which Raquel replied, "I gave you another chance...and that led us here."
It was then that James realized how serious Raquel was. Much to her surprise, he was "calm" and continued listening to her.
"I was preparing for the worst, and it was the best possible outcome, I guess, that it could have been," she added. "Because he really did listen to me and was understanding of where I was coming from. He respected my decision."
Unfortunately, Raquel's relief was short-lived—they now had to either break the news at the Vanderpump Rules' reunion or pretend they were still together.
"We weren't even sure that we were going to address it at the reunion, because we're like, 'Maybe it's best to just pretend everything is fine,'" Raquel recalled. "But once we pulled up in the car, we were like we need to tell Bill [Langworthy]. We need to tell production what's going on."
From there, Bill, a producer, told Andy Cohen and then Andy told Lisa Vanderpump.
"And then you told all of us," Scheana added.
James and Raquel then took the break-up public on Sunday, Dec. 5.
Now, the former couple is "still speaking occasionally."
"We are still friendly with one another," she said. "We still follow each other on Instagram and like each other's posts. My goal would be to maintain a friendship with him because he was my best friend for so long and it's really difficult to just cut that off and pretend it never happen. Because it did happen. We spent so much time with each other and he was the love of my life at one point, but more than that he was my best friend and we shared everything together. We are going to try our best to be friends."
Hear the complete episode of Scheananigans with Scheana Shay here.