Tom Sandoval Finally Tells His Side of the Story | Howie Mandel Does Stuff #116

All of it’s egregious, especially considering how comically grave Sandoval appears throughout, but 24 hours later, I can’t stop thinking about the way he discusses his sex life—or supposed lack thereof—with Madix:

I accepted it—I was like, Okay, you know, Ken [Todd] and Lisa [Vanderpump], they probably don’t have sex all the time. This is probably how it is.…I got porn, I got whatever. I can just go crack one off in the bathroom. But there were so many other perks [to being in a long-term relationship]. The building of the brand, the everything, the image of it all.

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For the Pump-illiterate, Ken and Lisa are technically Sandoval’s bosses, thus, the fact that he thought to measure the intimacy of his relationship against what he perceived of theirs is...pretty fucking weird.

He also went on to describe attempting to play matchmaker for Leviss and his longtime friend, castmate, and business partner, Tom Schwartz. Whether this is true, or—as some viewers have suspected—simply a decoy for his own dalliance with Leviss, remains unclear. What’s explicit, however, is Sandoval’s attempt to absolve himself by indirectly heaping some blame on his former partner who he claimed was simply “in denial” about the state of their sexless relationship.

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“I was seeing Raquel as often as I could, which I know that sounds horrible, and FaceTiming her all the time, and, like, Ariana just really didn’t even notice, because that’s just how separate our lives were,” Sandoval asserted.

“We would travel more by ourselves than we would together. I would go to weddings by myself,” he added. “I love Ariana. I still love Ariana and I care about her very much so, but we, for a while, had been sort of having our own lives.”

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In response to whether or not they were still together when #Scandoval broke, Sandoval claimed he’d ended things with Madix “two weeks earlier,” but she refused to accept it even days afterward.

“A couple days later, I sit down and talk with her again, and she’s like, ‘I’m not letting you leave me. You’re going to have to force me out of this relationship,’” he recalled. “And I was like, ‘Ariana, I don’t think I could be faithful in a relationship with you right now.’” Cool! Normal! A very nice guy!

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Though she’s declined to speak about the breakup thus far, a source close to Madix told People they were “fully together” when Sandoval’s affair with Leviss was exposed.

Fortunately, a few fellow Vanderpump Rules castmates weighed in post-interview—which culminated in Mandel shaving Sandoval’s mustache, by the way: “It’s not that I don’t dig Howie Mandel. Dope, cool, got it, whatever, but what a weird fucking first interview,” Lala Kent said via Instagram stories. Jax Taylor, Sandoval’s former friend and castmate, also had some thoughts on the appearance: “There’s no justifying cheating. Take it from someone who’s been down this road. You own up to what you’ve done. Be a man.”

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For what it’s worth, Mandel’s co-host and daughter was rather optimistic about life for Tom post-#Scandoval: “I think you’ll be fine,” she told him. “If Michael Vick could go back to playing football, if Chris Brown can go back to…” Unfortunately, she’s probably right. After all, that’s Bravo, baby!