Welcome to Is This Real Life, a Bravo podcast that relates our favorite shows to our own lives in the world around us.

I'm your host, Mandy Slutszer. Let's get to it.

Hi, everyone. I hope you had a wonderful week. Thank you all so much for the feedback from last

week's episode with Andrea Ashley of the Adult Child podcast. I really was proud of the episode that we did,

and I feel like what's been missing from the Scandival discourse has been some sort of nuance and trying to

understand not just, okay, what would make someone cheat on a partner of nine, nine and a half

years. And it less be about just the cheating and more about what could have happened in someone's life that would lead them to

engage in such behaviors. And it definitely opened my mind and I learned a lot researching for

it about a number of the people on the show and some of their experiences from childhood.

And, you know, my heart really does go out

to all of them and to anyone that has grown up in a violent, dysfunctional or alcoholic home

because it really does impact you and, you know, make you behave certain ways. And then sometimes you grow up and you don't

realize why you engage in certain behaviors. And I hope that the people who are involved are

able to heal and get some professional help. It sounds like Raquel has been doing that. I mean,

let's hope it helps. You know, and as,

as hard as it is, you know, at some point, you do have to realize, okay, I am now a grown person.

And even though these terrible things happened when I was a child, and they may explain why I

behave a certain way, I need to take responsibility

for the fact that I am now an adult and I in turn hurt other people. And that's where it gets so

difficult and frustrating because you can empathize and understand what would make people behave

a certain way, but it doesn't excuse the behavior,

right? It just explains it. And you can't keep hurting people and harming those around you

...