While Ashley Darby is embracing her more vulnerable side on Bravo’s new reality dating series, back home, she’s a proud mom to her two sons.
“Bravo’s Love Hotel,” which is airing weekly now on the network, shows Ashley and three other single “Real Housewives” looking for love with potential male suitors in Los Cabos, Mexico.
Ashley said on the show she wanted to date more “age-appropriate” men, which is something she tells TODAY.com is “still a work in progress.”
“I would say that just men of different decades, whether it’s 20s, 30s or 40s — 50s or 60s, I would even say — they all just sort of present their own challenges,” she says. “So I’m trying to navigate all of it.”
The 36-year-old married Michael Darby, who’s currently in his 60s, in 2014. They welcomed two sons together: Dean in 2019 and Dylan in 2021. The ups and downs of their relationship played out on “The Real Housewives of Potomac” over the years, and Ashley confirmed they had separated in 2022 to Bravo’s “The Daily Dish.” The two finalized the divorce earlier this year, People reported.
Michael Darby and Ashley Darby before their separation. (Charles Sykes/Bravo / Getty Images)
She says co-parenting with her ex is “much better” now.
“I think that the finality of our divorce just sort of closed a lot of chapters for both of us,” Ashley says, adding they have a custody agreement and vacation schedule.
Now that things are “more clear and defined,” they “know how to operate,” she says.
Over the last three years, there’s one thing in particular Ashley has learned that she would share with other single moms.
“The biggest thing, where I really had to lean in, was asking for help,” she says. “When I was married, I was the caregiver, the homemaker. That was everything — I did the laundry, I cooked, I did the dishes. That was what I did. I loved it.”
Ashley says now she is adjusting to “the big undertaking” of having her own house while keeping up with her growing boys’ after-school activities. She explains she recently asked a neighbor to take one of her sons to a baseball game.
“It was uncomfortable for me to ask that, but she was so welcoming and so helpful,” Ashley says. “And I was like, ‘Man, what was I so uncomfortable about?’”
When it comes to introducing a partner to her kids since her split, Ashley says, “So far, my children have not met somebody who I am romantically dating.”
There was one instance, she says, in which someone she was getting to know was present at a social event she and her children were at.
“My children just associate that person just like anybody else,” she says. “It will take, probably, me loving somebody and actually saying the l-word for me to feel comfortable enough, because if I love them, then that means I feel sort of trust and confidence with them, that I’d trust them around my children. So we would really have to get to the love part, which is very hard for me, you know, as a divorcée.”
Even though Ashley, who is bisexual, is testing the waters with eligible men on “Bravo’s Love Hotel,” she says women have “100%, yes” been part of her dating experience since she and her ex-husband ended things.
She points out WorldPride, an event that supports the LGBTQ+ community, will take place in Washington, D.C., this year.
“D.C. was called, if not the gayest, one of the gayest cities in America,” Ashley says. “It’s very nice that I’ve met quite a few interesting ladies, attractive ladies, very intelligent ladies. So yeah, I’m keeping my options open.”
While her sons are young now, she says one day she “definitely will be open” with them about how to be and love as they are.
“I’m not stifling them or restricting them in any way they choose to express themselves,” Ashley says.
She explains one of her sons has a pair of boots with a “super high heel.”
“He calls them ‘moon boots,’” she says.
“I think in the past, with some of our archaic thinking, like, ‘Oh no, you can’t wear those!’” she adds. “But I’m just like, ‘Yeah, you want to club around in my shoes?’ You know? And have a good time.”
