Dorit Kemsley reacted to the tense conversation she had with her estranged husband, Paul “PK” Kemsley, on an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills this season.
After she and PK, 57, sat down to discuss their marriage, with PK declaring himself “single” and accusing Dorit, 48, of emasculating him, Dorit explained what would make her give up on her relationship, addressed the possibility of PK dating, and offered some backstory as to why PK was feeling less than.
“I actually had said to PK before the dinner, ‘Be honest. Be open. Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you need to say, say it,’ because I also wanted that clarity. So, of course, there’s gonna be really really difficult things,” Dorit admitted on a recent episode of the RHOBH: After Show.
While she and PK had a tough discussion, she didn’t blame him for referring to himself as “single PK.”
“He was a single, free man,” she explained. “[And] I felt secure enough and at least strong enough to be able to deal with whatever was going to come my way, and I was being honest, open, and vulnerable.”
One thing that was particularly hard for Dorit to hear was that she and PK wouldn’t be talking as much.
“It shocked me,” she shared.
Although Dorit didn’t go into her separation with the mindset of staying close to PK so they’d eventually get back together, she felt they’d be in touch frequently since they share two children, Jagger, 10, and Phoenix, 8.
“I had said to him multiple times, ‘Whatever you need, whatever you want, you can have it. You need for us to have time apart? Fine,’” she recalled. “I’m not one of those women that is going to fight to stay married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to me. I’m just not going to.”
That said, Dorit noted that if she and PK were both fighting for the relationship, she would “of course” commit herself to doing so.
“But equally so, if he wants to go out and his desire is to go out and date other women … That would hurt, royally. That would be hard,” she continued, noting that while they were speaking at the time, their dynamic was changing from day to day.
During another segment of the RHOBH: After Show, Dorit revealed that their dinner wasn’t the first time that PK had told her he’d felt emasculated by her.
“When I’d heard it, I was listening to respond and I don’t think that I ever listened to let it sit with me and accept, ‘These are his feelings,’” she shared. “[They would come up] whenever I would take over something. So if he was going over a contract that I had, and that’s his domain, that’s the truth, and it reached a point that because I had known more about whatever it was that I was getting into, I wanted to intervene and take over.”
While Dorit felt that she had educated herself enough to enter the business side of her relationship with PK, doing so made PK feel “less than.”
“It made him feel like he wasn’t the best at it, and I didn’t have the trust or the respect,” she explained. “PK felt like I didn’t need him as much as, let’s say, I once did.”
According to Dorit, PK interpreted her desire to be more in control as her not needing him anymore, even though that wasn’t — and isn’t — the case.
“It never changed. I felt like, feel like, I needed him exactly the same amount but in different ways. It didn’t drop off,” she insisted.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 14 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
