REAL Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice says she should have ended her marriage to Joe years earlier.
The brunette – who split from her husband in December – claimed that her ex had cheated on her and even had a separate cell phone for his mistress.
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The reality star made the accusation for the first time as she chatted to friends and family about Joe, on Thursday’s RHONJ.
The cast and their husbands were in Jersey Shore for a weekend getaway, in a scene filmed before their split – although she was unsure about the relationship as Joe was still in ICE custody following his 41-month prison sentence.
During a conversation about prenups, Teresa vented about a phone call which Bravo cameras captured earlier this season, during which Joe angrily told her he had her sign a prenup one week before their wedding because he “didn’t want to get married.”
“I have a lot of resentment,” she told the group. “I felt like I didn’t deserve that ’cause I was like the perfect, perfect f***ing wife!”
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Dolores Catania’s ex-husband-turned-best friend, Frank, called Joe “an ass” for those comments, and asked Teresa if she thought Joe was as good a spouse to her as she was to him.
“No, because there was rumors out there,” she said, prompting Margaret Josephs’ husband, Joe Benigno, to ask, “You think he ever fooled around behind your back?”
“Listen,” Teresa replied, “he had a separate cell phone with one girl.”
Those listening looked stunned.
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“You know that for a fact?” Jennifer Aydin asked her.
“I found it!” Teresa shouted. “It was his ex-girlfriend’s sister. He said she was going through her divorce. He was helping her, trying to sell her house. Like, I quit my job. Gia was 3. And I was like, ‘What am I gonna do?’ I should’ve left then, right? I didn’t because he denied it to me. I believed him.”
Joe Gorga then asked his sister directly, “Today, do you believe he cheated on you?”
“Yeah, now I do!” she responded.
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“Listen, I don’t think it’s news to anybody’s ears that Joe was cheating on Teresa,” Melissa Gorga told a later confessional.
Bravo showed two incriminating clips of Joe from earlier years: The first was the time Joe referred to Teresa as his “b***h wife” and a “c**t” while he was making a mysterious phone call in Napa Valley in 2012 and the second was in 2015, when RHONJ alum Jacqueline Laurita told Teresa at a reunion taping, “Honey, you walked in on your husband when he had someone on the desk in his office! You told me that!”
Joe denied infidelity in both instances.
However, Teresa said that she had refused to see what was right in front of her.
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“I’m just saying, sometimes you’re blind,” Teresa told the group.
Her brother interrupted to point out that snooping and separate phones doesn’t create a healthy relationship. “Listen, alls I’m saying – you’re looking at phones and you gotta worry about that – that’s not marriage.”
Teresa added in a later confessional, “It took a long time, and it still is really hard for me to admit, but I owe it to myself to open my eyes to it.”
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Teresa and Joe Giudice announced their split in December.
The couple share four daughters.
Joe has been living in Italy since he chose to wait there for the result of his deportation appeal, after being held in ICE custody after being released from prison following his sentence for fraud.
Teresa was also sentenced to 15 months in prison for the same crime, which she served before Joe.
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