Amber Portwood is finally detailing what led to her ex-fiancé Gary Wayt’s disappearance.
During the season finale of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter Thursday, Amber is picked up by MTV production crews after longtime friend and castmate Maci Bookout drives her to Tennessee from the North Carolina hotel Amber and Gary were staying at when her then-partner went missing.
“So, what happened?” show producer Larry asks.
“I guess his dad read my Wikipedia,” Amber says, before a screengrab of the MTV star’s sordid past flashes across the screen, including her run-ins with the law, and her abusive past with ex, Gary Shirley, with whom she shares 15-year-old daughter, Leah.
“I think he was holding in the fact that he maybe heard from his family or something, and not telling me,” she continues. “I was just saying, ‘I can’t do this. No. How can we get married then if your family can’t accept me and stuff.’ And maybe he took that as me breaking up with him. It seemed like, to me, that maybe he was upset and like, hopeless.”
Breaking down in tears, Amber was offered a glimmer of hope after receiving a call from her manager, who informed her that TMZ had called with news that Gary had been located.
“He has?” Amber exclaims before learning that Gary notified that outlet that is alive and in good health. “Are you serious?”
“They’re removing him from being considered a missing person,” Amber’s manager tells her.
The longtime TV personality seems relieved upon hearing the news, as her manager works to try and find out more information about Gary’s whereabouts.
“So he was able to reach out to the police. Has he sent you any messages?” Larry asks.
“No,” Amber responds. “It’s throwing up a little red flag,” Larry says back.
A red flag, indeed, with Gary’s lack of contact a sign of things to come, but not without first getting OG Gary’s reaction.
The cameras head to his house, where he’s sat with his wife, Kristina, as they read the headlines about Amber and Gary.
“I have to feel a little compassion for her,” Gary admits. “I don’t have compassion for you not seeing your child, though.”
“That’s another thing, too. I wish Amber would realize. Men come and go. Friends come and go. But the ones who stay, are your children,” Kristina adds.
Amber then heads to her psychiatrist in the aftermath of Gary’s disappearance to unpack what’s happened — admittedly in a bit of a manic state — she struggles to make it into appointment after trauma dumping on her Uber driver.
“Right now this man broke me,” she says through tears, as her friend, who was riding along in another vehicle, attempts to get her out of the car. “I was stable. And right now, this was the first time in years in my life. I am 34. I am not f–king right because a man put a ring on my finger,” Amber goes on to say. “You broke me because we were actually in love. The day that man left, for no reason. And I’ma say no reason because there was no f–king reason, and he ruined something so f–king good. I am f–king broken right now.”
Amber says she was bombarded with media attention amid Gary’s disappearance, blaming the media for painting her in a negative light and even accusing her of “killing” Gary after her went missing.
“Do you know how that feels when people are calling you a murderer to your f–king fiancé?” Amber yells. “Do you know how that f–king feels? He doesn’t know what he did! They were calling me a murderer and they said I f–king killed him!”
When she was able to get through to her psychiatrists door, Amber made clear that was in a bad place, noting that despite the traumatic relationships she’s experienced in that past with exes Andrew and Matt, no one was has “broken” her quite like Gary.
“If you wanna show what heartbreak is, this is it,” Amber says. “It’s not just about a man. We had something better than we both have even seen in our lives with other people. He looked at my family, my daughter and just asked to me a big, happy family.”
“It’s definitely a loss,” her psychiatrist says in response.
Amber and Gary would go on to call off their engagement, with the episode marking the first time Amber shared the reason behind his disappearance since their split in June.
