Brittany Cartwright has had it with her “toxic situation” with husband Jax Taylor — and let him know it in the season finale of The Valley.
All season long, viewers have seen the couple fight, knowing the two separated in real life before the premiere aired. While Tuesday’s episode began with them still very much together, it didn’t take long for things to change, bigtime.
At the top of the hour, Brittany wondered whether her husband felt bad “for being mean to me” after she surprised him with a visit from his sister before the opening of his new bar. She, of course, was referring to him accusing her of being drunk during a recent cast trip.
“I feel like you’re not even attracted to me sometimes,” she then told him. “It kinda hurts my feelings that whenever it came time for our schedule to try for the baby this month, you were so against it. That really hurt my feelings.”
While he admitted to having second thoughts about having another child, she told him they needed to have better communication about topics like that. “As much as I want to have a kid, even I don’t know how me and you can bring another baby into this world if we don’t fix these things in our relationship. I don’t want this for our future,” she told him.
Though it’s clear the bar opening was meant to be the end of filming, cameras picked up six months later — as news broke that Brittany and Jax were living apart. “I didn’t see this coming, sorry,” Taylor said as he sat down for a confessional, getting emotional as he said, “I never thought I would be in the position I’m in right now.”
Brittany explained that “a lot has happened with me and Jax” since cameras stopped rolling — saying “things seemed like they were getting worse and worse and worse.” She said that, eventually, she moved into an Airbnb with their son, Cruz, because Jax refused to leave the house.
“That shows how selfish Jax is. The fact I had to move out with Cruz, instead of him moving out,” she added, saying it was “too toxic of a situation” to stay in any longer. “He was going out to the bar, coming home and having these horrible hangovers that would make him as mean as a f–king snake,” she added, while Jax admitted the two were “not getting along.”
“I hit this point where I started noticing everything he did to me. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, what am I doing? Why am I here?” she continued in a confessional. “There’s been a lot of things I’ve taken back Jax for. I’ve been cheated on, I’ve been disrespected. I’ve been humiliated. I have been through a lot of pain in this relationship. It’s been very public, the pain I’ve had to deal with. I can’t deal with it anymore.”
Jax, meanwhile, was seen telling a costar he needed to go to therapy — and was hoping to get some anti-depressants to “take the edge off.” He added, “I have to get help. I can’t continue this arguing all the time.”
The episode ended with the two having a sit-down conversation with one another at their home, with Brittany coming in hot by telling him, “You’re not going to just get away for the way you treated me all these years because you wanna sit there acting all cool, calm and collected, you’re not.”
When he told her he had made a therapy appointment, Brittany was again skeptical.
“You made it yesterday, right before the cameras came up,” she said. “The day before we pick cameras back up, he all of a sudden has an appointment to see a doctor? This is all a front. This is what he wants everyone to see and believe he’s doing to do these things to change. I bet you money he won’t do it.”
In his own confessional, Jax admitted he didn’t go — because “it was really far” away.
“Don’t get mad at me because I’m calling you out. Do you want me back or are you gonna just sit there and let me go. Because I will go,” she then told him. Though he said he does want her back and that things were “hard for me in the beginning” after she left him, he started feeling like “this has been nice” living separately.
“I think it’s been amazing. But do you realize why I decided to leave you? You took away my safe space, you took away all of that from me. I had to uproot myself and my child,” said Brittany. “Why haven’t you done anything, why haven’t you changed? You screamed at me, said horrible things to me, that I had no friends here, that nobody liked me here.”
He denied saying anything, wondering if they were “out drinking” when he allegedly made those remarks. She then again accused him of putting on an act for the show.
“As soon as these cameras drop, you’re going to text me a million text messages and talk horrible to me. You’re going to rage text the s–t out of me. Be real,” she said. “I don’t know how to talk with you anymore. It sucks. I feel freakin’ weird being in my own bedroom.”
Jax noted that the two of them “clearly can’t be in the same room together without arguing,” before wondering what else he could do “to show you that I’m trying here.” Brittany was still pretty livid, telling him to stop telling paparazzi that she had moved back into the house “when clearly I didn’t.” His comments, she added, “literally made people think I was lying.”
“Who just lies for attention? He does,” she exclaimed in a confessional. “I’ve come into my own. I make a lot of money and I just feel like I have woken up. I feel so much stronger now, I know I’ll be okay. I know my worth and I know I do not deserve to be in a relationship like this. What was I thinking staying with him this long?”
Jax then admitted he needed to do more, apologizing for taking out his “pent up aggression” on her. He added that it’s hard for him — and all the men in his family — to get help. Their conversation ended with Brittany saying he lets his emotions out in a “very aggressive way,” before they agreed to not argue in front of their son.
“It’s been an amazing 9 years. I have no regrets. I love Brittany, I love my wife,” Jax said in the show’s final moments — while Brittany got emotional as she acknowledged she wouldn’t have Cruz if she “would have gotten rid of [Jax] a long time ago.”
“Now that I have Cruz and I’ve woken up from the situation, for [her son’s] sake and for my mental health, I can’t stay here anymore,” she concluded.
The two are still separated.
