‘Family Karma’: Monica Vaswani Was Blindsided by Rish Karam Cheating Rumors but Is ‘Taking My Power Back’ Today [Exclusive]
While Monica Vaswani from Family Karma can’t reveal much about her relationship status with Rish Karam, she can share that she’s in a better, happier place today.
Vaswani spent Family Karma Season 3 dealing with rumors that Karam cheated on her. But she also felt stuck in her relationship with a man who seemed hesitant to propose.
Reliving the pain from the season has been hard. “I’ve received a lot of support and at the same point in time, that’s kind of offset some of my feelings through it too,” she recently told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “It’s been like a giant therapy session for me to live back and see things for the first time and hear conversations for the first time. But yeah, it hasn’t been the best.”
Monica was totally blindsided by the Rish cheating rumors on ‘Family Karma’
She was also totally blindsided when rumors surfaced that Karam had cheated on her. After chatter surfaced at brunch amongst the friends on Family Karma, close friend Amrit Kapai took it upon himself to meet with Vaswani and let her know that people gossiped that Karam had cheated.
“I had COVID for a week. So I hadn’t really seen or spoken to anybody for a little bit of time. And I thought that we were jumping back in,” she recalled.
“And I really thought that that sit-down lunch with Amrit and Nicholas was going to be in regards to their wedding dances. I thought I was going to be asked to choreograph them. So I was thinking that it had a lot to do with the wedding talk, but I didn’t know what it had in store. I really didn’t see that one coming.”
Monica wasn’t surprised by who started the cheating rumor
Even after confronting Karam and he denied it, Vaswani said the rumor ate away at her the entire season. “It was definitely not going away,” she said about the rumor. “There were a lot of things on the back end.”
The person behind the rumor was Karam’s brother’s girlfriend, who Vaswani had her eye on long before she started the gossip.
“The person that really had started this rumor was somebody that I saw as a concern well before any of this had happened,” she said. “And I had red flags with that situation. I kind of had some intuition that there was a little bit of an ulterior motive to try to stir something up, and get some attention. So I had been warning his family that I had concerns about this person. So it was difficult because I was really unpacking a lot of that throughout the season. But I wasn’t really getting the support that I needed to handle it head-on.”
She hoped to get engaged to Rish on ‘Family Karma’
Beyond the cheating rumor, she also felt the pressure of marriage. She hoped to be engaged at this point in her life and Karam simply wasn’t pulling the trigger. “I was unloading a lot of these emotions in that moment,” she said. “So, for me, it was two parts. There was something that was happening with someone who had started this rumor, who I had already had previous issues with. And then there was another part to it where there was this looming question of like, what’s going on here?”
“Things are moving a little too slow for me. And I never really merged those lines. I never really saw them as something that were connected. I saw them as two separate things. And I never really thought that they were connected in any way throughout the season,” she added.
Plus, Vaswani’s father Raj was clearly frustrated, especially when he’d see his child get so upset. “I understood where he was coming from,” Vaswani said about her dad and his clear frustration with Karam.
“We come from a very close community. News spreads like wildfire,” she added. “We’re very protective over our reputations, our kids’ reputations. Especially when as a culture, we’re very protective over our daughters. And so I knew where my dad was coming from on this.
“Because I know that had the shoe been on the other foot for anybody else’s daughter, some people would have been way more vocal, way more explosive about it,” she said. “So I think if anything, he was being very generous with his patience in regards to it before stepping in when he felt like he needed to say something.”
Monica Vaswani is ‘taking her power back’ post ‘Family Karma’ Season 3
Vaswani said she is in a better place today. “I can tell you that I’ve really focused my energy on taking a step back for myself and focusing on my dreams and my career and really kind of taking my power back.”
“I think that that’s the journey that I’m on right now is really just taking my power back and not wanting to put so much pressure on anybody or anything else to give me peace or give me happiness,” she said. “And so I think I’m really at a place right now where I’m happy and I feel so fulfilled and I feel so content with where I’m at. But it’s been a journey to get that power back.”
The Family Karma Season 3 finale is on Sunday, February 26 at 9 pm ET on Bravo.
