Monique Samuels Dishes Explosive ‘Love & Marriage: DC’ Reunion – Reveals Why She Wouldn’t Have Married Chris [Exclusive]

Monique Samuels revealed that the first dramatic season of the reality series Love & Marriage: DC will culminate in a two-part jaw-dropping reunion that will address many of the questions viewers had after the season finale.

“The reunion is where people are able to get a lot of clarification that they didn’t during the season,” Monique told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “You’ll get an update from Chris and I as it pertains to our marriage. We’ll be able to clarify some things.”

“We had a very heated, yet fun finale where the couples were asked if they had to do it all over again, would they have married their spouse knowing everything that they know?” she recalled. “And everything they’ve been through the years? Would they go back and still marry their spouse?” Looking back on their journey, Monique said she probably wouldn’t have married Chris.

Monique and Chris will answer more questions about their marriage during the reunion

Monique revealed why she would have approached her marriage to Chris differently. “The reason I told him no is I wish that we would have worked out some of the things that we needed to work out as far as changes in our personal lives,” she said.

“We would have attacked that before we went down the aisle,” Monique asserted. “And also, I felt like he was more open and vulnerable with me when we were friends. It’s like once we got married, there’s this shift that happens, especially with men, where they feel like they have to be so strong. And ‘I’ve got to be the leader of the house!'”

“So they stop sharing with their women,” she continued. “Is them letting their guard down a sign of weakness? Really, that’s the vulnerability that is necessary in every marriage. That was our biggest struggle this season is getting to that vulnerability and getting that conversational intimacy back into our marriage. So it was a very tough point in our marriage and we were able to really show how we navigated that. So you’ll see the update of where we are now.”

‘Love & Marriage: DC’ goes deeper into marriage, Monique says

Monique acknowledged that Love & Marriage: DC viewers saw the good, bad, and ugly in a marriage and sometimes it wasn’t pretty. “I feel like with marriage, we go into these different seasons,” she reflected. “We have our ups and downs. A lot of people aren’t brave enough to show their downs. They just know when everything is beautiful and everything is bliss. But nobody ever shows you how to get to that bliss.”

“And for Chris and I, I would have loved it if it had been a different time where we were getting better along. But at the end of the day, I felt like I wanted to be vulnerable,” she said referring to the tenser moments she had with Chris on the show. “And this vulnerability may touch somebody, you know? So why should I keep this to myself if this is what I’m struggling with in my marriage?”

“If this is an issue that my husband and I are actually having while we’re filming. I’m not going to hold back because that’s the whole purpose. Like, we do things so that we can help somebody, you know? So while I’m helping myself get through it, we’re going through the motions. We don’t know how many couples are out there that are dealing with the same exact situation that we’re dealing with and how to help navigate through it as well.”

Chris suggested they give reality another shot

Reality television has often been blamed for sparking conflict in a marriage. And while Monique referred to her time on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Potomac as being “toxic,” she and Chris went into this new reality experience with their eyes wide open. In fact, she said it was Chris who nudged her toward the opportunity to film Love & Marriage: DC.

“This is funny because I got on reality TV because of Chris,” she said. “He literally manifested it and encouraged it. So when the opportunity rolled back around, he was down for it because this felt like more of what we wanted to do. We were on Bravo versus what we were going to do with this show. So he was totally for it. He was like, ‘I’m down because I feel like this is more in line with what our family would want for a reality TV show.’ So it didn’t take any coercion. It didn’t take any of that. We talked to our children and then we made the decision as a family.”

Monique also appreciated how the series went beyond the cast’s relationships with each other, but also spotlighted how they do business. Monique featured her line of pure essential oils, Mila Eve Essentials and she said the entire family loves them. She joked about how much everyone needs her “Anti-Stress” essential oil.

“It’s one of our major sellers because it really works,” she said. “You just apply it to your forehead or you can put it in your diffuser. And I’ve had college students that purchase anti-stress and then I have another one called Mind Over Matter. They purchase them and they literally will message me and say I got through my dissertation using Anti-Stress. I got through my last exam, my finals or what have you using Mind over Matter.”

Part 1 of the Love & Marriage: DC reunion airs on OWN on Saturday, July 23 at 8 pm ET.