‘Vanderpump Rules’: Tom Sandoval Claims He FaceTimed Raquel Leviss ‘Often’ and Girlfriend Ariana Madix ‘Didn’t Notice’ the Affair

Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval has come under fire for cheating on his longtime partner, Ariana Madix, with their friend Raquel Leviss. He recently decided to open up about the affair and share his side of the story.

Sandoval gave fans many shocking revelations, including the fact that he FaceTimed Leviss a lot without Madix noticing.

Tom Sandoval talks about how the affair with Raquel Leviss started

During an appearance on the podcast Howie Mandel Does Stuff with Howie Mandel and his daughter Jackelyn Shultz, Sandoval revealed how he and Leviss started hooking up.

According to Sandoval, he and Leviss became good friends over a period of time, especially after she and James Kennedy broke up. Meanwhile, Sandoval and Madix were growing apart. Despite living together and putting up a united front in public, he admitted that he and Madix were spending a lot of time apart and no longer feeling an emotional connection to each other. As a result, he turned to Leviss for comfort.

“I was in such a place, just yearning for a connection,” he said. “Raquel and I had just become slowly, especially after her and James [Kennedy] broke up, really, really good friends. [We were] confiding in each other, [being] a source of strength.”

He shared at another point, “I thought she was so awesome … She’s so kind, she’s smart, she’s witty, she’s fun … She’s beautiful.”

Their friendship turned into something more one night when Leviss hung out at Sandoval’s house. The two of them were talking in the backyard when they suddenly kissed.

“It was magnetic,” he said. “We were, like, talking and moving closer. As time went on, we just started talking closer and closer. And all of a sudden, we were kissing. I felt something that I hadn’t felt in so long emotionally.”

Tom Sandoval says Ariana Madix ‘didn’t notice’ he was having an affair with Raquel Leviss

One thing Sandoval emphasized throughout the interview is how distant he and Madix had become toward the end of their relationship. The couple were so disconnected from each other that, according to Sandoval, Madix had no idea something was off. 

“[During] the later part of our relationship, I was seeing Raquel as often as I could–which I know that sounds horrible–and FaceTiming her all the time,” Sandoval explained. “Ariana really didn’t even notice because that’s just how separate our lives were.”

He continued, “I had to actually tell her, like, ‘Have you not noticed how distant I’ve been lately?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, you have?’”

Tom Sandoval claims he and Ariana Madix were already broken up when she discovered the affair

After Sandoval kissed Leviss for the first time, he decided to go to therapy. Then, he and Madix went to couples therapy together as well. At that point, Sandoval had already realized he wanted to break up with Madix and had plans to do it with their therapist present.

According to Sandoval, he finally ended things with Madix on Valentine’s Day in 2023. Still, Sandoval claimed that Madix was not ready to break up. He said that she kept “trying to convince [him]” to stay together and was “fully in denial” of his desire to separate.

Two weeks later, Madix found out about the affair when she went through his phone and saw explicit content involving him and Leviss. It didn’t take long before fans also learned of the affair in early March.