Brittany Cartwright Said Marriage to Jax Taylor Was Doing Lasting ‘Emotional Damage’
In 2024, Vanderpump Rules and The Valley star Brittany Cartwright filed for divorce from Jax Taylor after five years of marriage. Viewers of both shows have seen the couple’s turbulent relationship play out on their screens, and many have cheered on Cartwright as she enters a new chapter of her life. She said that while she had always hoped to make her marriage work, she realized it was wearing her down.
Brittany Cartwright said her marriage to Jax Taylor was draining her
Cartwright has filed for divorce. Even when she was still trying to make her relationship work, though, she recognized that the marriage was wearing on her.
“I feel like Jax is like sucking the life out of me and sucking away all my sparkle,” she said in a confessional on The Valley. “How much more of this can I possibly take? I’m starting to realize all the little things that I have put up with for all nine years of my life.”
As viewers of Vanderpump Rules and The Valley know, the couple fought often and dealt with infidelity on his part. Cartwright felt that her willingness to forgive Taylor made him take her for granted.
“I think Jax just doesn’t appreciate me as much anymore because he doesn’t think that I will ever leave him and he knows that I’m so quick to forgive always,” she said. “We’ll fight and 30 minutes later, he thinks everything’s fine. He doesn’t realize the emotional damage that it does to me.”
Even after she left for good, Cartwright said Taylor didn’t think their split would last.
“He didn’t want me to leave in the beginning at all,” she told People. “Now, he is more understanding. But in the very beginning, I think he thought I was just going to be gone for a couple of days and I was going to come right back and everything was going to be completely normal. But that’s not been the case.”
She filed for divorce in August 2024.
Brittany Cartwright said her son helped her decide to leave Jax Taylor
One of the main reasons why Cartwright left her marriage was her son, Cruz.
“Cruz is my driving force to be happier and to be a better person and to be in a space where I feel comfortable and be a better mom for him,” she said on the I Do, Part 2 podcast. “I feel like I just had so much stress and pressure every day in my life.”
She didn’t think growing up in a fraught environment would be good for a child.
“The energy was so bad and so off in our house,” she continued. “I felt like I had to get out and I had to do it for my son.”
Cartwright admitted that if it weren’t for her son, she may have stayed in her relationship. It took her love for him to realize she needed to leave.
“If I didn’t have him, I probably would have stayed with Jax for the rest of my life,” she said. “I feel like I loved Jax so much and I really was into this life and this marriage with him. I thought he was going to be my forever person. And having Cruz and seeing how I was treated in front of my son really opened my eyes. I think for a lot of women, you just as so blinded by love that you don’t really realize everything that you’re going through.”
She believes ‘The Valley’ damaged their relationship
When The Valley premiered in 2024, Cartwright and Taylor were still together. She believed the show damaged her marriage.
“We thought we were going to go into season one being a strong couple, and it just demolished [our relationship],” she told Glamour.
The show’s second season, which premiered on April 15, will show her navigating a separation with Taylor. She admitted that it didn’t feel easy to have so much of her personal life on display. Luckily, the public has already followed their breakup through podcasts, social media, and tabloids.
“I am worried about it,” she said. “It’s always hard to relive what you went through months ago, but it’s all been very public already. Our separation was public. Our divorce filing is public. These podcasts are public. So, there’s already a lot, but there’s so much more this season coming out that is going to shock everybody. People are really going to get to see a look into what I’ve had to deal with.”
The Valley airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST on Bravo.
