Brittany Cartwright Said ‘The Valley’ ‘Demolished’ Her Marriage to Jax Taylor

Brittany Cartwright and Jax Taylor’s rocky relationship has played out on television for years. Viewers of Vanderpump Rules watched their relationship from the start, when Cartwright moved from Kentucky to Los Angeles for him. Fights, cheating scandals, breakups, engagement, and parenthood have all played out on screen. After years on Vanderpump Rules, Cartwright felt confident about their relationship going into The Valley. She said the show made her marriage fall apart.

Brittany Cartwright shared how ‘The Valley’ impacted her marriage to Jax Taylor

After years of tumult, Cartwright felt her relationship was in a solid place before filming for the first season of The Valley began. It didn’t take long for this feeling to dissipate. 

“We thought we were going to go into season one being a strong couple, and it just demolished [our relationship],” she told Glamour.

By the first season’s finale, the couple were no longer living together. Cartwright has since filed for divorce.

“I ignored a lot of things because I was in love,” she said, adding, “I had a family, and I didn’t want to break that up. I really wanted to try to fix our relationship and try to change [Jax]. All the empty promises that were made — like he was going to change, he was going to do this, he was going to do that. It just didn’t happen for so many years. Finally, I had enough.”

Cartwright said the people in her life have been nothing but supportive. They knew the marriage was not good for her.

“I had support from everybody, literally everybody,” he said. “I think a lot of my family and my friends saw how he treated me. He didn’t care. He wanted to put on a front on Instagram and social media and stuff like that — that things were perfect. That’s what everybody does. You’re not going to show all your bad stuff. But if the cameras weren’t around, or even if they were around, people saw how he had treated me.”

Brittany Cartwright said she finally felt peace after leaving Jax Taylor

While audiences have seen many of the low points of Cartwright and Taylor’s relationship, she insisted they had fun together. When he wasn’t in a good mood, though, he was not easy to be around. 

“We had a lot of fun in our relationship; it wasn’t all bad stuff,” she said. “But then, he also had this really negative energy that the whole room could feel if he walked in, if he was in a bad mood, or if it was a day after he had been out partying all night. I started breaking out in hives all the time, and I was sick a lot. I think a lot of it was because of the everyday stress that I had going on in my life.”

She felt she could breathe easy when she moved out of their shared home.

“Once I got into my first rental house, I got it for a month at first, and I was like, Wow, this is peace. It wasn’t easy by any means. I was still in love with him at the time, but I knew I had to leave. I’ll never regret that decision now. There’s no going back.”

The couple’s wedding aired on ‘Vanderpump Rules’

In 2019, Cartwright and Taylor married in front of 240 friends and family members — and Vanderpump Rules viewers. Their wedding aired on the show’s eighth season.

“It feels amazing,” Cartwright told People. “We’re stronger and happier than we’ve ever been. We’ve been through a lot, but we came out on the other side. I feel like we’ve just gotten stronger and stronger.”