Jessi Ngatikaura is opening up about the ugly parts of her marriage like never before.
Fans who watched the new season know the 33-year-old hairstylist confirmed she not only kissed Vanderpump Villa star Marciano Brunette, but they had a two-week emotional affair. All while she was married to her husband, Jordan Ngatikaura. However, the pair never slept together despite what Marciano claimed on the show. They proved it through a lie detector test on camera. It caused problems in her marriage to Jordan, regardless, though. That, and because Jessi claimed her hubby was emotionally abusive to her.
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Following the new season, the reality star appeared on The Viall Files to talk more about her marital troubles, and she spilled some disturbing stuff about Jordan. Buckle up…
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How The Romance Began
Jessi recalled the early days of her relationship with the DadTok member, saying they met at a gathering through mutual friends:
“My husband actually came with me to a couple of [these group dinners]. One of the dinner parties right after I separated, I showed up alone and Jordan was like, ‘Where’s your husband?’ I was like, ‘We separated, we’re getting divorced.’ He’s like, ‘Me and my girlfriend just broke up last week.’ So we just sat and talked for hours about our breakups and we just bonded over that. Then a week or two later, he asked me out and I said yes.”
The television personality “was going through divorce while dating Jordan, which was not recommended,” and she now recognizes she “moved on too quickly.” However, Jessi felt like she was “looking for a distraction and something to help heal the pain of the divorce.” What she didn’t realize was that she jumped from one emotionally abusive relationship to another.
The Emotional Abuse
Sadly, Jessi alleged she experienced emotional abuse in her first marriage to Zach, as well as her second one to Jordan. She said:
“My muscle memory is me being used to being yelled at.”
That’s heartbreaking. No one should ever be used to this sort of treatment. Jessi continued:
“I remember when I was first married, there were really hard moments. He was super emotionally abusive — I would say more so than Jordan, to be honest. Jordan is [emotionally abusive] in different ways but I had already dealt with worse. So it was normal for marriage where it’s just hard. At least it’s not as bad as my first one. But then over time, it got to that point where it was as bad.”
She is not exaggerating when she said it got bad! She explained:
“It was a lot of Jordan controlling how I dressed, what I did, what I said, how much I worked and everything. If I left the fridge door open — actually to this day I still have PTSD — when it starts to beep and my heart starts racing because I would get yelled at. It was little things. I felt like I was always walking on eggshells with Jordan. I couldn’t do anything right at all.”
Absolutely disgusting. Jessi claimed Jordan “mom-shamed” her, called her horrible names, and would “physically block” her from leaving during arguments. And what makes matters worse? Their kids witnessed his gross behavior. That is bad enough, but Jordan allegedly dragged them into the situation by saying they were getting a divorce at one point. Jeez. Jessi added:
“That’s when I was like, ‘This is so unhealthy and we can’t let our kids be witnessing that.’ We can’t use them as pawns. That was the worst part of our separation because it was really bad. That was when he was yelling at me and I was really starting to see the effects of my kids and realizing what it might do to them.”
Although the duo got to a better place, the affair ended up causing more problems between them:
“In the moment he cared more about his image and he kept using the word emasculating. That’s all he cared about. It was embarrassing he got cheated on. He’s less of a man because he got cheated on and it wasn’t about the actual act. It was about how it made him look.”
Oof. The Hulu star believes she never truly healed from what happened in her first marriage, which is why she feels she got into a relationship with the same patterns so quickly afterward. Apparently, she left Zack in September and got married to Jordan in March:
“I didn’t heal from my first marriage that was emotionally abusive and I jumped into a second one that repeated the same patterns. That’s a big reason why I’m where I’m at is because I didn’t heal so I allowed the same thing to happen to me twice.”
But Jessi stressed Jordan and Zach aren’t the same people — despite what her second hubby did:
“[My first husband is] a good Mormon boy so I thought I was marrying the safe choice. He had a good family and they were in the church. He had been a returned missionary and he was great for the first couple of years. Then he got into some drugs and stopped working. Things just went downhill and he had a lot of anger issues. But I came out of that marriage broken because of that and I carried a lot of wounds into the marriage I have now. Now history has repeated itself so now I’m dealing with recovering from both.”
Hopefully, with time, she can heal from all that trauma…
Jordan’s Issues
According to Jessi, what led to a lot of their problems was that Jordan felt “threatened” by her success. Fans know she is not only a reality star, but she also owns a successful hair care company called JZ Styles. She shared on the podcast that her business made her “a multimillionaire within a few years.” DAMN! You go, girl! As for Jordan? He quit his job. And because he wasn’t the sole provider for the family, he allegedly became intimidated by his wife and treated her poorly. She explained:
“From my point of view, the more success I got maybe made Jordan [felt] a little threatened because he wasn’t the provider. Men do struggle with that sometimes, especially in Mormon culture. Even though he’s not Mormon, you grow up in that community and you have a certain way of thinking. … Jordan ended up quitting his job and didn’t have a purpose. I actually think that played a lot into how he treated me.”
WTF! Grow up! He shouldn’t talk down to his own wife because he doesn’t like the fact that she is the breadwinner of the family!
What They Lied About On Camera
Jessi went on to admit that she and Jordan also lied on camera about the timeline of their marriage troubles. Despite what they said on SLOMW, the couple were not separated when her husband found out about her affair with Marciano. Whoa. She eventually did leave Jordan, but it was because of how horribly he treated her behind closed doors after the cheating scandal. Jessi alleged he was blackmailing her over the situation! OMG!
“The reason I left was because we had been dealing with the affair for about six months behind closed doors. No one knew. During those six months, it got worse than it ever had. He was blackmailing me. He was threatening to send my texts out to Marciano to the world.”
The blackmail was addressed on the show, but it didn’t make the final edit… Why would producers leave this major detail out? To protect him? Jessi continued:
“Anytime I did anything he didn’t agree with, he had it on his TikTok drafts and he was like, ‘I’m going to post it.’ It was so toxic. I remember the day I left him, it got to a point where he was recording me and he’s taunting me and I was chasing him around the house. We were just screaming at each other. It was so bad.”
Jessi said she was living with Jordan when the affair started. He then made up the separation storyline once he found out:
“When me and Jordan were dealing with this alone, he said to me, ‘If anyone ever finds out, we need to say we were separated because then it’s less of a big deal.’ I remembered Jordan telling me that’s how he wanted me to handle this if anyone found out. He ended up saying, ‘If this is going to come out, we have to tell the truth.’”
The two didn’t want to “go along with a lie and get caught” in the lie, though. Hence why she is spilling the beans now, we guess.
Her Name Change
After all that, where do Jessi and Jordan stand today? You may have noticed she changed her social media handle to Jessi Draper from Jessi Ngatikaura. From the looks of it, fans’ first thought is that she’s getting a divorce. And we wouldn’t blame her if she did! Honestly, she deserves better than how Jordan allegedly treated her! However, Jessi said on The Viall Files that the change had nothing to do with the state of their marriage. It all comes down to pronunciation issues and branding. Hmm.
We’re sending so much love to Jessi. We want nothing but the best for her. Watch the entire interview (below):
Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments.
[Image via The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives/Jeff Jenkins Productions, Marciano Brunette/Instagram]
