Lisa and Lenny Hochstein.Photo: Lisa Hochstein Instagram
Lisa Hochstein’s world was turned upside down in April when her husband of 13 years, Florida plastic surgeonLenny Hochstein, told herhe wanted a divorce.
“It was a knife to the heart,“The Real Housewives of Miamistar, 40, tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s issue as part of her first extensive interview about the split since the news broke. “My life changed completely in the blink of an eye — and I didn’t see it coming whatsoever.”
The estranged couple — who share son Logan, 7, and daughter Elle, 3 — were in the middle of filmingRHOM’s fifth season for Peacock when cameras caught the before and after of Lenny’s decision.
“I still can’t wrap my brain around the day he told me he wanted out,” recalls Lisa of the conversation, which happened off camera days afterthe two had filmed a “Good Vibes” partyat their 20,000-square-foot Star Island mansion. “We were sleeping in the same bed for the last 15 years up until that day he told dropped the bomb on me. And now, suddenly, he wanted out? I felt so blindsided.”
“He wasn’t sympathetic or empathetic at all about it either,” she adds. “It wasn’t a, ‘Let’s sit down and have a talk. I’m sorry that this isn’t what I want anymore.’ It was a cold, ‘I’m going to start dating, whether you like it or not,’ basically. It was completely shocking and devastating. I just couldn’t believe that the man I had been with for this long was treating me this way.”
She starts choking up. “Family life is always what I wanted,” says Lisa, whose kids were both born via surrogate. “I struggled with infertility; it took us so long to get here and now that we’re here, he’s leaving. And there’s nothing I can do to fix it.”
Staples onRHOMsince joining the show in season 2, which aired back in 2012, Lisa and Lenny always presented themselves as having an unbreakable bond. “My husband built the perfect wife and I built the perfect life,” Lisa even said in her tagline last year.
But underneath that portrait of perfection were cracks that Lisa says she always expected they would work through together. “Of course our marriage wasn’t perfect. There were ups and downs, but we always prided ourselves for being that couple that would stick through it,” she says. “There was never any real talk of divorce before that. I never thought we’d be on this path. I always thought we would come back together and work it out somehow — especially with two young kids, a thriving business, and everything we worked for.”
Watching the first four episodes of season 5, which begin streaming on Peacock Thursday, there are moments before their split where Lisa boasts about how the two were in a great place in their relationship. Yet Lenny appears disinterested in being with Lisa, especially when she tries to involve him in family activities.
Asked if she was in denial, Lisa insists she was only focusing on the positives.
“Obviously, anyone can see watching the episodes that our marriage wasn’t in the best place. But I was trying to be a great wife and trying my hardest to make us strong again,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was cooking his favorite meals, creating happy memories with our kids — anything I could do to repair it. So it wasn’t that I was ignoring our problems, I was just desperately trying to fix this. And the best I could just wasn’t good enough for him.”
Lisa Hochstein.Courtesy Jahmar Amani
Lisa also says Lenny’s partying would spill over into their family home, which grew tiresome. “I was pretty lenient with these parties and having people I didn’t know come to my house. Football Sundays, the bar would be full of these people. He lives for his Halloween party. And I had fun, don’t get me wrong — I live in Miami, I’m fine with a party here or there at the house. But it got really old to me. He’s allowed to have a different set of friends, but it was just getting out of hand to have all these strangers around. It made me more and more uncomfortable.”
“I guess you would call that a mid-life crisis?” the reality star asks. “He wanted a different life.”
When she would confront him about her disapproval, Lisa claims that Lenny would turn the tables on her. “He thought that was controlling of me to say, ‘Please don’t entertain these single women who I don’t know,'” she recalls. “And then if I would have a once-in-a-blue-moon night out with friends, he would get mad atme. So what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander? I found it bizarre.”
“He was gaslighting me,” Lisa alleges. “He made up some excuse that he was leaving me because I went out too late partying at night while he was busy working. It was like, ‘What are you eventalkingabout?’ Because that was clearly not why.”
Alexander Tamargo/Getty
Just days after Lenny told Lisa he was leaving her, he went public with his romance withKatharina Mazepa, 27.
Lisa says she did everything she can in the aftermath to save her marriage, but has very much accepted now that it’s over.
“That night he told me, I did everything I could to save my family,” she remembers. “I was crying, devastated, trying to talk him out of it, trying to ask him if we could go to therapy. What could we do? How can we change this? I was desperate — fighting the fight of my life. Hoping that he would come around and just wake up. I would have done whatever it took. But with a powerful man like Lenny, my journey felt like David and Goliath.”
Lenny Hochstein and girlfriend Katharina Mazepa.Katharina Mazepa/Instagram
But Lenny denies Lisa’s claims, telling PEOPLE that he was the one struggling to keep up with her lifestyle.
“The idea that I was the one partying, nothing can be further form the truth,” he says. “I don’t like to party. I don’t have girls over to the house. I’ve had the same friends I’ve always had, and they are normal people who have normal jobs. When I have them over on Sundays, it’s during the daytime and we watch football games with our kids and afterwards, everybody goes home. The one who likes to go out isLisa. I hate it. I like to be home. I like to be with the kids. I like to spend my weekends with my family. Her lifestyle made that impossible.”
Lenny continues, with a sigh: “I think she hated me. She hated my friend, she hated everything I did, she hated everything about me.”
“My goal was always to keep this quiet,” Lenny says. “Believe me, I don’t want to be on the phone right now talking to the press about this.”
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“We had a great marriage for so long,” she says. “But this is not the man that I considered my family for all these years.”
Season 5of The Real Housewives of Miamistreams Thursday on Peacock. For more about Lisa Hochstein, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE — on newsstands Friday.
source: people.com
