Jo Wenberg, Tom Schwartz. Bravo (2)
Vanderpump Rules newcomer Jo Wenberg revealed she no longer speaks to Tom Schwartz after their onscreen split.
“It’s from both Tom Schwartz’s and my choosing. I think that we don’t talk anymore, and we’re gonna do a little bit of a boundary situation,” Wenberg said on the Thursday, April 11, episode of Rachel “Raquel”’ Leviss‘ “Rachel Goes Rogue” podcast. “That doesn’t mean that we might not talk in the future and it doesn’t mean that I don’t miss him.”
Wenberg was confident that Schwartz, 41, was affected by their distance as well, adding, “It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t miss me. Our relationship was very organic. It was very granola, very simple, very easy. You list all the things that you wanna have in a partner, they were there.”
According to the hairstylist, who made her debut on season 11 of Vanderpump Rules, a lack of “trust” led to issues.
“The one thing that wasn’t there probably was trust. And that’s OK, because who am I to say who [he] needs to be with or who doesn’t need to be with? What I need to do is I need to move on and work on myself,” Wenberg said about Schwartz, who is currently dating Sophia Skoro. “I look back and I feel very grateful that I had somebody in my life that made me so happy. We could not have laughed more.”
Schwartz’s confusing — but very close — connection with Wenberg was initially brought up on season 10 in the aftermath of his and Katie Maloney‘s divorce. (The former couple announced their split in March 2022, months before they started filming new episodes.)
The TomTom co-owner subsequently confirmed at the season 10 reunion that he was casually seeing Wenberg. He has since played off how serious the pair actually were — which viewers got a larger glimpse of on the show.
“I think that we could have worked through it. However, we’re in different places in our lives and I support his place and I support myself. We’re not on bad terms at all,” Wenberg continued on Thursday. “I had to set some boundaries and I feel good about that.”
Wenberg said she was “very depressed” after Schwartz ended their relationship on screen.
When viewers were introduced to staff at Lisa Vanderpump‘s restaurant during Vanderpump Rules‘ 2013 premiere, it was clear everyone was intertwined in one another’s love lives. From Stassi Schroeder‘s rocky relationship with Jax Taylor, which took a turn when he hooked up with her best friend Kristen Doute, to Peter Madrigal’s casual connections to several […]
“It’s really tough because I’ve never been with somebody who really made me smile almost every single second of every single day and then have it end. It’s not been easy,” she noted. “We were so happy. We were in love. We would tell each other we loved each other and we would be extremely just in our own bubble. We liked it that way and the cameras would come up and it was like I didn’t even exist.”
Schwartz mentioned several times throughout season 11 that he wasn’t looking for anything serious. Wenberg, however, claimed that Schwartz was saying something different to her behind closed doors.
“It was tough. It was mind-blowingly tough,” she admitted on Thursday. “I’m getting goosebumps thinking about this. Then we’d film again and he would make up these things and say that we were both dating other people. I wasn’t dating anybody else.”
It has been difficult for Wenberg to watch season 11 of Vanderpump Rules due to Schwartz’s comments. “I was the last to know everything and all I was doing was just being myself,” she noted on the podcast.
Wenberg said she was “still grieving” her relationship with Schwartz, adding, “I miss him a lot. I also know that he’s moved on so there’s nothing you can do. It’s going to take me a very long time to get me to a place of happiness again with anybody.”
She continued: I got mentally f—ked up. Like, I’ve never said that before. I haven’t been able to kind of get out of bed unless I’ve been doing hair and stuff … You spend time with somebody for five days a week for a year plus and then it gets cut off. It’s kind of like a death. Then they don’t really help you out with your recovery and you don’t know until later that they’re already dating somebody else. It’s like, pick a lane.”
Wenberg’s insight comes two months after Schwartz broke down why timing worked against them.
“There were maybe mixed signals there a little bit. We had a lightning in a bottle situation for a while there,” he said on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in February. “I don’t know if it was sustainable given my mental state of being. I don’t know if I was equipped to be in a conventional relationship.”
Schwartz joked he “should have been committed” instead of seeking out a girlfriend, noting, “I was in a very weird place like I have never experienced in my entire life. I’ll shut up now.”
