Tarek El Moussa is revisiting the darkest chapter of his life after seven years.
In Flip Your Life: Easy methods to Discover Alternative in Misery — in Actual Property, Enterprise and Life (out Feb 6), the HGTV star, 42, tells his aspect of the story of his extremely publicized break up from his ex spouse and Flip or Flop co-star Christina Corridor, 40, for the primary time — together with the harrowing 2016 incident involving a gun that led to their divorce.
When the pair’s break up grew to become public in December 2016, it was revealed that they’d really secretly separated seven months earlier throughout an altercation during which El Moussa fled right into a nature space with a pistol after what he referred to as a “blowup” combat with Corridor.
She referred to as 911, police flooded the park and as rapidly because it had devolved, it was over — the incident and their seven-year marriage.
Tarek tells the story of that day from his perspective in Flip Your Life, and opens up about it completely to PEOPLE on this week’s situation.
Courtesy of HGTV
In his e-book, he writes that after a heated argument, he “went out to our yard in Yorba Linda and hopped over the fence.” On that a lot the exes agree. However his rationalization as to why differs. He says somewhat than fleeing, he was craving train and wished to scout the paths close to the home after having not too long ago bought some new mountain bikes.
The neighboring Chino Hills State Park is a habitat for wildlife together with mountain lions and bobcats, so he introduced alongside what he calls an “insurance coverage coverage,” a .38-caliber pistol. He says he’d acquired his California concealed-carry license a number of weeks prior.
When a helicopter appeared overhead, he remembers he thought there was an emergency, presumably a wildfire, however he rapidly realized it was for him.
“A police officer leaning out of the helicopter pointed a rifle at me. Mud swirled round me from the spin of the blades, and a loudspeaker crackled, ‘Get your arms within the air!’” he writes. Extra police in off-road automobiles swarmed.
Paul Archuleta/FilmMagi
The officer within the helicopter miraculously acknowledged him. “I heard an officer shout, ‘Tarek?’ I screamed again, ‘Sure! I’m the man from TV! What are you guys doing?’” he says.
They lowered their weapons and tensions eased, but it surely was the start of a downward spiral for El Moussa.
“For the following a number of hours, I sat on a cooler on my driveway, handcuffed,” he writes of the aftermath. “That was the final time we have been collectively as a household: with Christina strolling down the driveway, crying, and me sitting there in handcuffs, asking myself, What on this planet is occurring?”
Talking in regards to the e-book to PEOPLE, he describes the weeks instantly after the break up as “bodily and emotional hell,” and writes of hiding out on his boat, ingesting himself unconscious and going via excessive withdrawal from the testosterone he’d been taking till mates stepped in to get him to a rehab facility.
Within the wake of the separation, he says, “All people gave up on me: the magazines, the retailers, the community, no person believed in me.”
He receded from the highlight for months. Dwelling in what he describes as “a midway home,” he discovered the desire to combat for what he thought on the time could be the reunification of his household. (He and Corridor share daughter Taylor and son Brayden, now 13 and eight, respectively.)
He says he realized that wasn’t within the playing cards “after I discovered that she had moved on.” Corridor started courting her second husband Ant Anstead within the fall of 2017. “I’d say devastating could be an understatement,” he remembers of how that realization hit him.
Seven years on, nevertheless, each he and Corridor have healed significantly.
“I maintain nothing in opposition to Christina. I perceive why she did what she did. We had a variety of exhausting years via my sicknesses and my psychological well being struggles from the testosterone.” He takes an extended pause. “I’ve by no means mentioned any of this, ever.”
Tarek El Moussa/ Instagram
The exes continued to movie their present collectively for a number of years, which made it troublesome for El Moussa to maneuver on, however in the present day he says their relationship is “higher than it has been ever because the separation. All of us talk properly, even [Tarek’s wife] Heather [El Moussa] and Christina. We actually deal with the children.”
Assembly Heather at a Fourth of July get together in 2019 was “my breakthrough second,” he says. “Ever since that day, I simply have not appeared again and I am simply so joyful and excited in regards to the household I’ve in the present day.”
Tarek El Moussa/ Instagram
He and Heather welcomed their son Tristan in January 2023. Christina has additionally remarried, first to Anstead, from whom she break up lower than two years later after welcoming son Hudson, 4, after which to Josh Corridor in 2022.
That’s the lesson of the e-book, he says: “I by no means gave up. By a variety of exhausting work, ache and simply dreaming, I used to be capable of get to the place I’m in the present day.”
Flip Your Life: Easy methods to Discover Alternative in Misery — in Actual Property, Enterprise and Life is out Feb. 6 and out there for pre-order now.