NEED TO KNOW
Teddi Mellencamp opened about her relationship with ex Edwin Arroyave, whom she’s still married to, on the new episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show
On the show, Mellencamp discussed how she and Arroyave put their divorce on pause when she got her stage 4 brain cancer diagnosis last February
Mellencamp also shared how Arroyave has been of support throughout her cancer treatment, even staying in their house with her when she’s not feeling well, and her thoughts on him dating
Teddi Mellencamp is getting candid about where she stands with ex Edwin Arroyave, whom she’s still married to.
On the Tuesday, July 29, episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 44, recounted how she and Arroyave, 48, put their divorce on pause when they found out about her stage 4 brain cancer diagnosis last February.
“I always knew he’d do the right thing by me,” Mellencamp said. “If he wanted to, he could still be filing and finishing this divorce off right now. But, my dad [musician John Mellencamp] and family just said like, ‘I don’t think this is the right thing for her to be able to try to navigate right now or figure out.’ It was like, ‘Yeah, of course. No, we’ll wait. We’ll wait until she’s better, and then we’ll figure it out.'”
Though Mellencamp called Arroyave her “ex-husband” at one point during the episode, she clarified that she doesn’t “know what you call somebody you were married to, then you filed for divorce, and then you got cancer, so then everything went on hold.”
Mellencamp filed for divorce from Arroyave, an entrepreneur, in November 2024, three months before she learned her melanoma — which she was first diagnosed in 2022 — had metastasized to her brain and lungs.
In the time leading up to her diagnosis, Mellencamp said she continued “not feeling well” and wished she’d been more open with Arroyave about what she needed.
“I think men so often want to be the protector and the provider and the this and the that. I just wanted somebody to come lay in bed with me and watch a movie,” she said. “I wanted someone to collapse with me for a little bit, not fix me.”
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Teddi Mellencamp in May
Mellencamp said she recently looked at their text messages from that time and realized “we wouldn’t text each other like that now.”
“I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I just got back from the doctor, they think I have melanoma.’ And he’s like, ‘Like cancer?’” she said. “It’s just so flippant. It’s like we’re asking what we’re ordering from the supermarket later. If you’re in a marriage and you’re trying to figure out if you can make it work, give each other as much care as you can give.”
Amid their problems, Mellencamp said they “did a lot of work in our marriage.”
Mellencamp said she and Arroyave sought help by going to marital retreats and church every week, but their problems ran deep.
“People are only going to ask for things a couple times, and then they’re going to, at some point, they’re going to shut off,” she said. “I would say that’s ultimately what happened with me. I just wanted certain things that I don’t know if he didn’t know how to give. Then it all turned into I was no longer in a place where I would go above and beyond to make sure that this person was happy. I had kind of gone into, ‘Do whatever makes you happy. I’ve asked for enough years, and now I’m done.'”
During that time, Mellencamp said what she needed most was Arroyave’s “presence.”
“He’s very good at multitasking and so good at business,” she said. “I was one of those people that, yeah, it’d be Saturday, and I’d want to plan out the day. I’d be like, ‘Do you want to have people over and we can swim in the pool and then we can do pickleball?’ Back then, he didn’t like it. Now, I see him doing the same thing. Once you’ve got the kids, you do want to have a slight general idea of what organizing you’re going to do so that you guys can all have a fun, productive day.”
Mellencamp — who shares kids Slate, 12, Cruz, 10, and Dove, 5, with Arroyave and is a stepmom to Arroyave’s daughter Isabella — said “years and years of past stuff that we didn’t fully work through” also played a part in their split.
“I think he wanted me to just naturally work through it. I think my natural response was just to push back,” she said. “I think once you do that, once you take the care out, it’s really hard to make it. It’s really hard to make it.”
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Teddi Mellencamp with (from left) kids Cruz, Dove, Isabella and Slate
Despite their split, Mellencamp said Arroyave “will always be my friend.”
After all, Arroyave was the person she called to take her to the hospital when she wasn’t feeling well in the days leading up to her brain cancer diagnosis.
“To this day, I don’t hate Edwin,” she said.
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During the time the podcast filmed, Mellencamp said she and Arroyave were “staying in the house together.”
Though Mellencamp said there are times when he’ll stay at their other house, she told him that she was feeling “really sick,” so he decided to stay “downstairs in the bedroom at our house right now.”
“We can live in the same house,” she said. “We don’t argue.”
In terms of dating new people, Mellencamp said she “would be fine with him dating.”
When asked how Arroyave would feel about her dating, Mellencamp said, “I don’t know.”
“We’ve talked about it,” she said. “I talked to my therapist about it, like, if I feel the urge, if I get asked on a date or if somebody wants to take me out, she’s like, ‘You should go.’ She’s like, ‘Anything that you want to do right now and you feel in your heart that you want to do, do it.’ She’s like, ‘It could be if [Edwin] asked you on a date and you wanted to go, nobody’s setting any rules for you.'”
“Right now, I’m not wanting that from him,” she added. “I just want him to be happy, and I want our kids to be happy, and I want us to be able to have a good friendship and relationship, and I don’t want to do anything to hurt him. I kind of know how our marriage works.”
Read the original article on People
