Gossip is like a game of telephone and by the time the information gets to the receiving end of the line, it's been so distorted and misquoted that the original message gets lost, and this can be especially true when it comes to matters of the heart. Social media takes "he said, she said" to a whole new level, and we're now living in a world where we need screenshots and receipts.
Addressing rumors in a relationship can mean having some tough conversations and Adrienne Houghton says she experienced this firsthand before her marrying her husband, Israel. The couple, who will celebrate three years of marriage in November, faced a multitude of backlash after making their relationship public in 2016, only months after Israel's tumultuous divorce and infidelity scandal with his ex-wife of 20 years. Recently, Adrienne opened up about what really went on behind the scenes between their highly-publicized courtship.
In a recent episode of The Real, Adrienne explained that after reading the tabloids, she, too, was shooketh by the accusation that she was dating a married man and made it a point to clarify this conundrum with a quickness. She explained:
"Thank God for the internet these days. Things get confusing, and you get to clarify, like me, when I first started dating my husband, people thought he was married."
Adrienne and Israel have both been adamant about the fact that their relationship was strictly platonic before Israel's divorce, even setting each other up on dates with mutual friends. While the two maintain that Israel's marriage had ended long before their relationship, the tabloids told a different story. During this time, Adrienne says that she was just as confused as the rest of us and decided that her new suitor had some serious explaining to do; but before that, the then 32-year-old talk show put her investigative skills to work:
"You got me stepping to this man like, 'Did you lie to me? Did you have me out here looking crazy?!' That's a real conversation to have. I was like, we need to do some investigating. So my publicist, who was me and Jeannie's publicist at the time, called me and was like, 'Aye, there is nothing there.' I looked over I said [to Israel], 'They said there's nothing there!' And it was that they were under their initials and when they found them, they had been filed so long back and he just chose to disclose that the marriage was over way later once children and everybody was like settled, months and months later. But hello! Investigation come through! I needed to know."
While proving that her Magnum P.I. skills are on 10 at all times, Adrienne shared that she also learned a powerful lesson about honesty in romance. While love is about walking in truth, it's also about being real enough with your partner to ask them exactly what the truth is; then and only then did Adrienne finally find the truth that she was searching so desperately for:
"So, this is the thing. If you are being real, you want to talk to you the man, and you're like 'You got me out here looking crazy. Let me see the paperwork. The crazy thing is him and his ex-wife actually filed under their initials and not under their names, so when Page Six and a lot of these other news outlets went to go look for divorce documents, they couldn't find them because they were under their initials for their privacy. Ha-ha! But, it was true."
To watch the full clip, click below!
Adrienne Investigated Online When First Dating Israel To See If He Was Still Married (He Wasn't!)youtu.be
Featured image by @AdrienneBailon.