“It wasn’t easy,” Gina tells PEOPLE. “Matt and I were just coming out of the baby, baby, baby-phase and were recognizing that our relationship had run its course. At the same time, he had taken a new job in Los Angeles and was living there during the week. And I had made this commitment to come on this show.”
“All of a sudden, it all collided,” she says.
Despite their split, Gina and Matt have kept their divorce civil so far. The two have been together for 11 years and married for eight. They share three kids — sons Nicholas, 6, and Luca, 3, as well as daughter Sienna, 4 — and plan on continuing to co-parent them.
“We’re always going to be family. We are a family,” Gina says. “Matt, I would never throw under the bus. He’s my best friend. I can never imagine him not in my life. He’s the father of my children. He’s the most important person to me.”
Though their divorce is far from finalized, Gina admits “there’s so much paperwork, it’s a huge pain in the ass,” she says, the two have been transparent with one another in negotiations and plan to sit down with their respective councils and a private judge, reports the publication.
As previously reported, they are selling their house in Orange County, but the former couple have decided to wait until the market is stronger. Instead, they’re essentially “bird nesting” — keeping the kids in one family residence and rotating their time there separately.
Matt is also still financially supporting Gina and their three kids. “He’s always going to take care of us,” Gina insists. “We don’t come from money, so it’s not about money. I’m not going to fight over money, it’s not worth it.”
Despite getting along, Gina reveals the real reason why they two decided to end their marriage. Gina says the two had simply grown apart. She looks back at their decision to get hitched and realizes she was planning more for the wedding than she was for the marriage.
“It’s a huge, huge decision — one of the biggest ever — and I was 23 years old?” Gina tells PEOPLE. “I wasn’t ready to make a decision about who I was going to spend the rest of my life with at 23. No wonder! We made it work because we made it work. But I’m a completely different person than I was then.”
Leaving their family behind in Long Island and moving to California also had an impact in their split.
“On Long Island, marriage is a community thing,” she explains. “Your parents, your in-laws, your siblings, your friends, your family — they’re all a part of your relationship. You don’t think about breaking that up. So when we moved to California, it was like, now you only have each other. And you really have to validate that relationship and say, ‘Are we really functioning and working well? Are you really my soulmate who I want to spend the rest of my life with in that way?’ “
“When we asked ourselves those questions, we discovered that we really didn’t,” Gina adds.
Photo Credit: Bravo
