Melissa Gorga Discusses Her ‘Strenuous’ Relationship With Husband Joe Gorga; Says: “We Are Still Learning Each Other”

Melissa Gorga revealed that her relationship with her husband Joe Gorga is doing “much better” after recent issues that fans watched unfold during the last season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

“I know we’re been married for 16 years, but we are still learning each other. There’s different turning points, I would say, in marriages,” Melissa told Us Weekly. “Joe is not big on change and he likes things to stay the same. He likes to know that everything’s going to be intact and probably, that’s what makes him a great husband. But for me, I’m all about change right now.”

“It’s not that he’s not proud of that. He is proud of it, but it does pull me out of the house a lot,” the mother-of-three explained about their ups and downs. “It was becoming strenuous for us because he just doesn’t want it. And I’m not willing to give it up.”

The COVID-19 pandemic allowed the pair to spend more time together, but it also forced them to face their problems.

“The pandemic I think put us together a lot more hours than we usually are because usually he’s at work. So we don’t have time to argue about this stuff because by the time he gets home … I worked all day, he worked all day, but all of the time to talk about it was almost like it was rough for us,” she continued. “We filmed season [11] during the pandemic last year, so you were kind of seeing … us just going at it.”

“At the beginning I was embarrassed. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe we did this,’ but I feel like it’s real,” Melissay told Us Weekly. “This is what happens. It is what it is. There’s ups and downs. Nothing’s perfect. I know a lot of people always wanted to believe that we were, [but] we are not, we have arguments. We love each other hard, but we also butt heads.”

Since then, the couple has made significant steps to make their relationship work.

“I told him to stop picking on me. So he stopped picking on every little thing I do as if it was going to have like change our life, every move I made,” Melissa shared. “I’m really picking and choosing a little bit more as to when I actually have to go somewhere and stay overnight and be somewhere. I’m being a little more choosy where before I was like, ‘Nope, I’m doing every single thing. This is what I have to do.’ I think I’m picking and choosing a little bit more now.”

Photo Credit: Gregory Pace/Shutterstock; Aurora Rose/Shutterstock