Teresa Giudice‘s relationship with Luis Ruelas was the main focus of the Real Housewives of New Jersey season premiere on Feb. 1. Within the first five minutes of the episode, Teresa sat down with her four daughters and revealed that their house was about to sell, so everyone will be moving into the house that she and Luis “bought together”. And since none of them have lived with a man for six years — something Gabriella had mentioned during the conversation — it’ll certainly be an adjustment. But Gia said she won’t be deviating from her “routine” in the new house, so Luis and his son, who will also be living with them, better come correct. “My routine is not changing just because we’re moving somewhere else,” she said.
Teresa, on the other hand, is looking forward to becoming a stepmom. “I’ve always wanted a son, and now I’m going to have two,” she said, after explaining that Luis’ older son, who’s 20, won’t be living with them. However, Gia reminded Teresa that because they’ll be living with men again, she won’t be able to go and lay naked in the backyard like she does now. “It’s going to be so annoying,” Milania said, but Gabrielle had her mom’s back and said it won’t be “the end of the world”, and Teresa noted that they’ll “all get used to it” after a while.
Even though they’ve only been dating for 11 months, Teresa claimed that she and Luis “took the time to get to know each other”. She said “everything feels right”, and Luis is her “soul mate”, but Milania and Gia told Teresa to be careful because their 11-month romance is “just not that long” in the grand scheme of things.
“You can still find out new things about a person every single day,” Gia said, as though she knew exactly what was coming next. Because just a few minutes later, Jackie Goldschneider went to meet up with Margaret Josephs and asked her about a “weird” video of Luis that surfaced online. Margaret said it’s a big “red flag” and Teresa just likes to “romanticize her life” and ignore stuff that should be addressed.
“This video — I don’t know what was going on,” Margaret said in a confessional. “But Luis is on the beach in the middle of this pack of men. And they’re all, you know, naked. The poor guy looks like he’s been dragged through the river, and he’s begging for forgiveness with the men behind him. And they’re all like cheering him on, [saying], ‘You can do it!’ And they’re men who would scare the hell out of me if I saw them in an alleyway, by the way.”
Margaret went on to tell her husband, Joe Benigno, that Luis appeared to be apologizing to a woman from his past and he “obviously did something wrong.” Joe said Teresa needs to pay attention to “what is going on around her”, and not overlook this, and she agreed. Especially because there have been “allegations” about Luis “mistreating past girlfriends” before.
“There is something unsettling about [the video],” Jackie told Margaret, who added “there’s some explaining to do.”
But when everyone united at Teresa’s summer kick-off party, she didn’t really want to address it. For starters, Luis arrived late and told Teresa that he’d only stay at the party for a little bit because he was stressed and wanted “to get out of there”. Then, when the ladies started bringing it up more aggressively — after Joe Gorga made a joke about it during a comedy show — Teresa said no one should be “getting into Luis’ business.” But Margaret disagreed. After an exchange of words with Dolores Catania, Margaret told Teresa that “Luis needs to address the video”.
Teresa told the ladies that the video is a “part of his past”, so he “doesn’t owe anyone an explanation about anything.” Teresa further said that Luis is an “amazing man” and she only goes by what’s in the present — not what happened in the past. “I have a past, [and] he has a past. I don’t care,” she said before begging for “respect” and saying things “won’t be good” if people keep asking about it.
Want more drama? New episodes of The Real Housewives of New Jersey air Tuesdays at 8pm on Bravo.