“Southern Charm” star Chleb Ravenell says his relationship with co-star Kathryn Dennis went downhill after she moved in together and her custody battle played a major role.
“We gave it a chance. We worked at first – we were a very loving couple – and when we moved in together, we broke up a bit,” he told E! News on Friday, a day after the couple broke up, aired on Bravo.
According to the 33-year-old, things got worse when filming began, but he doesn’t necessarily blame the cameras for the split – which took place during filming in November 2021.
“We just discovered things faster,” he told the outlet.
It sounds like the exes seem to agree that the stress of Dennis’ ongoing custody battle with her ex-boyfriend, Thomas Ravenel — with whom she shares daughter Kensie, 8, and son Saint, 6 — affected their relationship.
“Just seeing her go through that was painful,” Ravenell told E! News, in which he claimed his efforts to “make her happy” were inadequate.
“Because she was dealing with all this, she didn’t really realize what I was actually trying to do,” he said. “She had too much on her mind.”
Though Ravenell said he and Dennis, 30, are “not dating right now,” the two will come face to face for the season-end reunion.
“I’ve thought about that,” he said. “That’s going to be crazy.”
Despite being called “emotionally unavailable” and being dumped on national television, Ravenell still hopes Dennis “does well in the custody battle, Thomas [and] all her friends.”
On Thursday’s episode, Ravenell explained that before dating Dennis, he “didn’t know what” [he] was getting,” referring to her children with 59-year-old Ravenel. (Ravenell and Ravenel are unrelated, although their Bravo counterpart, Craig Conover, previously claimed that Ravenel’s family once owned Ravenell’s as slaves, hence the name similarity.)
“After three months into our relationship, you threw the kids right at me. That’s what scares me too,” he told her, adding that seeing her feud with the father of her children also “pulled him back.”
Dennis and Ravenell were first linked in the summer of 2020 and became Instagram official in October of that year.