Bethenny Frankel is back on the market, but she’s doing the dating thing differently this time around.
“I am dating,” Frankel, 54, said during a Thursday, March 13, appearance on Alix Earle’s “Hot Mess” podcast. “I have always, sort of, wanted to know exactly what everything is, and I’m trying to let the wine breathe more vs. need to know what it is.”
Frankel explained what she meant, adding: “Like, what the label is or that [if] I’m getting married.”
Us Weekly broke the news in May 2024 that the former Real Housewives of New York City star and Paul Bernon had called off their engagement after six years together.
“I’ve been dating,” Frankel added during Thursday’s podcast. “I don’t know what it was like when you started dating and you were public. People think because you’re photographed with one person that you’re all of a sudden married again or engaged again.”
The former Bravo star said she’s been trying to keep her love life on the down-low lately. She also explained why the dating scene is difficult as a successful entrepreneur.
“What I run into is extremely successful men that by anybody’s standards are very wealthy, very successful, very smart. Then they meet someone like me, but they start to question their own business. How successful they are,” Frankel said. “No matter what, it will be intimidating. It just will on some level.”
She added, “I’ve had several men say to me, ‘Wow, you’re doing all this stuff. I feel like I’m not doing anything.’”
Frankel said that she’s guilty of “dumbing [herself] down” in certain situations.
“I don’t want to make them feel bad. I’m telling them how their thing is the same thing as my thing,” she continued. “So, it’s nice to be with someone who’s not in even the same business. So, it doesn’t feel adjacent or competitive.”
She also offered advice to Earle, 24, about getting married young. (Earle has been in a relationship with Braxton Berrios since late 2023.)
“I got married at 26. And I really, really thought that I wanted everything to be figured out at your age,” she said. “You’re in your own body, you’re in your own brain, you don’t know. You can’t see the road ahead of you. You can’t see the road ahead of you. So, it’s impossible to ever describe to someone young what it’s going to look like now.”
Frankel noted that sometimes she’s even “shocked” that she still goes out and has fun.
“It’s shocking at this age,” she admitted. “There’s not as much time to do all the things that you guys are doing now as there is to be married. Once you’re married, you have all of these years ahead of you.”
