Kristen Doute has a new man in her life! The Vanderpump Rules alum confirmed her romance with Luke Broderick on their Sex, Love and What Else Matters” podcast.
“I battled with being, like, your person. I love you so much, but just the thought of being someone’s girlfriend again threw me through a loop because I want to be a wife and I want to be a mother,” the 39-year-old former Bravo star began on the most recent episode of the podcast. “Most of all, I just want to be a mother and a partner. And I was so tired of being a girlfriend for a couple of years and then having s—t fall apart.”
Us Weekly confirmed in June that Doute and Alex Menache split after two years together. She previously dated former costars Tom Sandoval and James Kennedy, and Brian Carter from 2015 to 2019.
“You tried really hard not to fall in love with me and not to let this become a thing because of my age, because of the distance, because of these factors that when you think about it logically, like, how can this work?” Broderick, 31, noted.
In addition to the eight-year age gap, distance — Broderick resides in Colorado while Doute lives in California, Broderick’s passion for hunting was an issue.
“Luke loves to hunt and fish. I am an animal advocate. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 11 years old. And that truly was the one thing that was, like, a little difficult for me in the beginning,” Doute continued, adding that she’s OK to “overlook” his passion for hunting because he’s not a “cheating, lying, bastard piece of s—t” like other men she’s dated.
The twosome met at Rachael O’Brien’s wedding to Greg Hunter over the summer.
“Right after we met at the wedding, or, like, hung out at the wedding, we had sex,” Doute explained, noting that she instructed her new beau to make a separate Instagram account after she saw his hunting pics. “The scrutiny, I guess, [I] chose to deal with being on reality TV. … [And] the unkindness because he’s such a kind, loving, good-hearted person who knows nothing about this world in Los Angeles, the podcast world, the reality TV world, the Instagram world that I have chose to live in.”
While Broderick noted he felt a “spark from the very beginning,” the He’s Making You Crazy author said she “found” him when she “stopped clawing my way out of my last relationship” with Menache.
Broderick has already met her famous pals, attending Jax Taylor and Sandoval’s separate birthday parties and Scheana Shay’s wedding in Mexico.
“Tom being my ex-boyfriend has no weight on this at all, like, we broke up 10 years ago or something. So we went to Tom’s birthday party at their house, and you had a blast,” Doute said.
The former reality star admitted that she tried to fight her feelings for Broderick.
“You definitely never pushed anything on me. You were just persistent. You’re consistent, which is what made me fall in love with you. But the persistency definitely made me stay interested in you,” she explained. “I’m a creature of habit where I fight against what was wrong in my last relationship. … I don’t love being alone. I love connection. And I just had this feeling like, ‘Oh, man, I’m falling for this guy now. And he doesn’t even live here. And I’ll find a way to make that work because I love being in love.’ And I was hell bent on being single. I didn’t want to hurt you either. Because I knew that you really liked me — not to sound like a d—kbag — and I knew I really liked you. I just felt like I had to get some s—t out of my system.”
She concluded: “I was very afraid that I was just latching on to someone that felt so comfortable, so easy, so amazing, so perfect, that it was just gonna go wrong. And I had to sort of turn my cheek at it.”
