After darkness must come light. Lauren Conrad opened up about her heartbreaking split from her ex-boyfriend Jason Wahler on Tuesday, August 2, as part of The Hills’ 10th anniversary MTV special.
The former reality star, 30, admitted that the very public split was tough, and not just because it was all caught on camera. During the special, fans got a glimpse of a never-before-seen clip of the pair reuniting post-breakup. (The couple called it quits on their relationship in 2006.)
“After we went on a break from filming, it was like a couple weeks in, I finally decided to end things. We broke up,” the Celebrate author recalled on That Was Then, This Is Now. “I said, ‘You have three days to get your stuff out, I’m having the locks changed on Monday.’ So when I saw Jason that day, it was the first time I had seen him since we had broken up. It was really hard. What made it harder was I could see he wasn’t sober.”
Wahler, 29, has previously spoken out about his battles with alcoholism and substance abuse. In May, he told Entertainment Tonight that his addictions got the better of him and ultimately spun him “out of control.”
“My addiction drove me to suicide,” he said at the time. “Not contemplation. Actually attempting suicide.”
On Tuesday’s Hills special, Conrad recounted how she felt guilty for Wahler’s condition, and for not being able to help.
“That really broke me, because I felt responsibility to take care of him, and I felt like when we broke up I was abandoning him,” she said, getting emotional. “Because there were a lot of nights that I was getting 2 a.m. phone calls and I had to go pick him up passed out in the back of a club. So I was like, who is doing that now, I know he doesn’t have friends who are doing it. … I was like, ‘Oh, God, no one is taking care of him.’”
Since the series ended in 2010, however, both Conrad and Wahler have moved on. Wahler married girlfriend Ashley Slack in 2013, and cofounded a men’s sober living home, Widespread Recovery, in Laguna Beach, California. Conrad married husband William Tell in September 2014.
“Jason’s story has a happy ending,” Conrad said Tuesday. “He is sober now and married and very happy.”
