The cameras may not be rolling in Charleston, but the drama is more intense than ever. After Southern Charm’s Thomas Ravenel implied that his on-off girlfriend cheated on him, Ashley Jacobs is telling her side of the story.
“I was back in my hometown, Santa Barbara, at the end of July/beginning of August and I had actually kind of called things off with him and I didn’t want to put that out publicly,” Jacobs told Us Weekly exclusively on Monday, August 27, two days after the 56-year-old accused her of being unfaithful on Twitter. “When I came back to Charleston, I was still spending time with Thomas, but I made it very clear to him that we weren’t exclusive. People can think, ‘She’s having her cake and eating it too,’ but I wasn’t necessarily dating people or hooking up with people.”
“Right around that time, I went out to a restaurant with a couple of my friends and mutual friends approached us,” the 33-year-old continued. “This guy sat and joined us and he was cute and I was like, ‘Hey, I can still flirt. I mean, I’m not gonna take him home.’ We exchanged phone numbers and we talked back and forth. … I let Thomas know once the story was out there of us and someone took a video of us, so I said, ‘Thomas, this is what I was doing, this is where I met him.'”
Jacobs added that she later joined the man she met on a boat with his friends, but she “wouldn’t consider that cheating.” However, Ravenel, who Jacobs first started dating in May 2017, saw how often she was speaking to the man on her phone records and was not happy with what he saw.
“Thomas was able to get into my call log on my phone records and he was able to see that I was having more conversations than I … not that I felt like I should have to explain, but I guess he felt sort of I was dishonest,” she explained. “I should have been more upfront that this guy texts me more than I led him on to believe, but it was all harmless and I told this other guy, I said, ‘Thomas and I, we’re in a very complicated relationship.’”
On a second night out in Charleston, the registered nurse claimed a married man and his friends paid her and her friends’ tab, so they and went over to thank them. She added that the group claimed to know Thomas and the cast of Southern Charm.
“I get a picture from Thomas, a live one that’s of me,” she explained. “I called Thomas and said, ‘Thomas, this guy knows you. He knows everyone from the cast and he’s married and has a child on the way.’ Well that turned against me because he wrote me that message about me lying and he said that I was hanging out with a married guy, so it just sounded so bad. It just sounded really bad. And I just thought, ‘There’s no way that I can talk to Thomas [anymore]. There’s no way that I can … this is just the last straw for me.’ It’s not … it’s not fair to him because if this is gonna constantly happen and he’s constantly insecure and feeling paranoid about this relationship.”
She added: ”Thomas is the only person I’ve slept with since I’ve lived out here, so it’s upsetting to see that I was cheating on him because I wasn’t, but I could have been better about letting him know that this person is reaching out to me more, but we’re not exclusive, so why do I owe him that? I don’t know why I owe him that and I honestly didn’t think he’d get my phone records, that’s the truth, so I did get busted. I did get busted.”
Jacobs first confirmed her split with Ravenel on August 15 via Instagram Live. While Jacobs’ future on Southern Charm is unclear, Ravenel said he was not returning for season 6 of the Bravo hit earlier this month. His departure came months after he was accused of sexual assault by two different women.
