Kyle Richards has opened up about discussing her sexuality with her daughters (Getty Images)
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards has revealed that she was terrified to speak to her daughters about her sexuality, in the wake of media speculation.
Richard, who has starred in the California-based Real Housewives show since its first season in 2010, recently divorced her husband of 27 years, Mauricio Umansky, as speculation surrounding her relationship with singer Morgan Wade swirled.
Speaking to Page Six’s Virtual Reali-Tea podcast, Richards said the chat with her four children – 36-year-old Farrah, Alexia, who is 28, Sophia, 24, and 16-year-old Portia – was “the most difficult I’ve ever had with [them] and I was terrified. I just wanted to be as honest as I possibly could”.
She added: “There were stories out there about me and… this did make me wonder and question myself.”
Richards, who shares Farrah with first ex-husband, Guraish Aldjufrie, and the other three with Umansky, said she had “never thought like [that] before” about a female friend.
“This is not the way I was raised. That’s not the way my mind even operated. And all of a sudden I was thinking like that and I wanted to be as honest as possible [with the children] because they are my best friends.
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“I like to lead by example and I thought: ‘If this is what I’m going through and feeling, I want them to always feel comfortable enough to share with me the hardest conversations and know that they’ll be accepted no matter what’.”
She need not have worried: the children’s reactions were nothing but accepting.
“Having that conversation, their reaction and response to me, I thought: Wow, I’m so impressed by these four women in front of me’, and I thought, ‘Maybe, just maybe, I did do a good job’, because that was my most proud moment as a mom, just seeing how they all reacted.”
Although Richards has not labelled her sexuality, she revealed that she was spending less time with Wade.
“I think she didn’t want any part of anything to do with my role [on] reality television and all that came with it,” the star said.
Season 14 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is due to begin on Tuesday (19 November).
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