NEED TO KNOW
- Taylor Armstrong and Russell Armstrong married in 2005, and welcomed daughter Kennedy that same year
- Their marriage was plagued by abuse, as Taylor publicly addressed during season 2 of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
- The public speaker and author found love again love and in 2014, she married attorney John Bluher, who later adopted Kennedy
Fourteen years after the death of her ex-husband, Russell Armstrong, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum Taylor Armstrong is reflecting on how she and her daughter, Kennedy, navigate Father’s Day and why they choose not to commemorate it.
“We don’t,” Taylor tells PEOPLE exclusively. “She was 5 when he passed, and he worked nonstop. He was a true workaholic.”
“He would go to work before she would even be up in the mornings, and he would come home after she was in bed and she didn’t really spend much time with him,” Taylor says. “So I guess in some ways, thankfully, that loss wasn’t as significant as it would’ve been if she were older and they had a lot more interaction. So I don’t really think of it as a day to commemorate the loss.”
Taylor, 54, and Russell married in 2005, and welcomed daughter Kennedy that same year. However, their marriage was plagued by abuse which Taylor first publicly addressed during season two of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Throughout the season, tension mounted as Taylor confided in castmates about her fear and emotional instability. In one pivotal episode — often referred to by fans as the “tea party” episode — she broke down sobbing, revealing on camera that she was in an abusive relationship.
Behind the scenes, Taylor endured physical and emotional violence. In July 2011, she filed for divorce, citing abuse. A month later, Russell died by suicide. He was 47.
In the years since, Taylor has worked to reclaim her identity and create a safe, happy life for herself and Kennedy, now 19.
Part of that journey included finding love again, and in 2014, she married attorney John Bluher, who later adopted Kennedy.
“When John asked me to marry him, I said, ‘I will marry you, but you cannot change me,’ ” she says.
“And that’s another thing when I speak at universities, or to people in general, is I changed so much in my first marriage because when you’re dealing with an abuser, it’s a constant strive to keep the lid on the boiling pot.”
“And so you’re constantly changing to try, or you think that you’re going to somehow keep him from boiling over,” Taylor explains. “So your hair is too long, your hair is too short, your dress is too long, your dress is too short, you laugh too much, you don’t laugh enough, you talk too much, you don’t talk enough. You’re constantly toggling between behaviors.”
The reality of that constant shapeshifting became painfully clear when she watched her first season of RHOBH back.
“We used to get the DVDs in advance because we would blog on BravoTV.com, so we would send in our comments prior to the show airing. And when I first started watching myself on the show, I thought, that doesn’t even seem like me. I had turned into such a mechanical ghost myself, like a Stepford Wife persona,” she says.
“And when one of my best friends I’ve known for years, he said, ‘I don’t know who that girl is on the show, but it’s not you. And I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but it’s bizarre.’ I mean, I’ve always been super sarcastic and fun-loving and I didn’t know who to be anymore because Russell would say to me, ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like that.’ So I would try to be in the middle, and ‘I don’t like this friend.’ And so I would try not to be around that friend, but it never changes.”
“When you’re with an abuser, nothing’s ever going to be okay,” she continues. “Your hair’s never going to be the right length, and your dress is never going to be the right length. It’s always going to be something. You’re never going to laugh enough or too much. There’s never going to be a time when they are approving of you. It just is a constant. So eventually, I just became this ghost of myself, and that’s something that when I married John, I just said, ‘I’m just now figuring out again how to be the person I used to be before my first marriage. And so you’re just going to have to let me be the Gemini that I am, all eight of me.’”
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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