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Credit: Bravo, Dave Starbuck/Future Image/Cover Images
Kristen Doute and Janet Caperna looked back on a chat they had about their strained relationship amid The Valley season three after Wednesday’s new episode.
After Kristen, 43, called Janet, 36, mean and said she couldn’t trust her, she doubled down on her lack of motivation to reconcile, stating that their past friendship had “died” as Janet admitted she felt she couldn’t win and explained when their relationship first fizzled out.
“Finally, I literally looked at Janet, and I was like, ‘I’m not interested in a friendship with you. What more do you need? What more do you have to say to me? We sat down for three hours at Brittany’s house,’” Kristen recalled of their conversation on the July 15 episode of The Valley: After Show.
According to Janet, she went into the discussion hoping to remain “calm, peaceful, [and] level-headed.”
Janet also spoke to her therapist ahead of the chat.
“I said, ‘I have to have a conversation with a former friend. Every time we get together, it’s fireworks. We’re both like, screaming at each other. And it gets really heated, and I don’t want to get there.’ My therapist was like, ‘Well then don’t. Don’t get there. Stay calm,’” Janet shared as Kristen reflected on her “really quiet” tone.
“She was like, ‘What is your issue with me?’ [And] I think the very first thing I said was, ‘I have a question. I’m gonna open this up. Do you think [Danny and Nia Booko] owe you anything?’” Kristen revealed. “And she was like ‘I’m not here to speak about them.’ And then I brought something up about [Zack Wickham], and she’s like, ‘I also told Zack I wouldn’t say anything about him, so I’m only here to talk about me and you.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that is me. These are my friends. And the way you treat my friends is a direct reflection on how you would treat me.’”
As for Janet’s comments about their past friendship, Kristen said, “That died so many years ago.’”
“There’s no growth. There’s no evolution,” she continued. “And even by the end of that conversation, she started talking sh*t about Zack again. Like, she can’t help herself. And I explained to her that I’m seeing a new version of her.”
Meanwhile, Janet expressed frustration at their inability to move forward.
“I was like, ‘I can’t win,’ and I hate that term, but like, if I blow up at her, then I’m crazy, emotional. I’m a b*tch. And if I don’t, then I’m robotic,” she explained.
Looking back on their relationship, Janet said things began to take a turn during one of Kristen’s past romances, seemingly referencing her ex-boyfriend, Alex Menache.
“Kristen and I went south basically when she was going through her breakup with the boyfriend before [Luke Broderick],” she revealed. “I very much wanted to be there for her, but it was really back and forth and up and down a lot. So it would sort of be like, she would come over to my house and be like, crying about this guy, and ‘he did x, y, and z,’ and I’d be like, ‘You don’t deserve that. Why don’t you come stay with me tonight?’ She’s like, ‘I’m done with him. I’m breaking up.’ And then I just wouldn’t hear from her for like two days, and all of a sudden she’d be posting like, ‘Man crush Monday.’ And it’s the boyfriend.”
As Janet got engaged and married to her husband, Jason Caperna, she began to feel that Kristen didn’t appreciate their friendship as she should.
“I was talking to her all day, every day for hours at a time. And stepping away from work, and Jason, and our life, to be there for her, which is important to me as a friend, and I felt like she didn’t really appreciate it. But it was also such an important time for me in my life, like, she was staying at my house when I was on my honeymoon, because she was moving out of the boyfriend’s house, and I didn’t like how she treated my home while I was gone.”
According to Janet, Kristen left dog poop and vomit around and drank a bunch of her wine that was for work.
“So I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t love this.’ And she was like, ‘I would never disrespect your home,’ and I was like, ‘Well, you kind of did.’ I don’t know; it felt like she took advantage of the situation,” she explained. “And all I wanted her to do was be like, ‘I’m sorry,’ and that was kinda like the final straw for me. I was just like, ‘I have to put a boundary up.’ As soon as I put a boundary up, she was like, ‘You’re my enemy.’”
The Valley season three airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.