Raise your glass! Since Vanderpump Rules premiered on Bravo in 2013, viewers have had a front row seat to some of the biggest reality TV fights and feuds.
Kristen Doute and Tom Sandoval’s tumultuous relationship was a topic of discussion during the first two seasons. As the pair tried to work out their issues, rumors of infidelity spread on both sides. At the end of season 2, Kristen admitted that she cheated on Tom with his friend and coworker Jax Taylor.
Shortly after their split, Tom started dating his fellow SUR bartender Ariana Madix — which didn’t sit well with Kristen. At the time, the T-shirt designer accused her ex of cheating on her with Ariana before their breakup.
The tension between Kristen and Ariana later reached an all-time high when the former SUR waitress invited a woman who claimed she slept with Tom to Lisa Vanderpump‘s restaurant. Over the years, the duo eventually became friends while spending time in the same circle.
“I really love Ariana. I, like, really like her. It’s confusing for me,” the Michigan native revealed to Us Weekly in February 2018. “I feel like I’m going through something right now because we’re, like, tweeting each other now. She’s unblocked me, that’s a step in the right direction. There’s an occasional group text and hanging out in a group situations.”
Kristen went on to joke that she was “trying not to invest too much” energy in the friendship in case the Florida native changed her mind.
In June 2020, the James Mae founder released her book, He’s Making You Crazy, where she noted that she was no longer angry with Tom and Ariana about their past.
“I made a choice to let everything go, because whether or not I thought those rumors about an illicit rendezvous or two behind my back had been true or not, it didn’t matter anymore,” she wrote in the memoir. “A girl can’t actually steal someone’s boyfriend. He made a free-willed choice to leave me, and a free-willed choice to be with her. I needed to let them be happy. … They needed to find their own path to forgive me.”
At the time, Kristen revealed that she was frustrated with Vanderpump Rules for never showing how she got to a better place with Ariana.
“She and I are so, so close now,” she exclusively told Us in June 2020. “It’s been so many years. And [not including our reconciliation] was one thing that really frustrated us about Vanderpump Rules. … There was such a temperature change I feel when she and I were no longer, like, salty toward each other. And I thought it was such an important transition that they never focused on. So I felt it was really important to include.”
Ariana, for her part, also embraced her new friendship with Kristen when she posted an Instagram snap of them together in January 2020, writing, “We cute @kristendoute what’s our good cop/ bad cop show called? .”
After a follower asked why she was hanging out with her boyfriend’s ex, Ariana clapped back, “On this show? I’m cool with almost all my [exes] and with Tom’s as well and none of them are ‘on this show.’ Like who cares we are all dying soon.”
Scroll down for all the most memorable Vanderpump Rules feuds throughout the years:
