Why Did Jon and Kate Gosselin Get a Divorce? Inside Their Rocky Breakup and Its Aftermath
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In Touch Weekly posted an update
Once upon a time, the TLC reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8 featured a married couple managing a family of sextuplets and two older twins. Midway through season 5, however, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their decision to separate and following their split, the former pair have had different accounts of what caused their rift and they mostly surround rumors that he was unfaithful.
At the time of the breakup, rumors of infidelity ran rampant, but Jon has long maintained he had remained true to his wife of 10 years. “The biggest misconception is the reason for the divorce is that I cheated on my wife, but I didn’t,” he said on a 2014 episode of the reality show Couples Therapy. He also said his marriage was “very non-affectionate” and “just kind of like 10 years of a business transaction.”
Jon explained, “I always felt like I did Kate’s task list. ‘Here’s the Post-it note. This is what you have to do. This is how you’re a good husband. This is how you’re going to behave.’ [I thought], ‘OK … I’m going to complete these tasks, and she’ll love me because I do these things.’ January 16 was when I did all my stuff. I went out to a bar and stayed out till 4:00 in the morning. When I came home that morning, she said nothing. So, I did it the next night.”
And by the time of that next night, Jon had realized his relationship with Kate was ending. “I knew [the marriage] was over [on] January 17, 2009,” he said. “That was the definitive day. I just knew.”
Jon also denied the affair rumors during a 2016 interview on Dr. Oz, saying, “She thought I was having an affair after … during separation in 2009, which I wasn’t. No.”
For her part, Kate told People in 2016 that she “really would have thought [Jon would] have been here for the long haul,” before adding. “The weirdest thing is that overnight he became a different person.”
Jon had begun buying motorcycles and cars and staying out late instead of taking care of the kids, Kate said. “People closest to me thought I was crazy and making it up,” she added. “When they saw it for themselves, they were like, ‘Whoa.’ They saw the proof.”
In a 2016 appearance on The Steve Harvey Show, Jon said he lost “everything” in the divorce and alleged TLC had sided with Kate and had even paid for her divorce attorneys. “We knew we were going to get divorced, and then the network tried to keep us together for the benefit of the show, so I quit,” he explained. “I said, ‘I’m not having my divorce filmed. I’m not having it aired out for the public’s consumption. And I’m not having reruns so my children can keep on watching the demise of their parent.’ … I just took a moral stance versus a business stance. I lost everything. I lost all my money.”
Following their split, Jon alleged that Kate verbally abused him and that Kate was an “absentee” mom, while Kate has said that none of her children have been “damaged” from filming the reality TV series. While Collin and Hannah remained in his custody and live with him in Pennsylvania, Aaden, Joel, Alexis and Leah are in Kate’s and moved with her to North Carolina in March 2021.
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