Kyle Cooke Opens Up About Relationship Struggles with Amanda Batula in 'Summer House' Season 8 tram

Nearly two years after trying the knot, Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula headed back to the Hamptons for season 8 of Summer House. But the honeymoon phase was decidedly over.

“I'm not going to lie about it, when we went in a summer, we weren't in a bad place, but we definitely weren't really seeing eye to eye on a number of things, like the balance between work and our personal lives,” Cooke, 41, tells PEOPLE.

When Kyle and Amanda, 32, arrived at the house with Paige DeSorbo, Ciara Miller, Gabby Prescod and new roommate West Wilson during Wednesday’s premiere, Paige asked Amanda to pick which “era” she found herself in.

“I might be in my no patience era, for Kyle specifically,” Amanda told the ladies while Kyle gave West, 28, a house tour.

In an on-camera interview, Amanda explained that the pregnancy scare she had on Winter House months earlier took a toll on her marriage.

“There’s a reason that I come back to the house every year and it is to spend time with people other than Kyle,” the New Jersey native said. “Over the winter, I ended up taking a pregnancy test. And I feel like ever since, we haven’t been in a really good place. Taking that test really made us start to think about like what’s next for us. And we’re not ready.”

At this point in their marriage, Kyle says the questions about him and Amanda trying for a family and moving out of New York City come from all fronts.

“All these pressing questions that it's not just producers and the audience asking, it's our friends, it's our family,” the Loverboy CEO and founder tells PEOPLE. “They're like, ‘What's next?’”

After West cooked a quesadilla dinner for the house with help from Ciara — which shocked her housemates — Amanda, Gabby and Danielle Olivera pitched in with cleaning. Amanda tried to rope her husband into helping, too, and he snapped, “Your little sassiness needs to be contained.”

“I feel like were struggling to really feel like were on the same team about anything,” Kyle said in a confessional interview.

Following dinner, the housemates headed to a local carnival where they played games, went on rides and drank beer. Kyle, who won a Rasta banana pushie he named Mon, confronted Amanda about the lack of time they’d been spending together.

“I know we do really good hanging out with our friends separately. What I want for this summer is for us to actually spend more time to together,” he said to Amanda. “We’re like the anti-attached-at-the-hip couple.”

Amanda told Kyle it was his fault that they didn’t spend time together. “All you do is spend time in your office,” she added.

Kyle said it felt Amanda didn’t miss him when he traveled for work.

“I’m home and I’m taking care of the dogs and I’m watching TV, so I’m fine,” she replied.

Kyle hoped he and Amanda could be “a little more like inseparable,” saying, “I’m starting to feel like I’m the only one who misses something in our relationship,” he said.

Amanda suggested, “We’ll use this summer to get our groove back.”

Kyle acknowledges that he and Amanda struggle with finding a work-life balance.

“We don't make it easy on ourselves,” he tells PEOPLE. “We've been filming two TV shows for three years. We work together and running a company, particularly in alcohol where it's insanely challenging, and that weighs us down. It definitely impacts our relationship.”

The morning after the carnival, Amanda gave Kyle a hard time for spending most of his time that night with the stuffed banana.

“He blames me, gives me a hard time for it and then what’s he do all last night? Hangs out with Mon,” Amanda told Danielle, 35, while Kyle listened.

For the first party of the summer, Gabby hosted a sparkly pre-Fourth of July party. New housemate Jesse Solomon arrived in time for the party, but Summer House vets Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard spent the weekend in Washington, D.C.

Kyle caught up with Paige, 31, during the party and vented to her about his relationship issues.

“She says things that just like, shut me down,” Kyle said. “I don’t feel like as a team we’re like, really functioning as well as I like. We are starting to talk about next steps, we are talking about family, we are talking about looking for homes. But my God, like, I am a little scared s---less. Her No. 1 beef with me is, I work too much. How can you give me a hard time for working? I’m trying to like, set us up like, financially secure.”

In a confessional interview, Paige suggested Amanda had simply been acting like herself.

“Part of that is just his wife’s personality,” the fashion influencer said. “And I don’t think he like realized that when they got married.”

Kyle reiterated to Paige that, with where things stood between him and Amanda at that time “the thought of adding kids to that mix scares the s--- out of me.”

The New Hampshire native tells PEOPLE he sees Summer House as somewhat of a months-long therapy session.

“I always think filming's a little therapeutic for couples that are on the same show,” he says. “I know that sounds crazy, but you're forced to talk about things that you conveniently avoid and I think of Summer House as my therapy.”

Later on during the party, Paige told Amanda about what she and her husband discussed.

“He’s full of s---,” Amanda replied. “The proof is in the pudding. Last night he said, ‘I want to hang out with you more.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s go on the Ferris wheel together.’ And then he went on rides with a stuffed animal that he won. So, like, he just makes s--- up. He’s just stressed about work and then he takes it out on me.”

The premiere ended with Paige mentioning to Amanda that Kyle expressed concerns about taking the next steps in their marriage.

“Then go be single!” Amanda remarked. “Like, what do you want? I mean, he f---ing cheated on me and I took him back. And it’s like, let’s talk about that. Like, get it together.”

Kyle says that, today, he and Amanda “are still kind of up in the air” about where they stand on having kids and buying a house outside of New York City.

“You'll see us contemplate, ‘Hey, should we start looking at homes? Should we start looking at a second home if we keep our apartment? How do we balance work and travel with having two dogs? What are we going to do and we have kids? Do we want to live closer to Amanda's parents to benefit from the in-laws?’” he says of what’s to come on Summer House season 8. “All that stuff that a lot of people can probably relate to, we're just kind of trying to figure it out right there in front of the camera.”