The Real Housewives of Miami star Lisa Hochstein was blindsided back in April after her husband, Dr. Lenny Hochstein, ended their marriage of 13 years and filed for divorce. Just days later, he went public with his new girlfriend, model Katharina Mazepa.
Lisa is opening up in a new vulnerable interview and revealing that she never saw the divorce coming, leaving her world in shattered pieces.
“It was a knife to the heart,” Lisa told PEOPLE. “My life changed completely in the blink of an eye — and I didn’t see it coming whatsoever.”
The pair were in the middle of shooting season five of RHOM when Lenny dropped the “bomb” on Lisa. The conversation happened off-camera, but viewers will see the aftermath play out on the reality show. Lisa revealed that Lenny was “cold” and finite in his decision to divorce her, and there was nothing she could do or say to change his mind.
“He wasn’t sympathetic or empathetic at all about it either,” the RHOM star explained. “It wasn’t, ‘Let’s sit down and have a talk. I’m sorry that this isn’t what I want anymore.’ It was a cold, ‘I’m going to start dating, whether you like it or not,’ basically. It was completely shocking and devastating. I just couldn’t believe that the man I had been with for this long was treating me this way.”
Lisa continued by saying that “family life” is what she always wanted. Lisa and Lenny struggled with fertility issues for years before finally having their children, Logan, 7, and Elle, 3, via surrogate.
“I struggled with infertility; it took us so long to get here and now that we’re here, he’s leaving. And there’s nothing I can do to fix it,” she said.
Although Lisa knew that her marriage to Lenny wasn’t perfect, she stated that “[Lenny and I] prided ourselves for being that couple that would stick through it.”
“Obviously, anyone can see watching the episodes that our marriage wasn’t in the best place. But I was trying to be a great wife and trying my hardest to make us strong again,” Lisa confessed. “I was cooking his favorite meals, creating happy memories with our kids — anything I could do to repair it. So it wasn’t that I was ignoring our problems, I was just desperately trying to fix this. And the best I could just wasn’t good enough for him.”
Lisa went on to share that in hindsight she didn’t realize how terribly Lenny treated her. She only gained clarity after rewatching past episodes of RHOM and noticing that he “belittled” her and was antagonistically “rude.”
“I didn’t realize until I actually watched it on TV, but he’s not nice to me,” she said. “You see me trying so hard and it’s just him shutting me down, belittling me and being quite rude to me. It’s very hard to watch.”
“It’s clear he was not interested in doing anything with me,” Lisa noted. “I’m like, ‘Wow, you really didn’t want to participate in anything or accompany me to anything!'”
Lisa also explained that Lenny’s partying ways and seemingly his “mid-life crisis” contributed to the marriage’s demise, though Lenny would continuously “gaslight” her and flip the narrative back on her.
“I was pretty lenient with these parties and having people I didn’t know come to my house. Football Sundays, the bar would be full of these people. He lives for his Halloween party. And I had fun, don’t get me wrong — I live in Miami, I’m fine with a party here or there at the house. But it got really old to me. He’s allowed to have a different set of friends, but it was just getting out of hand to have all these strangers around. It made me more and more uncomfortable.”
“He thought that was controlling of me to say, ‘Please don’t entertain these single women who I don’t know,'” Lisa recalled. “And then if I would have a once-in-a-blue-moon night out with friends, he would get mad at me. So, what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander? I found it bizarre.”
Lenny, on the other hand, gave his own statement to the publication, doubling down on his take that Lisa was the one whose partying escalated and became uncontrollable.
“The idea that I was the one partying, nothing can be further from the truth,” he says. “I don’t like to party. I don’t have girls over to the house. I’ve had the same friends I’ve always had…the one who likes to go out is Lisa. I hate it. I like to be home. I like to be with the kids. I like to spend my weekends with my family. Her lifestyle made that impossible.”
Lenny also alleges that Lisa was never “blindsided” by his decision to divorce as the two had been separated and sleeping in separate bedrooms for months.
I’ve never hidden anything from Lisa,” the plastic surgeon added. “She was not blindsided by this, that’s completely false. In fact, I told Lisa time and time again, ‘You can’t do this. I can’t do this. It affects our relationship’. I begged her to change, and she refused. She didn’t care. If anything, she became worse. And that’s why we’re getting divorced.”
However, Lisa does have some more positive news in her life as the restraining order that was filed against her by Lenny’s girlfriend, Katharina, has been dismissed and deemed meritless.
The model filed the motion after she claimed Lisa was harassing and bullying her.
On November 28, the courts handed down the filing. “Upon review, the evidence presented is insufficient under the Florida law … to allow the Court to issue an injunction for protection against domestic, repeat, dating or sexual violence or stalking,” read the court documents obtained by PEOPLE.
“It never should have been granted in the first place!” Lisa said. “Restraining orders are granted when you threaten someone with physical harm and they’re in danger for their lives; her life was never in danger. None of what she claimed was true and the court proved that.”
