YouTubeTarek El Moussa has figured out the root cause of his divorce from Christina El Moussa.
The Flip or Flop stars announced their split in December after an eight-month separation. While appearing on The Doctors Monday, Tarek says their growing fame and his cancer diagnosis took the ultimate toll on their relationship.
"I feel like if we had better communication, we would have had a better relationship," he says of his seven-year marriage to Christina. "I think as time went on, as you get busier and busier. It was like overnight: businesses, TV, all these things happened overnight, then the cancer, then the cancer, and the back surgery. It just kind of started pushing us apart from each other."
Even though they were growing apart, the HGTV stars struggled to come to the decision to split. Like any couple, the El Moussas tried to make it work for their children.
"I would be lying if I said it was easy," he adds. "But like anything, there's ups and downs and you have challenges, but at the end of the day, we're just normal people. What's most important is the family and the kids. It's really important that we stayed positive."
But with a looming divorce and cancer diagnosis, Tarek's happiness was nowhere to be found. "It was an emotional rollercoaster, physical rollercoaster, I had 60-pound weight swings," he reveals of his cancer battle. "For the first time in a long, long time I feel really good. It was a miserable three years."
Fortunately, Tarek is cancer free.
After skyrocketing to fame, both Tarek and Christina found life started to have pros and cons, but when the stars of The Doctors ask if he regrets putting his life in front of the cameras, Tarek admits it literally saved his life.
"Yes, I regret it, and no, I don't regret it," he explains on the show. "The reason I don't regret it is because a nurse out of Texas was watching our show, she emailed me, said, 'Go get your thyroid checked, you might have thyroid cancer.' So if it wasn't for the TV and that nurse, I never would have found out."
Both Christina and Tarek moved on romantically after announcing their divorce—Christina dated their family contractor Gary Anderson and Tarek got involved with their nanny, Alyssa Logan, but now both reality stars are single.