Summer House’s Paige Desorbo and Southern Charm’s Craig Conover broke up late last year, and fans reacted fervently. While Paige has her own legion of loyal fans, Craig is a Bravo darling, and many viewers were quick to draw lines and take sides. Now, as Southern Charm’s tenth season comes to a close and season 9 of Summer House heats up, more information is coming to light about their relationship. The breakup began quite civilly but has since grown uglier, with both casts standing by their respective co-stars and launching digs at the other party. Most recently, the Summer House girls gave viewers a glimpse into Paige’s three-year-long relationship with Craig, and it’s made me more supportive of Paige than ever.
Last December, Paige announced on her podcast that she and Craig had decided to part ways. In her statement, she chose her words with great care and kept the commentary short and sweet. As Paige told it, the breakup was a decision the couple had arrived at mutually; the split was unfolding amicably, and she was confident it would remain that way. She gushed about how much she loves and respects her ex-boyfriend and how highly she thinks of him. Their breakup, she said, wasn’t catalyzed by bad behavior or mistreatment from either party, it was simply a matter of incompatibility, especially as it related to their divergent timelines for settling down and starting a family.
The narrative throughout their relationship was that the two had massive differences that would make it difficult to remain together at some point; he’s devoted to his life in Charleston, South Carolina, and she lives a fast-paced life in New York City. Both have businesses tying them pretty permanently to these places. At 36, Craig was ready to get married, have a few kids, and live a slower life, while Paige only grew less interested in settling down as her career took off. The possibility of a breakup, even despite their best efforts, was always on the table if they couldn’t find a compromise on several major life goals.
Craig Positioned Himself as the Victim in His Breakup With Paige
Following Paige’s podcast episode, Craig addressed the breakup in an Instagram video posted in January, which seemed a bit less gracious. He told his followers he was “very shocked” and seemed to subtly position himself as the victim. I’d like to believe his moves weren’t calculated, but surely he knows that Bravo viewers have a long history of forgiving or siding with men and being unduly hard on female cast members in a way that can only be described as misogynistic. In the video, he sits on a porch, swaddled in a pure white cable knit sweater, head half-buried in the crook of his elbow as he confirms the news. He shares with his followers that he was blindsided and lists off a slew of platitudes through an unassuming smile.
From there, the breakup started to get messy. Speculation of infidelity had already begun to swirl as soon as news of the split broke, but they got worse when, in mid-January, now months out of her relationship with Craig, Paige was spotted with a mystery man at an Eagles game. One blurry image, a lot of online armchair detective work, and a vague statement from the man’s former fiancé were more than enough to convince scores of viewers that Paige had secretly been stepping out on Craig. Paige responded, “Ima be outside a lot get used to it,” and left it at that. Though Craig himself appears to be moving on, as he was recently spotted on Raya, his Southern Charm castmates did their part to perpetuate the gossip that Paige was unfaithful; on Watch What Happens Live in late January, Austen Kroll said: “I don’t think those are rumors at all, I think that those rumors have been substantiated.” Because, of course, as we all know, if you attend a single football game with a man, that’s your husband now. “Ahhh yes,” Paige countered in a comment section, “a man I haven’t spoken to in 6 months knows exactly what I’m doing.”
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Their priorities just didn’t line up.
Paige’s castmates expressed hope that Craig would have her back by shutting down false rumors. Paige had done as much for Craig, by making it crystal clear in her announcement that he had been nothing less than a great boyfriend. But when cheating theories emerged, Craig only made things worse. When asked on Watch What Happens Live if the rumors were true, Craig neither confirmed nor denied, claiming he’s not involved at all (which is of course, categorically untrue). His refusal to defend her was “because Paige lied on her podcast and said the breakup was mutual,” he claimed spitefully, counting out reasons on his fingers. When he got to the second reason, he came up blank, his sentence trailing off. “I’m the ex-boyfriend, I’m moving on with my life, I’m not going to get sucked into the mud with [her cast]” he said, positively mud-soaked. True enough, Craig doesn’t owe anything to someone he has no relationship with, but on the other side of that coin — it’s hard to understand why Paige deserves punishment for ending a relationship that was no longer serving her. As another Summer House cast member put it, “Paige was nothing but kind, and Craig just sent the dogs after her.”
Paige Reflects on Her Relationship Struggles
Now, alongside her co-stars and best friends Amanda Batula and Ciara Miller, Paige has decided she’s well within her right to get more honest about what life was like with Craig. On last week’s episode of Summer House: Aftershow, Paige said, “When you’re in it, you can’t see it the way you see it when you’re out of it or the way your friends see it. I think I loved him so much that I tolerated too much.” The girls discussed how Paige was constantly tasked with doing damage control (likely a reference to the recently resurfaced discussion about Craig being kicked out of Amanda’s wedding to Kyle Cooke). “She’s constantly having to be a mother to this man,” Ciara observed. Paige spoke about how Craig could find a way to make any milestone in her career about himself, and eventually, she decided to stop sharing them with him.
Considering the massive differences in how they wanted to spend their futures — where they would live, when they’d get married, how soon they’d have children, what life might look like in the interim and after — the idea that Craig could have possibly been “blindsided” tells me that he expected Paige not only to compromise, but to cave completely and give him exactly what he wanted in certain areas. She has said repeatedly that her career would always come first, and he assumed at some point that would change for him.
So now we know. There’s more to this breakup than incompatibility; Paige didn’t feel supported by her partner. She shouldn’t have to be with a man so set on changing her. She should be allowed to celebrate her wins, and her partner should be happy to celebrate them with her. It happens to women all too often, and here we are watching Paige ruthlessly criticized for liberating herself from it. These new insights have only made me more supportive of Paige, and I hope at some point soon, viewers ease up on the unnecessary and misogynistic hate for a woman they don’t know, leaving a relationship she no longer wanted to be in. She doesn’t owe Craig access to her womb the moment he wishes to make use of it. She doesn’t owe him a relationship and shouldn’t keep participating if that’s not what she wants.
Summer House
- Release Date
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January 9, 2017
- Franchise(s)
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Summer House