Someone to lean on. Amanza Smith revealed that her ex-boyfriend Taye Diggs helped her family when her ex-husband, Ralph Brown, could not.
“I was with somebody for five years. I dated Taye for five years,” the Selling Sunset star, 43, explained during the Tuesday, October 6, episode of the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast. “He took care of us. I worked barely. And so I never felt at that time … it didn’t make sense to ask for [my ex’s] money when I was … After Taye and I broke up, I did ask for it and [Ralph] told me, ‘I can’t.’”
Smith and Diggs, 49, split in 2018. Prior to their romance, she was married to Brown, 42, from 2010 to 2012. The former NFL star and the realtor share daughter Noah, 10, and son Braker, 9.
The reality star then got real about why she did not press the athlete to support her and their kids. “I’m not your typical chick,” she noted. “It’s been so long and we could argue that he owes it, but I went through so much when we got a divorce — just the back-and-forth texts and anger. He was so angry. When it kind of settled down, it’s so much more important for me to just have peace in my life. I would rather bust my ass and work 10 jobs than have to always feel, like, anxious or blamed or guilty. I can’t. I just want to be happy, and I feel like I’ve been blessed because I do have opportunities. I did have a boyfriend that took care of us for a while. I have a huge platform now. I’m making my own money and that feels so good.”
Smith added that one reason Brown failed to pay child support is because “after he retired from the NFL, he blew his money.”
Since then, the former football player made headlines for his disappearance from his ex-wife and children’s lives, which became a story line on Selling Sunset. August marked a year since she has seen him.
“I’m positive that he’s alive and I know that he’s alive because I’ve had to get an attorney and we’ve had to file court records and I’m trying to get full custody and at one point he submitted something to the courts where he did a change of address and we traced it back but it’s a P.O. box at, like, a UPS store,” she said. “So, I mean, he’s off the grid. Whatever’s going on and I have no idea what it is, whatever it is, he doesn’t want to be found right now, and for me, if he doesn’t want to be found right now, then it’s probably best that he’s away until he’s better or he wants to come back.”
Smith ultimately admitted that despite wanting to help Brown, she is not ready for him to reappear out of the blue. “Right now, we’re doing good and we’ve kind of just settled into this new reality, and if he showed up on the doorstep right now, I think it would just rock our worlds even more, so I’m not even prepared at this point if he were to, like, show up tomorrow,” she concluded. “‘Cause I don’t know what that entails. I have no idea what state of mind he’s in.”
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