“I didn’t know. I found out a lot at the tell-all about what happened when I was not in the Dominican Republic,” Chantel told People magazine on Monday. “I didn’t have a proper reaction in the Dominican Republic [because I didn’t know] about the severity of it. At first, I thought it was just a two-second dance, but this is a girl who wants a relationship with him that he’s seen on multiple occasions.”
Pedro admitted he was wrong. On the same night, he took off his wedding ring and put it at the bottom of a drink. Chantel was still in Atlanta when this happened. “I messed up. I enjoy in the moment I had with my friends. I passed the line,” he said. “I been so long in United States, I no have friends over here, you know what I mean? That’s why I extremely passed the line.”
Pedro isn’t the only one with regrets. If Chantel would change one thing, it would be lying to her parents about her plan to marry Pedro. Originally, she told them he was legally in the U.S. on a student visa, when in reality it was a K-1 90-day fiancé visa.
“I wish I had done my marriage a different way, like I had told my parents some things. I feel like I messed up on one big decision of my life — not to be with [Pedro], but the way that I told my parents,” she told People. “I would still choose to marry him, but I would definitely have more realistic expectations.”
Now, fighting with their in-laws is what causes the most friction for Pedro and Chantel. Before the series, Chantel thought she had the perfect relationship.
“I used to watch 90 Day Fiancé while Pedro and I were dating and were in our engagement and I really wanted to be a part of the show because I wanted to show everybody how perfect I thought my relationship was,” she told E! News last week. “Being on the show has made me realize that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship and we have our flaws… We disagree on a lot of things and that’s something you’ll definitely see play out.”
“It’s hard to be vulnerable under the public eye—you feel like you’re in a fishbowl—but after a while, you forget the cameras are there,” she said. “We took our vows for better or for worse and that’s something that I take very seriously,” she told E! News. “You have to drown out the negative and focus on the positive.”
Even though things are difficult now, she’s not willing to give up on her marriage.
To find out what happens next, don’t miss The Family Chantel, which airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
