Taylor Armstrong of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” is opening up about her troubled relationship with estranged husband Russell Armstrong, six months after he committed suicide.
Armstrong sat down for several interviews yesterday to discuss her new book “Hiding From Reality,” available in bookstores today. In the interviews, Armstrong revealed that her venture capitalist husband once told her that being intimate with her was like “having sex with a skeleton.” Still, she says it would have provided her “great solace” if he had been murdered instead of taking his own life.
“He would make comments when we were sexual about my weight. No woman needs to be criticized in that moment,” Armstrong told “Entertainment Tonight.” “He’d make criticisms like having sex with me is like ‘having sex with a skeleton’ … It was so hurtful.”
Armstrong also told interviewer Nancy O’Dell that her husband had required her to take a polygraph test to prove she hadn’t been intimate with anyone else since they met.
“I felt like a criminal,” said Armstrong. “I agreed because I thought, ‘Surely if I took the polygraph test, this is going to end these discussions we’ve been having for years over points that are inaccurate.’ I kept thinking this will end the argument. But afterward, I felt filthy, like I needed a shower filthy.”
Armstrong also claimed that her husband only wanted a baby if it was a girl. “I felt terror,” she said. “I was like, ‘please let it be a girl.'”
On last night’s conclusion of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” reunion special, Armstrong also spoke about the experience of finding Russell’s body. Cohen asked about a brief case that Armstrong had said was alongside the body.
“There were several files [in it] that contained things I knew nothing about,” she said. “Ten different bank accounts, an office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that I never knew about. Flash drives I’ve yet to open because I’m scared … He had a lot of things going on that I didn’t know about.”
Cohen also asked about Russell’s business partner, who also committed suicide. Armstrong revealed that several people had contacted her, believing that there could be a foul play link between the two deaths.
“I hate to say it,” said Armstrong. “But it would give me great solace to think that this was at the hands of someone else as opposed to my husband being in such despair that he took his own life.”