Melissa Gorga Claims Her Father’s Infidelities Nearly Destroyed Her Relationship With Joe
September 26, 2013 by Lindsay Cronin
Melissa Gorga and her husband Joe seem to have one of the most healthy relationships in reality TV. They have each other’s back, they have fun together, and the passion is clear. But just like all marriages, it isn’t perfect. In Melissa’s just-released book, Love Italian Style: The Secrets of My Hot and Happy Marriage, she is opening up about how her father’s infidelities almost ruined her relationship with Joe.
“My father died driving in the middle of the night on personal business that my mother and I knew nothing about,” Melissa wrote in the book.
“He had disappeared before. Many, many times,” she explained. “Like all young men, my father liked to party, but he didn’t want to do it with his wife. A wife was supposed to stay home, care for the kids and make dinner. A good woman didn’t run wild. So when the urge to run wild hit my father, he went elsewhere to chase it.”
“As young as six or seven years old, I remember nights and days of anxiety, of not knowing or understanding what was going on. Dad was home, and then he was gone. Mom fretted and cried.”
Despite her father’s regular nights out without the family, Melissa said he always returned and her mother always welcomed him back. “No matter what, she would never have left him,” she claimed. “And he never, ever would have left her. Okay, he did leave the house. But he’d never leave the marriage. There was never a doubt that he would eventually return home to her.”
For Melissa, watching her father come and go as he pleased taught her that “men aren’t reliable. Even when you love them as hard as you can, they cannot always be trusted.” Needless to say, this wasn’t a positive thing in her relationships and when she met and began dating Joe, “trust issues” became a focal point in their relationship.
“I would still get suspicious about Joe, despite his seemingly loyal behavior,” Melissa admitted. “If Joe said he was going out on a Sunday morning to do estimates on properties, I’d always question it in my mind. My father was a builder too. He used to say the same things to my mother. And then we wouldn’t see him until Tuesday.”
Joe often became frustrated with his then-girlfriend, snapping at her over her obsessions with his every move. Eventually, Melissa broke down and told him the truth about her father.
“That day was a real turning point in our relationship. He already knew my father died in a car accident. Then I told him the rest: his infidelities, disappearing acts, the distrust that lingered in my heart,” Melissa wrote. “I’d never told another man so much about myself. I realized that confiding in Joe was a sign that I did trust him.”
To get your copy of Melissa’s new book, visit Amazon.