Spilling the southern sweet tea! Naomie Olindo publicly spoke out for the first time about her split from Metul Shah after learning of his alleged affair.
The Southern Charm star, 29, made headlines in July 2021 when news broke that she and Shah, 30, called it quits after three years together. The news came amid cheating allegations on the doctor’s part, and now, Olindo is breaking down what really happened.
“I was still trying to process what had just happened that, you know, infidelity is the thief of reality. So I was like, ‘What is my life? What am I doing? What have I been doing? Who is this?’ Questioning my judgment, you know, ‘How did I not see all this?’” Olindo said on the Monday, February 7, episode of the “Skinny Confidential Him & Her” podcast. “Everybody knew. And, and then, you know, people are commenting on the situation.”
The France native, who appeared on Southern Charm for four seasons before her 2020 exit, recalled people being “cruel” to her ex, which led her to stand up for him even though she had alleged proof he cheated on her with his ex ahead of their brief move to New York City that summer.
“I felt bad for him again. And I was like, ‘Guys, please stop being mean to him. This is not the answer,’” she recalled. “Like, still defending him at that point, even though he had done essentially the worst thing you can do to somebody that trusts you the way that I trusted him.”
When looking back at her relationship with Shah, Olindo revealed that there were red flags before she saw his text exchanges with his former flame.
“I think I just wanted to feel loved. I don’t think that he ever truly loved and accepted me,” she explained. “It was always what he thought I could offer him or what he thought he could gain. It was never about who I was.”
When Olindo did break off the relationship — on the day she was packing up her home to move to the Big Apple with Shah — she remembered him trying to pull her back in.
“The process afterwards was really difficult because when somebody is that narcissistic and they try to come back into your life, they’ll say all the right things. They know exactly what they’ve been withholding from you, like, previously in the relationship what you crave,” she told the listeners. “’Cause I would express my needs, but they would just not get met. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe this is a trade-off, you know, he doesn’t scream at me. He doesn’t call me names. So I’m alright, I’ll take it.’”
The Blueprint to Breakup cocreator remembered Shah constantly trying to reinsert himself in her life after she pulled the plug on the relationship.
“I was begging him on the phone, sobbing being, like, ‘Please stop trying to call me. I need time to think and figure out what’s going on.’ And [he’d] be like, ‘OK, hold up. But can I just call you tonight?’ And I’d be like, ‘No, you can’t,’” she claimed. “And he would call me over and over and over again.”
During that time, Olindo learned that she deserved more, saying, “If somebody just can’t respect your boundaries, that is the No. 1 sign [that] they don’t need to be in your life.”
In addition to finding herself again, the breakup led Olindo back to Southern Charm. She will appear on season 8 of the show after having to “beg” the network to let her come back.
Scroll down to learn more about her reality TV comeback and where she stands now with Shah: