Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra are making progress in their relationship amid a 30-day trial separation.
The Teen Mom OG couple opened up about the controversial move to save their marriage in Monday’s all-new reunion special episode of the MTV reality show.
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“I understand where he’s coming from,” Lowell said of her husband’s request that the two spend a month living apart amid her pregnancy with their third child. “I am supporting him in this, because I feel like as a wife I should support him.”
She’s even been working through the initial triggering that the suggestion of a separation created, explaining, “Initially, it gave my anxiety. I was sad. I was hurt. But I think just working through it in therapy and stuff and in couples’ therapy as well [helped].”
Baltierra, meanwhile, said he was confident that he and his wife would emerge stronger from the separation than ever before, admitting, “I feel like things have been changing.”
He added of his reasoning behind the temporary split, “I think me and Cate got together super young, and we used each other as survival to drive through this life. You just kind of lose who you are as an individual. Who am I if I’m not Catelynn’s husband?”
The dad to 3-year-old Nova added that he knows he’s sounded “insensitive” throughout the season about his wife’s mental health issues. Lowell checked herself into inpatient treatment in 2017 after experiencing a miscarriage that prompted suicidal ideation, and while she was away, Baltierra has admitted to growing “bitter” over what he perceived as his wife failing to push herself to get through her issues.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t have bitterness in me, so I’m going to handle it in therapy during this separation,” he explained.
Lowell, meanwhile, was hoping that the work in therapy she has been doing to work through her “childhood traumas” will benefit their relationship in the longterm.
“My dad leaving when I was younger,” she said when asked by host Dr. Drew Pinsky about what traumas she had been dealing with. “I really struggle with abandonment issues. Then also, my mom, she struggled with alcoholism, and I think that’s hard in and of itself, especially with me being the oldest kid. That’s why I have all these caretaking qualities.”
When confronted by Pinsky about the statistics surrounding separations generally ending in divorce, however, the couple confirmed they had no plans to divorce, and were dedicated to their new baby and their family.
Teen Mom OG airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on MTV.
Photo credit: Getty Images
