‘RHONJ’: Margaret Josephs Confronts Ex About Future of ‘Broken’ Family

Margaret Josephs’ time on The Real Housewives of New Jersey has brought her formerly-estranged children closer to her.

The Bravo newcomer has been open about her family issues since coming on the show, revealing that her three stepchildren, with whom she was “extremely close,” cut off communication after she divorced their dad, Jan Josephs, due to her affair with her current husband, Joe Benigno.

In Wednesday’s episode of the Bravo show, Margaret sat down to talk with her ex about the future of their family, asking him if there was ever a chance that his children would allow her in their life again.

“There’s always a chance,” he says diplomatically, at which point Margaret begins to cry, saying she wishes “things were different.”

“For a long time you were a great mother to the kids, to my kids,” Jan tells her “…but you chose a different way.”

Margaret apologizes again for her part in their divorce, saying she “absolutely takes responsibility” for her choices, but Jan isn’t wanting to hear her emotional speech.

“I’d be lying if I said I give a s—,” he responds. “I resent what you did, but I don’t hold it against you.”

“I’ll just put it this way,” Margaret says of the relationship with her stepchildren. “I’m never giving up, that’s not me.”

“You do whatever is best for yourself,” Jan responds diplomatically, before reassuring his ex that he’ll talk to the children about their relationship with her, adding that everything “will be” OK with their family in the end.

The 50-year-old opened up about the conversation with her ex to Entertainment Tonight Wednesday as well.

“It’s very emotional,” she told the publication. “I’m 50, I was with my kids since I was 24. You know, my kids are grown adults. So, I think sometimes the viewers don’t realize that when I was speaking about them. So, it’s very hard, ’cause I raised them from a young age. I was a young girl. It is very, very emotional.”

She admitted that there’s been progress with her family since bringing up the issue on the show, saying her family is no longer “broken,” but still “disconnected.”

“It’s not that we don’t text message, and I check in on them and I also have my [biological] son … who I’m very close with, [and] he’s always with his brothers and sisters,” she shared. “So it’s just, we’re not together at holidays. We’re not together every day. We don’t speak every day. So, we’re disconnected … we’re not totally back together, but we’re working on it.

“I think we are in a slightly better place,” she added. “We’re working on it, that’s what I like to say. And you can see I’m very close with my ex-husband, my mother’s close with my ex-husband.”

She also opened up about how she and Jan tried to make things work for their kids before deciding it wasn’t healthy to do so.

“You can have a great family and not a great marriage,” she said. “I think a lot of families stay together for the kids, but my kids, I just want to say, were grown adults when we got divorced. Like, grown adults, living separately. They were in their 30s, my stepchildren, and I was with them, like I said, from a young girl. And my biological son was 15 when it happened and he’s now 21. So, everybody really was up and out. But it didn’t make a difference how old everybody was, we were all so close and spent so much time together, I think it cut very deeply.”

Real Housewives of New Jersey airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.

Photo credit: Bravo