Bethenny Frankel Explains How Her Approach to Dating Has Changed

Bethenny Frankel is changing things up when it comes to dating after her split from ex-fiancé Paul Bernon.

The Skinnygirl mogul, 54, revealed on the latest episode of the Hot Mess podcast that she is trying to keep her love life out of the spotlight.

“I’ve been dating,” she told host Alix Earle. “I don’t know what it was like when you started dating and you were public. People think because you’re photographed with one person that you’re all of a sudden married again or engaged again.”

“And I’ve tried to keep things on the DL because of Miami, and you know the paparazzi is worse there than anywhere,” she continued.

While Frankel is quietly jumping back into the dating pool, she has had a change of heart about putting labels on relationships too quickly.

“I have always sort of wanted to know exactly what everything is, and I’m trying to let the wine breathe more versus need to know what it is,” she said.

“Like, where you stand with someone maybe?” Earle, 24, asked as the Real Housewives of New York City alum clarified, “Like, what the label is or that [if] I’m getting married.”

However, the former reality star shared that it’s difficult to find a partner who isn’t jealous of her success.

“What I run into is extremely successful men that by anybody’s standards are very wealthy, very successful, very smart,” she explained. “Then they meet someone like me, but they start to question their own business. How successful they are. No matter what, it will be intimidating. It just will on some level.”

“I’ve had several men say to me, ‘Wow, you’re doing all this stuff. I feel like I’m not doing anything,'” she continued.

The behavior can be a problem for Frankel because she then is “dumbing myself down, not telling them things because I don’t wanna make them feel bad, and I’m telling them how their thing is the same thing as my thing, and it’s this dynamic.”

“So it’s nice to be with someone who’s not in even the same business so it doesn’t feel adjacent or competitive,” she added.

PEOPLE learned in May 2024 that the former Bravo star and Bernon split after six together.

The TV personality addressed the breakup during the July 7 episode of her Just B with Bethenny Frankel podcast.

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Confirming the split happened after the “really traumatic loss” of her mother, Bernadette Birk, at the end of April 2024, Frankel said, “I went through a breakup. It was something that I kept to myself. It was something that I mourned on my own, and I did therapy, and I did the work… I just didn’t feel like it needed to be shared.” 

“It was a breakup that I wanted to process alone privately, and I didn’t feel that I owed anybody any explanation,” she added.