10 Signs Ashley and Michael Darby’s Marriage is Headed to Divorce

Quite often age is just a number, and May to December romances work out just fine, thank you very much. With Ashley and Darby though, that 29-year gap between them has sometimes been problematic. It made things especially tense when they opened up their restaurant, Oz, for example. “Stepping into this role of being responsible for people's livelihoods and having budgets with a lot more zeroes on them has been a learning experience for me, to say the least,” Ashley told Bravo in 2017. “So it does cause some issues for Michael and me and really made us think about why we were doing this. We didn't do this restaurant to tear ourselves apart; we did it to bring us together. So we'll work on that.”

In the past, Ashley has also spoken openly about how she transfers her father issues onto Michael. Last season, during an emotional episode involving a therapy session, she revealed that she’s afraid to show her real emotions to Michael because she’s subconsciously afraid he will leave like her real dad did when she was a year old. “Subconsciously and deep down I knew one of the things that draws me to Michael is that he’s nurturing and authoritative in a way that I would imagine a father would be,” she said. “But I didn’t realize the hurt I experienced with my dad has also spilled over into my marriage. That part of me is still so raw.”

Leading up to that therapy session was another explosive Darby doozy: Robyn and Candiace accused Michael of making a sexual comment about another man during a drunken party after the cameras had clicked off. While Ashley denied it and said she would have remembered her husband saying something like that, the women gave her grief because they felt she was too drunk to remember anything.

In 2018, things took another turn for the Darbys when Michael was accused of sexual assault. A cameraman for the show said that Michael groped him and gave him a flirtatious look. According to reports at the time the man told him to stop and then informed his supervisor, and Michael was charged with felony assault and misdemeanor improper sexual contact. Later the charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence, but the incident definitely got fans talking.

While Ashley and Michael have categorically denied that Michael is gay or bisexual, the rumours have followed them for their entire relationship. At one point fans were speculating that Michael was on Grindr, and that this couple’s marriage wasn’t what they were putting forward publicly.

When Dean Michael Darby was born, it took Ashley a long time to feel normal again. Not only did she deal with postpartum depression, but she has also been open about how things weren’t exactly the same in the bedroom. The couple has since gotten past that dark stage together, but as all new parents know having babies can definitely take a toll on any marriage.

Season five has spent plenty of time teasing and (finally) digging into what really went down at the MGM hotel in Vegas late last year, when videos of Michael in his boxers in a hotel room with a stripper surfaced online. While Michael has told his own version of events, which include waking up after a drunken night and not knowing where he was, the videos certainly paint a different picture. One that Ashley has had to publicly discuss after the other women (led by Candiace) brought it up on camera.

This isn’t the first time that allegations of Michael having an affair have surfaced, but Ashley still shocked her co-stars in a recent episode of RHOP when she revealed that she’s practically a pro at telling if her husband is cheating. “I don’t just ask questions,” she said to Candiace. “I read emails, text messages, I sniff underwear, everything.”

Everything about Ashley and Michael’s marriage probably seems unconventional to some people, but following the cheating allegations Ashley is opening up about her relationship to media and fans in a whole new way. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight she revealed that she related to the recent drama surrounding Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith (Jada had a long-term relationship with another man outside of the marriage), and said that her situation isn’t the norm either. "I'm not a conventional person and I just don't think it's gonna come as a shock to anybody," she said. "Michael and I are an unconventional couple in many ways.”

However things shake out for Ashley and Michael, one thing is for sure: they have lots of emotional moments ahead to look forward to. The couple revealed in early September that they are expecting a second baby in February 2021. While that’s happy news for sure, here’s hoping for that this time around things go a lot more smoothly for this roller coaster couple.