How Teresa Giudice Deals With Loneliness While Joe Is in Prison -- and His Promise to Be Better (Exclusive)

Teresa Giudice admits it is “lonely” at home while her husband, Joe, serves his prison sentence.

“How do I deal with it? Well, I have four daughters that keep me very, very busy!” she tells ET. “I'm not kidding, like, if you were to come to my house, your head would spin! And I have great friends, I have to say … between my four daughters and my friends and, you know, now my dad lives with me, my plate's full.”

“No joke, I'm like the Energizer Bunny,” Teresa continues. “I never stop going. But once I lay down, I'm done. So I have nothing to think about, except sleeping.”

So, the Real Housewives of New Jersey star doesn’t really give herself time to think about the loneliness -- or, she says, the future of her relationship with her husband of 18 years. He’s expected to be released in 2019, but Teresa says she’s not sure what their life will look like then.

“I'm not predicting the future anymore,” Teresa says. “You know when they ask you that question, where do you see yourself five years from now? Or, where do you see yourself 10 years from now? I'm never answering that question again … wherever, you know, life takes me, it'll take me. I'll embrace it fully. Whatever my journey is, it is.”

Teresa Giudice’s ‘Standing Strong’: 7 Revelations From Her New Memoir

In her new memoir, Standing Strong (out now), Teresa gets candid about her changing thoughts on marriage and divorce, confessing she would get a divorce if she wasn’t happy in her marriage. Still, she tells ET that she is “hoping for the best.”

“I want us to always be together,” she shares. “That's what life's about.”

In the book, Teresa makes a couple of comments about Joe “starting over” and beginning “his life” once he is out.

“He has to do the right thing when he comes home and better himself,” she says. “That's what I did and I think that's what he should do, and we'll do it together, as a family.”

The mom of four acknowledges she does know what her husband will do for work once he’s released, but she’s not quite ready to share that information. What she can share is that she has seen a lot of “growth” from the father of her children while he’s been away.

“I see it already in his emails, and how he speaks,” she says. “Maybe this was a learning lesson for him, unfortunately … like, for him to be there and look at himself, the way he came off, so he could better [himself].”

‘RHONJ’ Star Dolores Catania Consulted Cops to Learn How to Handle Danielle Staub (Exclusive)

“Before he left, he was drinking a lot,” Teresa adds. “He couldn't handle all this, the stress of it.”

Teresa says Joe is watching back The Real Housewives of New Jersey, airing Wednesdays on Bravo, for the first time ever -- and not liking how he came across on the show. She says he has promised to be better once their family is reunited.

“That's what he keeps saying to me,” she shares. “When he gets out, 'I will show you.' Can't wait to see that.”

Joe hasn’t been able to read Teresa’s candid thoughts about their marriage from the book yet, but she says she did let him know she was putting it all out there for the world to see.

“It gives him things to think about while he's in there,” she notes.

While she’s not predicting the future, Teresa did open up about how she is looking at it.

“I'm happy, positive, you know, I have good energy, good vibes,” she says. “I'm excited! I'm excited to go into the next chapter of my life.”

For more from our chat, check out the video below.