Jeannie Mai Gets Candid About Dating After Divorce (Exclusive)
Dating after divorce isn't easy -- especially if you've got a "Mama Mai."
Jeannie Mai's mom makes an appearance on Thursday's episode of her Kin Network webseries, Hello Hunnay, and only ET has an exclusive clip showing just how big of an impact an Instagram-connected mom can have on a daughter's dating life.
"Today, now, I'm 40 years old. We are two grown women, and now you live with me. I am now starting to date again. How am I going to feel confident about dating in my new life if you are still going to be this way?" Jeannie asks her mom, Olivia, who has embraced her "Mama Mai" nickname.
As Jeannie -- who finalized her divorce from ex-husband Freddy Harteis last year -- explains, the one time she showed her mom who she was dating, it didn't end well.
"I showed her on my phone. She memorized the person's first name. She googled this person's name, found out how much he made, found out what shows he worked on -- he's in TV -- found out all this stuff. Then she went to his Instagram account, followed him, followed his show, and commented, 'I'm the Mama Mai. I know the Jeannie Mai. I'm watching you,'" she recalled. "That's the last time I ever heard from that guy!"
"I introduced myself!" Mama Mai hilariously tries to justify.
"But you can't do it on the 'gram and do it in front of millions of followers, and you don't want them to know you know them when we don't even know each other yet!" Jeannie replies. "Mom, I'm so embarrassed about that. He never messaged me again. We even had a date [planned] the next week!"
Mama Mai clearly can't wait to find out if her daughter is in another relationship post-divorce, though Jeannie admits that it's been hard to adjust to dating after her 10-year marriage.
"The divorce was really, it was sad," she explains, as her mom calls the split "nasty." "Instead of having bad energy go towards anybody else or the situation, I just wanted to give positive energy towards myself. So I spent a year really, really taking care of myself. I got myself to a healthy weight, I started to learn what it felt like to be strong."
"After that year, I came out, I felt full, I felt whole. And when you feel really good about yourself and confident about the way that you love yourself, you're ready to recognize what that love feels like coming from someone else. So that's when I kind of knew that I was ready to start dating," Jeannie says, noting that she also wanted to respect her ex's privacy before moving on publicly. "It's just nice to see that everybody kind of has the same flow."
See more in the clip above, and tune into Hello Hunnay on Facebook Watch and YouTube.
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