Rachel “Raquel” Leviss revealed her thoughts on James Kennedy‘s future with girlfriend Ally Lewber during an episode of her podcast last week.
Days after the premiere episode of Vanderpump Rules, Raquel, 29, spoke of James, 32, and Ally, 27, as she shared if she believes her former fiancé can have healthy relationships, addressed a comment Tom Sandoval, 41, recently made about her on a podcast, and admitted to feeling FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) amid season 11.
“We’ll see,” Raquel replied after being asked if James and Ally would last on the February 1 episode of Rachel Goes Rogue. “I think Ally is a very patient person. She reminds me a lot of me, and I think there’s a motive in her to help. And I think time will tell. He is older now. He has more life experience. But it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of growth there. So we’ll see.”
Raquel seems to be worried that Ally isn’t in love with James, but rather the idea of a future with him.
“My advice to Ally would be don’t fall in love with the potential of somebody because you’re going to be let down. And you could just focus on yourself and really develop yourself so that one day you can find someone who is on that same level and has done the same amount of healing so there’s a healthy relationship,” she shared.
According to Raquel, she’s in a different place than she was when she dated James, and when she engaged in a months-long affair with Sandoval behind the back of his then-girlfriend and her then-friend, Ariana Madix, 38, because she’s done “a lot of therapy. Like, intense, intense therapy.”
“I’ve done a lot of reflecting on my patterns and my relationships and looking at the things with James and then looking at that relationship with Tom and seeing what was overlapping,” she explained. “For me, this affair, it was kind of manifesting in a different way. Like, I didn’t see the similarities when I was in it, but as I’ve been able to take a step back and look more clearly at it, I can see it for what it is. Like it was that potential. Like I was in love with the potential of us having a real relationship out in the open and not in secrecy. And I didn’t even see that as a pattern until I was able to remove myself from the situation totally.”
Although Raquel is no longer in communication with Sandoval, she did hear what he said about her during his appearance on Nick Viall‘s podcast last month.
“I hated what he said. He said someone like Raquel, some 20-something-year-old doing that whipped cream bikini thing like Varsity Blues. And I’m like, ‘Okay, what is this reference?’ And I YouTubed it and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, like, what?’ And we’ve already talked about it on my podcast how this came to be, our first moments that really shifted the dynamics into something more of a love connection if you can even call it a love connection. But the way that he was describing it really made it sound like I was the temptress and that it was this seduction that he fell into,” she revealed. “I can take ownership of my part in that because, yeah, it was a choice that we made every day. And it was a really bad decision, but it just felt like he was putting a lot on me saying it was my fault for seducing him, which I don’t think is right.”
Though Sandoval appears to have moved on from their sordid romance with model Victoria Lee Robinson, 31, Raquel believes Sandoval still has work to do on himself.
“If he got good therapy and some introspection, he would come to the conclusion that your self-worth isn’t based on your significant other,” she noted. “You can’t get your self-worth from somebody else. It has to come from within you.”
Raquel also questions James’ ability to have healthy relationships.
“I don’t think that that’s a healthy relationship,” she said of his romance with Ally. “I don’t think any relationship with James is healthy, especially knowing that we broke up and he got with somebody else so quickly after. There’s no time to really reflect on yourself in a span of three weeks or four weeks, however long it was. The same problems, just a different person.”
Just talking about James made Raquel admittedly “anxious” and “nervous” due to the emotions she was feeling about their past relationship — and his current life with Ally.
“That was my fiancé. That was somebody that I thought I was going to spend my life with. And we were looking at houses that had a pool. And we were ready to take that next step. And here he is in this new house with a pool and a backyard,” she shared, also noting, “I just thought it was funny that an airplane, like, they’re in a fly-over zone … I enjoyed that.”
As for season 11, Raquel confessed to feeling “a little FOMO” after quitting the show last year.
“I can own that, but I don’t know. As it went on, I just kept thinking, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so happy that I’m not part of this,’” she added.
Vanderpump Rules season 11 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
