Rachel Leviss Announces A 1-Year Moratorium On Dating After Scandoval!

Rachel Leviss isn’t looking for a new man in her life anytime soon!

On the latest episode of her Rachel Goes Rogue podcast, the 29-year-old former reality star revealed she made a decision to take a break from dating for a whole year following her months-long affair with Tom Sandoval. She plans to use this time off in her romantic life to prioritize herself and those in her inner circle!

Related: Did James Kennedy Just Call Tom Sandoval’s 7-Month Affair ‘A Silly Mistake’?!

Sounds pretty healthy to us! Rachel explained:

“I’m not dating for a year, and in doing that, I’m just focusing on myself and after this talk, focusing on my emotions that come up for me, like what are my own needs that I need met, and not adding an additional person into the equation, so that it is just focused on me and other people as well my friends and family and the people that are in my inner circle that are safe friends.”

Good for her for recognizing she needed to step back to work on things. A part of focusing on herself during this no-dating period is working through her actions on Vanderpump Rules and how she navigates even talking about Scandoval! Rachel shared that she wanted psychologist Dr. Hillary Goldsher to join her on the podcast to help her unpack everything — including why she constantly was “smiling” while opening up about her “most painful traumatic memories.”

The pageant queen has received criticism from Vanderpump Rules fans about how she giggles and smiles while talking about the affair and other things that make her “uncomfortable” both on the Bravo show and podcast. And even she agrees her reactions to these topics aren’t normal, which is something she wants to work on moving forward:

“Listening back, hearing me laugh about, especially the Graham situation for me, like that’s not a funny thing, and I want to know why. Like what is this thing that my body does without me even knowing? Honestly, I’m excited to have a professional tell me why this is happening, because, yeah, it’s not normal. The average person isn’t smiling through their most painful traumatic memories.”

Rachel made it clear she isn’t trying to make light of her affair with Sandoval or the pain she caused his then-girlfriend Ariana Madix — despite what some people may think. Hmm. Instead, she learned while at a mental health facility last year her “bizarre behavior” was a coping mechanism for when she talked about difficult topics:

“There’s a term called ‘wall of pleasant’ and it’s a wall that you have up which keeps you from being intimate with other people, and therefore you’re not as relational and people can’t connect to you on a deeper level. And so I recognize that I have that ‘wall of pleasant’ that I can’t seem to help but to come up.”

Whether you like Rachel or not, you cannot deny she appears to be putting in effort to learn more about herself so she doesn’t have a repeat of Scandoval in the future. But what do YOU think, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below.

[Image via Bravo/Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen/YouTube]