Ned Fulmer is publicly commenting on the backlash he has received for filming a podcast with his ex-wife, Ariel Fulmer, following his notorious cheating scandal.
“I’ve heard a lot of the commentary and reactions to my podcast episode with Ariel and I wanted to take this video to address some of them,” Ned, 38, said in a video shared via Instagram on Saturday, November 8.
“That episode with Ariel was mostly about her story, and now in this video I’ll tell a little bit more of mine. There’s a lot that we wanted to keep private, but some things I’ll touch on today,” he added, before acknowledging that for fans it was likely “a very painful and uncomfortable conversation to watch.”
He continued, “For us, it felt like a necessary step to be able to move forward. We knew we would always get these sort of questions in any context online, and it felt like the only way to move forward was just to face it head-on.”
The podcast, which launched in September 2025, marks Fulmer’s first foray back to the internet since his 2022 cheating scandal with employee Alexandria Herring. Fulmer, who was known as the “wife guy” on his original “Try Guys” podcast, had been married for 10 years before news broke in September 2022 that he was unfaithful.
“Family should have always been my priority, but I lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship,” the internet personality wrote in a statement shared via X at the time. “I’m sorry for any pain that my actions may have caused to the guys and the fans, but most of all to [my wife] Ariel. The only thing that matters right now is my marriage and my children, and that’s where I am going to focus my attention.”
Ariel’s appearance on the podcast sparked backlash from fans, many of whom accused Ned of taking advantage of a painful situation and Ariel’s own stake in the new podcast to make it successful.
“She’s a stakeholder in the ‘Rock Bottom’ podcast and this new channel, and she wants it to be successful,” Ned said of his ex Ariel’s involvement in the podcast, explaining that it was actually her idea. “So that was part of the reason why in terms of having that conversation we did it together rather than on any other platform. We knew it would draw a lot of attention and I know that some of you have only seen 15-second clips of me putting my foot in my mouth, but I hope for those that watched the full hour that you took something away from it.”
Ned reiterated that clips on TikTok are “one small snippet of an hour-long conversation of three years of trying to work through this,” and detailed the “intensive program of therapy, group therapy, and work” he has embarked on since the scandal came to light.
“This involved a lot of facing rationalizations, denials, minimizations, all of these mental clouds that help you continue behavior that you know is hurtful, and you still do it anyways,” he explained. “So it let me face the truth and acknowledge in no uncertain terms that I cheated on my wife with an employee of my business, and it caused her immense pain and shattered our marriage and also caused a lot of pain to a lot of other people. Those were my selfish actions and my choices.”
The podcast host emphasized that he has spent time seeking to “understand the patterns of behavior that led to this” and that this included “internal family systems and parts work” as well as a 12-step program.
“In terms of my relationship with Ariel, it started as a therapeutic separation and then from there I prepared a disclosure document that answered all of her questions and volunteered for a lie detector test to then, in a therapeutic setting, convey that information to her so that we could build something new on the same page of knowing exactly everything that happened. This is a well-known therapeutic technique for people trying to recover from betrayal trauma,” he continued. “Speaking of betrayal trauma, that is a phrase that I learned. The idea of betrayal trauma and integrity abuse and these ways that are systems and language for understanding the pain and why keeping secrets like that, especially of a sexual nature, can be so damaging to your partnership. So those were things that I learned about and continued to practice on a daily basis when it comes to saying what I mean and doing what I say and when I make a mistake immediately correcting it to … keep my sense of integrity intact.”
Ned also said he and Ariel have been working through this process for two years, and that he will continue to do the necessary work. He also asked viewers to refrain from the impulse to “just judge me off of one clip of me talking about society, which obviously was not the best response to that situation” but added that if they must, “you are welcome to do that.”
“Moving forward, I really believe in the mission of the ‘Rock Bottom’ podcast to foster conversations with empathy and curiosity,” he added toward the end of the video. “It stems from a lot of that group therapy work, seeing how much someone sharing how they’re addressing the wreckage in their life that they caused, and how they’re overcoming a challenge can really be a catalyst for healing.”
In the first episode of the “Rock Bottom” podcast, Ariel shared that she has not forgiven Ned and will not, and also that while the pair are coparents to their children (they share sons Wesley and Finn), they are no longer romantically involved with one another.
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