If Valerie Bertinelli can be quiet with her significant other, she’s content!
In a clip from The Drew Barrymore Show the celebrity chef — a recurring lifestyle expert on the daytime program — posted on Instagram on Tuesday, March 11, she reacted to a New York Post article about how sitting in silence with a partner may be a sign of emotional intimacy.
Bertinelli, 64, says that according to the Post story, which cites a recent study, the secret to a secure, healthy relationship isn’t “grand romantic gestures or texting back within five seconds — it’s shutting up altogether.”
“A new study says couples who can sit in total, comfy silence without it getting weird are basically soulmates,” the Valerie’s Home Cooking star continued. “So this isn’t where you’re giving your partner the cold shoulder-silent treatment. This is where you can sit together, do the crossword puzzles and they can read or you can read and you’re just in a room together in silence.”
Her opinion on couple quiet time, as described? “Oh, my God, that’s heaven!”
After declaring her support for the study’s findings, Drew Barrymore Show cohost Ross Mathews hesitantly asked, “Is it heaven?” and both Bertinelli and guest Melissa Peterman responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
Mathews, 45, then asked the women if they have “achieved this kind of relationship,” and the Valerie’s Home Cooking star did not answer — but Peterman did.
Talking about husband John Brady, the Reba actress, 53, explained, “I will tell you, 26 years [of marriage], I love not talking to him. It’s OK to be silent. We don’t have to talk every moment.”
On Instagram, one user weighed in Bertinelli’s longing for the kind of partnership that the Post article — and Peterman — is describing, commenting on a clip of the Drew Barrymore Show moment, “I can’t imagine Valerie being quiet for a minute.”
“Lol you’d be surprised,” the Food Network alum wrote in response.
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Bertinelli’s yearning for a relationship where comfortable silence reigns supreme comes shortly after she publicly opened up about her last relationship for the first time, months after it ended.
On Monday, March 3, the cookbook author broke her silence about her break-up with ex-boyfriend Mike Goodnough, whom she dated for 10 months before sources confirmed the pair’s split last November, in an Instagram tribute to the writer.
In the tribute, she shared a lengthy message to Goodnough, stating that she is “irreversibly changed by him for the better” and praising his writing — even encouraging her followers to subscribe to his Substack.
“I feel so lucky to have gotten to know him, and to really see him and soak up his insights,” Bertinelli wrote in part, later ending the message, “Thank you, Mike, we may no longer be a couple, but you’ll always hold a very special place in my heart. Love you. ♥️.”
The chef also did some relationship reflection in February, stating in a since-deleted Instagram post that she “fumbled the last true good man I met.”
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