The Flip or Flop stars became famous when they landed their HGTV show, but Christina Anstead and Tarek El Moussa started making headlines when they suddenly split in 2016. Both halves of the couple have since moved on — Christina married and then split from estranged husband Ant Anstead while Tarek is now engaged to Selling Sunset star Heather Rae Young — but what went wrong in the first place? Rumors began flying about the famous family as insiders reported allegations of inappropriate relationships and secret text messages. Now, we’re breaking it all down.

Back in the day, the TV stars took everyone by surprise when they broke up, and that included the stars’ families. “The divorce was filed in January by Tarek and I responded to the filing last week,” the soon-to-be mom of three told Good Housekeeping in August 2017. “It came as a shock to 99.9 percent of people, including my parents,” she said. “I wasn’t very vocal with them about some of the issues that Tarek and I were having, so all of the sudden it’s like, bam — I’ve moved out, I’m living at my nanny’s house.”

In the divorce paperwork, the couple cited “irreconcilable differences,” but it may have been a little more complicated than that. Insiders exclusively told In Touch that Christina had been texting someone else, a contractor named Gary Anderson they’d hired in 2015 that she later went on to date. “Christina grew close to Gary,” the source said. “Tarek was suspicious that she was getting involved with someone but had no concrete evidence.” Though the couple later denied it, insisting, “Neither of us was involved in a romantic relationship with any third party prior to our separation, or believes the other was,” the rumors continued to swirl.

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Tarek himself cited a lack of communication as one of their major problems. “I feel like if we had better communication, we would have had a better relationship,” he said on The Doctors in March 2017. “I think as time went on, you get busier and busier. It was like overnight: businesses, TV, all these things happened overnight, then the cancer and the back surgery. It just kind of started pushing us apart from each other.”

After seven years of marriage, their divorce was finalized in January 2018. According to paperwork obtained by The Orange County Register, the couple agreed to not make “any disparaging or derogatory remarks” about each other in front of their kids, and they seem to be on good terms now. They’ve continued filming Flip or Flop and seem to have fun together on most projects.

Christina even wished her ex a happy Father’s Day in 2019, writing, “Taylor and Brayden love and adore [you].” They’ve also learned how to coparent effectively, sharing milestones like their kids losing their baby teeth. “Two teeth fell out in my house and one tooth fell out at Tarek’s,” she told Life & Style. “It’s nice we got to take turns being the tooth fairy!”

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