By: Dove
In Part One of our interview with Jaime Primak Sullivan, the vivacious PR maven-turned-reality star had a lot of great advice about motherhood in the Parent Trap. Anyone who watches Jaime’s show Jersey Belle on Bravo TV (we are hoping for a second season!) knows that she uprooted her busy life in New Jersey to create a life with the man of her dreams… all the way in rural Alabama.
Does Jaime feel she had to sacrifice much to make the relationship work? When did she know it was time to make the move? In Part Two of this UrbLife.com exclusive, Jaime gets all the way real as she explains how her long-distance love turned into a successful marriage.
What were some of the sacrifices you made to have a long distance relationship, or do you feel that you sacrificed at all?
Jaime: I’ve sacrificed my physical self. When you’re in a long distance relationship you’re not getting laid. Your needs are not being met, your relationship is a testament of true love and hard work and understand and teaching. When you’re in a relationship with someone who lives two doors down, you could cuddle up o the couch and watch Real Housewives wherever. You can go to a concert together. You can say, “you know, I don’t feel like cooking lets go out for Chinese”.
When you’re in a long distance relationship, you come home alone. That’s a choice you make every day, to come home alone. When you’re a publicist you’re going to award shows and you’re experiencing all of these things alone. There’s nobody to kiss you good night, and you’re not having sex. I’m not ashamed to say that’s a thing. Michael and I were in a long distance relationship for a year. We saw each other once a month. That sucks, I’m not gonna lie. He was worth it, but I’m not saying it was easy.
How do you make the decision to uproot your life? At what point did you know that you love this person so much that you would change your life?
Jaime: It was really when I realized that he had become, in the most organic way, the first person I thought about when I woke up and the last person when I went to bed. For me, who’s a cheater by nature…I’m not miss monogamy; “oh, I need a man and need to be with just one person for the rest of my life.” Let me tell you something. If you eat a Ritz, like Eddie Murphy says, that shit’s gonna be so good. If you eat a Ritz for like 10 years you’re gonna be like, “damn this taste like a fucking saltine” and that’s the truth.
I realized that if I was gonna be in the trenches with anybody, nobody in the world made me feel safer than Michael. And making me feel safe for somebody else is hard, because I’m so independent and he just brought a safeness and security to my life that was so organic.
I found myself waking up in the morning like, “Oh I hope he slept well, I wonder if he’s at the gym…”, little things. Before I would go to bed, I would talk to him and say goodnight and I would watch TV. At work or whatever I was doing, I would find myself smiling. I was still thinking about him, and I knew that even if I wasn’t in love with him, I would still want to be with him.
Now that you’re married and have three beautiful children, how do you keep the flame alive?
Jaime: Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes I feel that we’re two ships passing in the night. Sometimes I get scared that all we really are is just friends, and it terrifies me. Sometimes I feel so far away from him that the thoughts of cheating come more often than I care to admit. Then we have a night together, one of those nights where you feel young again and you forget that you have bills to pay and three sleeping babies, and hundreds of emails that have gone unanswered, and invoices that haven’t been paid and whatever else.
You wake up in the morning and coffee tastes better, you feel sexier, you just know. There’s that thing that I can only explain if you’ve experienced it. It’s that thing between two people who are truly meant to be, where one night can undo the distance. That’s how I know it works.
How do I keep the flame? One thing I do, I know this sounds like now we’re doing Fifty Shades of Grey but… [laughs]. Sometimes when the kids go to bed and Michael and I need to talk about something… and it doesn’t have to be serious, it just means that we need 10 minutes of uninterrupted time to talk. He’ll sit in the chair and I’ll straddle him, and we’ll talk face to face. Sometimes that’s the most intimacy we’ll have all week, but it forces us to pay attention to each other.
When you’re looking into your golden years and retirement, what do you envision for yourself? What do you see as the perfect retirement life for you and your family?
Jaime: God willing, by the time I retire all of my children will be moving towards living their own lives and hopefully all healthy and happy and rocking in whatever they choose to do for themselves. Michael and I, my hope is that our relationship is as grounded and secure as it is now. I hope that I am writing. I write films and I love it more than anything professionally. I’ve been so blessed that all of the projects that I have take out have sold. I hope that I have a life that is secure and comfortable enough to allow me to write as a second coming in my career.
Follow Jaime at Twitter.com/JaimePrimak, Instagram.com/JaimePSullivan and Facebook.com/JaimePrimakSullivan
