Getty/Handout
If you watched Basketball Wives, you’re familiar with the marriage struggles Brandi and Jason Maxiell have been through. When the couple appeared on the VH1 reality show, Brandi talked about her husband cheating on her but no one knew the extent of Jason’s philandering until the couple aired out all of their business with life coach Iyanla Vanzant recently, not even Brandi.
The pair will appear on Saturday night’s episode of Iyanla: Fix My Life, and in one of many upsetting scenes, Jason cops to cheating on Brandi throughout their entire 17-year relationship. And while that may be a fact Brandi was aware of, what she didn’t know is that Jason has slept with more than 50 different women, and that’s just since they walked down the aisle in 2010. The grand total of women Jason has slept with is actually 341.
In the clip below, Brandi is noticeably shaken up by the revelation of 50 women, particularly since she thought that number was closer to eight women — a figure Iyanla points out she shouldn’t be okay with either. And though Jason sat their emotionless as his wife held back tears, in a one-on-one conversation with Iyanla later, the 35-year-old breaks down himself as he recognizes the generational pattern of dysfunction among men in his family.
In the clip, Jason talks about providing being his definition of love but, ironically, he also points out how he saw his grandfather and other men around him break down when the women in their lives got sick. When Brandi was just 24 year’s old she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and while Jason may have stood by her side throughout the diagnosis and treatment, he still continued seeing other women on the side.
But it’s not just Jason whom Iyanla posed hard questions too. She also asked Brandi why she would stay with a man with such reckless disregard for their union. Brandi quickly answers it’s because she said “I do,” but what’s uncovered is that she has a history of witnessing abuse in a marriage and normalizing said behavior. And its that dysfunction Iyanla works to unpack with her in the clip below.
The “Basketball Lies” episode of Iyanla: Fix My Life airs Saturday at 9 pm on OWN. Will you tune in?
