The tough weight loss expert Dr. Eva Orsmond and her 27-year-old husband Wyatt Orsmond are getting divorced. The marriage ended irrevocably as she watched the new series Dr. were filming Eva’s Great Escape RTE television.
The couple, who have two adult sons, split temporarily in 2016 before reconciling in 2018. Now, the Finnish-born TV personality reveals that they are breaking up for good, but friends and business associates are staying at Portugal’s Solar Alvura Health Hotel, which they’ve renovated as part of the new series.
In the first episode, viewers will see Wyatt, an engineer from South Africa, appear annoyed as Dr. Eve is in tears. In one scene, she recalls the first time she walked into the hotel with her husband and said to him, “I want it to be mine.”
But after the couple put $3 million into the project, she said she realized, “It’s all I’ve ever wanted…and I actually think I’m the saddest woman in the world.”
Sitting in the sun outside the Dylan Hotel in Dublin, she talks about the decision to divorce: “It was years of trying. We tried to go back, we thought this project would help.
“But when the kids grow up and move out of the house, you have more time to think and then you realize that you don’t really enjoy your time together anymore and prefer to do other things.”
Doctor Eva Orsmond. Photo by Steve Humphreys
The former medical advisor on Operation Transformation was, she says, “always dreaming about the hotel – and I get it”. But it came at a personal cost. Cracks started to form due to a lack of shared interests outside of work and a missing spark.
“It would be nice to have that romantic side and have flowers and dinners. I thought we would sit around the pool in the evening with a glass of champagne after we had worked so hard all day. And then that happens and you actually realize that ‘it’ isn’t there.”
‘It’ means love? “I have thought about that myself. Because if I said I don’t love him, I’d be wrong, because he’s been my life for 27 years. He is the father of my children, but is that love? I don’t think I love him the way a woman should love a man.
“If I’m being really blunt, there must be a situation where you actually can’t wait to turn off the lights and get into the same bed and you really want to cuddle them. I don’t just mean sex – but hug them too. To have that feeling that you really can’t wait to put your arms around them.
“I don’t know if that feeling ultimately applies to everyone. But it’s definitely gone for me. I’m hopeful that I’ll meet someone else and feel like I’m on top of the world.
“I hope and I wish – and I bring it out to the universe, like the law of attraction – that I’m going to find great love and meet a great man. I just think I deserve this and I’m going to get it. But of course these are things you can’t buy, you can’t go to Brown Thomas and say ‘give me $1,000 in love’.
“You can be the poorest person in the world, but when you have love, you have everything. We only have one life.”
Eva and Wyatt have remained friends, something their sons have told her are proud of. She says she is entering what she believes to be the best years of a woman’s life “when the peak years are over, the kids have grown, you have a little more money in your pocket. Why spend that in a flat relationship when the spark is gone?
“You want to feel, ‘well, I really want to go to the hairdresser and get dressed. I want to go to a lingerie store and I want to make sure I’m skinny and look my best’. I kind of want that feeling. I’m telling you I’m still getting it. Maybe I’m looking too much, but I’ll at least give it a chance.”
Has Wyatt met anyone else? “You need to talk to Wyatt about that. I’m not speaking on his behalf.” Wyatt could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, the hotel is open and has a “Marrakesh” atmosphere with a yoga tent and spa treatment rooms. dr. Eva says it is a place where people can go for a “time out” from the demands of life.
“Often I felt like I wanted to take five days to get away from the family and take time for myself. I don’t know if I exhausted myself, maybe I was expecting too much from the relationship because I wasn’t taking care of myself and giving myself those other things.
“Here we offer people a place to relax, eat healthy, read books and put themselves first.”
Dr Eva’s Great Escape is on RTÉ One on Monday 8th August