90 Day Fiance star Fernanda Flores has finally revealed her side of her break-up with Jonathan Rivera and made several shocking allegations against him, including claims that he was mentally, verbally and physically abusive to her during their marriage.
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"I'm doing this video to clarify some things about my split... after six months, I'm finally ready," Fernanda explained in the beginning of the video.
"I was concentrating on myself and now I'm in such a better place to let you know the truth. I didn't want to sell my part of the story to any network because I'm not looking for attention [nor] money."
According to Fernanda, the couple's problems traced back to an agreement they made before Fernanda she even agreed to come to America: that they would only live in Lumberton, NC for a year and then move to Chicago, where Jonathan's family lives and where the sister and parents of her father, an American citizen who currently lives in Houston, also reside.
"I told him if I'm going to move [to America], I want the opportunity to be close to my grandparents and he told me, 'Well, I can not move right now right away, but we can live in North Carolina for a year [to] save enough money so then we can move to Chicago,'" she said.
"And I said, Okay, great, that's a deal. We had a deal, that's what he promised me."
Fernanda also claimed it was Jonathan's idea that they appear on 90 Day Fiance, and that she was unsure whether it would be a wise decision to have cameras chronicling their relationship but Jonathan convinced her it would be good for them -- and especially his real-estate agent business.
"As I was planning my arrival to North Carolina, he came to me with another idea. He told me he had spoken with a producer of a TV show," she said. "I [had] never heard about the show before, I had no idea of any reality TV," she said.
"I wasn't 100% sure to doing it, and I told Jonny, 'I don't know if it's going to be a good idea to have cameras on the whole process and he came like, 'Look, it's going to be good, it's going to be good for my business, it's going to be good for you too."
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According to Fernanda, she then began noticing some red-flags after she arrived in America in February 2018.
RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE' COUPLES NOW"I was [naive about] how someone can show you a completely different person than who they are. And that's exactly what happened with my ex. I started to realize a lot of things," she said.
"I started to realize he wasn't close with his family at all, he wasn't close with his friends [either]. He had his friends, but it wasn't like real friends. And I really think his priorities wasn't even family relationships. All his life was just work and money... I [also] realized that he likes to drink way too much. And I also realized that he did not have my best interests in mind."
And according to Fernanda, Jonathan also didn't really seem to be interested in moving to Chicago or attempting to save any money for them to be able to move in a year as they had agreed.
"You have to have a plan and he wasn't really on board. He wasn't careful with money at all. He [makes] good money, but spends [and lives] paycheck to paycheck," she said.
"I realized... we have to take care of our money, have a budget -- because we also want to move to Chicago [and] this is not gonna happen if we don't save money, we don't have any savings. He didn't really care, he didn't want a plan, he didn't want to listen to me."
Fernanda also claimed the women's thong 90 Day Fiance's sixth season showed her finding in Jonathan's bedroom furniture the first day she arrived in North Carolina wasn't the only holdover she found from Jonathan's prior bachelor lifestyle.
"That same [first] week I found a lot of stuff, not just underwear. Sex toys. Pictures. Movies," she said. "It's like, 'Dude, you're supposed to have left your past behind and started fresh with me.'"
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However, Fernanda said the loss of her independence impacted her self-esteem and, combined with isolation she experienced, caused her to begin suffering from depression as the months passed and Jonathan's behavior changed.
"After being an independent woman in Mexico with so many responsibilities -- with a busy life, with friends, with family, taking care of my brother and sister, cooking, cleaning, going to class, going to the gym, working -- [I went to] literally depending on this man, 100 percent. Without the right to say anything," she said.
"I was in a really abusive relationship."
"He would be like, 'You know what, just shut up' -- He would just drink and smoke," she elaborated. "And I became to be this woman... relying on a man to give me everything, draining my self-confidence. And that was mental abuse."
The YouTube video also included footage from a separate interview with Catherine, a Lumberton resident Fernanda met at a local gym in May 2018 and became friends with.
"She told me she had been trying to tell Jonathan, 'I need help, I need to go to therapy. I'm depressed, I don't want to get out of bed,'" Catherine said. "And he really wasn't taking that seriously."
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Fernanda's depression grew so bad that Catherine said she considered harming herself.
"She said one day or night she was there by herself which was like all the time and she was about to get in the shower and she had the thought of taking a razor and cutting her wrist," Catherine said.
As her depression got worse, Fernanda said she also stopped eating and began losing weight.
"After months of not feeling myself, I started to feel worse and worse every day," she said. "I wasn't hungry, I didn't want to eat. I had no motivation to do anything. I felt this feeling of sadness all the time. I wasn't talking to anyone. I wasn't me, I was just sad all the time, I had this feeling of crying."
According to Fernanda, the "mental abuse became to be verbal abuse."
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Fernanda said she told Jonathan she "needed to go to therapy" and "needed help," but her pleas fell on deaf ears.
"[He said], 'I don't know how to help you help yourself Fernanda,'" she claimed.
"As the time went by and I explained to him every day how I was feeling and he wouldn't do anything to help me or he would not be showing interest in what was going on with me, I realized that I wasn't going to find the help that I needed there."
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Fernanda claimed things only got worse once 90 Day Fiance's sixth season premiered on TLC in October 2018 and Jonathan became focused on the social-media attention he was receiving from his followers, especially other women.
"Jonathan got attention from a lot of people on social media [and] would be talking to girls. He would be in touch with 'his fans,'" she said.
"The show just aired and he was already lost. All he cared about was social media. How many followers that he had, comments, pictures, likes... what people were commenting about him, what people were saying about him."
Fernanda said Jonathan's abuse then also turned physical.
"Even all that wasn't the worst part. There were a couple of times when Jonathan put his hands on me," she claimed.
According to Fernanda and her friend Catherine, the first incident occurred when the couple drove to Raleigh, NC -- which is about a hundred miles from Lumberton -- to attend a party for a friend of Catherine's.
Jonathan allegedly went for a walk down the street to smoke or talk to another guy at one point, and a friend of Catherine's that spoke Spanish began taking to Fernanda in Spanish.
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"He was just... knew she was from Mexico so he was just trying to make conversation... [she was just] where hardly anybody spoke Spanish so it was nice talking to someone in her language, they were just chatting back and forth, it was a five-minute conversation."
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However, Jonathan allegedly wasn't happy when he returned and saw Fernanda talking to the guy and got so upset that he decided to change their prior plans to spend the night at a Raleigh hotel and instead make the long drive home to Lumberton despite his drunken condition.
"Jonathan was pissed, yelling at me, calling me 'bitch,'" Fernanda claimed. "He would be so drunk, and high, and I don't know what else, and he what be just really aggressive to me... I shouldn't have been fighting with a drunk man, that was my mistake."
Fernanda said she tried to refuse to get in the car with Jonathan since he was drunk, resulting in him physically pulling her into the car.
"I didn't want to get in the car with him and he take me -- he take my arm and he bring me into the car," she said. "I was so scared, I was crying and afraid for my life."
According to Fernanda, she begged Jonathan to stop the car and at least let her drive since he was so drunk, but instead he then pushed her face out the passenger window. "It hurt me really bad... but I wasn't pushing him back I was just [quiet]."
"I was asking to God, to please make a cop stop us," she said. "He was just pissed and driving so fast and yelling, 'Shouldn't have happened!'"
The couple managed to return home safely, however Jonathan allegedly denied the entire incident ever happened the next day.
"The next day, he [acted] like nothing happened, and I would be like, 'Are you serious? Like this is what you did.' And he would be like, 'No, I did nothing man -- Fernanda, I was drunk, I don't even remember what you're talking about, no. I just drive home because, yeah, I don't want to stay,'" Fernanda claimed.
"He [tried] and make the situation look like nothing. And I [flipped] out, 'Dude, you put your hands on me -- and you never did that before, and you're not going to do it again, it's not okay."
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Fernanda said she then called her father and he urged her to come stay with him.
"I was just shocked, and I left the house because I wanted to talk to my Dad. I told me Dad everything that happened, and my Dad said 'You're coming to Houston with me,'" she said.
"And I told Jonathan, that like 'You're not understanding what you did and I'm gonna leave so you can think [about] what you did because it's not okay and I'm not going to let that happen again.'"
However, Jonathan then allegedly convinced Fernanda not to leave and promised her he would change.
"He [was] so mad and sad and he cried and begged me, 'Please don't leave, please don't leave.' I was just drunk, I'm not going to get that drunk again. I'm so sorry, I promise you,'" she said.
Fernanda claimed Jonathan's behavior didn't really change that much afterward, however she stopped telling her family and friends what was going on because she felt she would be "a fool" to tell people if she wasn't going to "have the balls" to leave.
"I kept everything to me, everything to me," she lamented.
Fernanda said Jonathan's behavior and lack of concern for her eventually "got normal to me" and reached the point where she even told Jonathan she felt like she should just back to Mexico sometimes.
However, she claimed Jonathan's first reaction was that would be something 90 Day Fiance's producers would want to film.
"And I'm like, 'Are you serious, I'm telling you how I'm feeling Jonny, this is serious. This is not about [the] show, this is how I'm feeling -- that I'm so sad, that I'm not okay, that I need help,'" she said.
"And he would be thinking just about the freaking show, or about his fame, or about his money. He wouldn't care sh-t about me!"
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One day, Fernanda claimed she found a recently-opened condom wrapper in Jonathan's office. The discovery led to a fight that allegedly resulted in the second incident of physical abuse.
"I literally flipped out! I yelled at him and I said, 'What the f-ck is this?' and I literally was just yelling and was so mad," she said. "He reaction was to grab me from the neck and push me into the wall [and shout] 'That's not mine, you're crazy!'"
Fernanda said that was the point where she decided enough was enough.
"I remember at that point I said, 'This is enough. This is enough. What [am] I doing here?' Part of me stayed there because [I believed] it was worth it, that things were going to change. To stay positive. But when things weren't like -- no, there was no intention to help me, to support -- it was just nothing left. And then plus, him cheating on me?" she said.
"That was my future -- stay at home 24/7, waiting for a man that is working all the time, that doesn't care about you, that is cheating on you, and is treating you bad, and is abusing you?"
"At that point, I didn't care what Jonathan was thinking or saying, I just knew that I wanted to be with me family and be safe, ask for help, and be myself again."
However, for reasons that remained unexplained in her video, Fernanda apparently didn't leave Jonathan right away.
Instead, she apparently decided to stay with him until they followed through on their previous plans to fly to Chicago to spend Christmas with both their families.
That decision apparently led to the pre-Christmas incident in which 90 Day Fiance: What Now?'s recently-released season showed Jonathan claiming the couple split after they attended a Christmas party at the home of his neighbor the night before Fernanda and Jonathan were scheduled to fly to Chicago for the holidays.
"At my friend's Christmas party [before Christmas], there were several times Fernanda was trying to embarrass me in front of my friends. She even went as far as flirting with another guy to get my attention," Jonathan said on 90 Day Fiance: What Now?.
"I just wasn't having it. I went back home and she shows up an hour-and-a-half later, and she is packing some of her things. She goes, 'You're not my husband; I regret ever meeting you.'"
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An on-screen graphic shown during 90 Day Fiance: What Now? had stated, "Fernanda chose not to share her side of the story about the end of their relationship."
However, according to Fernanda and her friend Catherine, none of Jonathan's What Now? claims are true.
"Jonathan is talking about the night before I left, the Christmas party of his friend... right across the street. And he's saying that the night ended with him [leaving] the house because he couldn't fight with me anymore. It's a bunch of lies," Fernanda said in her YouTube video.
"The night ended with my friend Catherine begging me to go home with her because she was afraid of Jonathan putting his hands of me again that night."
In the video, Catherine said Jonathan had gotten drunk at the party and refused Fernanda's prior attempts to get him to leave the party and go home with her -- even after Fernanda called him from outside the friend's house and told him she was ready to leave the party and go home.
"She said 'Catherine, will you come outside with me?' and I said sure, and she called him on her phone. And she had him on speakerphone and she was crying and she said, 'Jonathan, I'm ready to go home, I want to go home. Will you please come home?' And he said, 'No, I'm staying at this party,'" Catherine said.
"And she was like, 'Jonathan, I'm your wife, I need you, please come home -- like let's talk, we're about to leave tomorrow -- please just come home.' And he said, 'No,' and he just hung up the phone."
Catherine said she then went back into the house and found Jonathan upstairs and told him he needed to go home with his wife, but he still didn't leave.
But in the process, Catherine ended up telling two other girls that overheard the conversation and knew Jonathan what was going on, and they remarked "that sounded like Jonathan."
Fernanda had allegedly already returned to Jonathan's house on her own, so Catherine walked over and kept her company until Jonathan finally came home later. However, Catherine then became concerned Jonathan was going to harm Fernanda.
"She was in the house crying, and he walks in the door, and he had this look on his face -- it scared me. Like I was scared to leave her there. And I was like, 'Well if you are leaving for Chicago tomorrow, please come stay at my house tonight.' Because I was scared he was going to put his hands of her," Catherine said in the video.
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The next morning, Fernanda allegedly broke down on Catherine's couch and told her everything that had been happening the last few months.
"We probably talked for two hours," Catherine said "[It] was stuff I had never heard until [this] point."
When the couple arrived in Chicago, Fernanda said she ran to her father and hugged her aunt and Dad and broke down crying.
"My dad was like, 'What's going on? What's wrong? Why are you crying?'" Fernanda said. "He saw me and he saw me so skinny, and he looked at me and said, 'Que Paso?'"
Jonathan then allegedly came walking up behind her and told Fernanda's father that he didn't know what was going on with her and was going to go to his mother's house.
"[He said,] 'Oh Senor, I'm so sorry, I don't know what's going on with Fernanda," Fernanda claimed in her video.
"'She doesn't feel that good, she wants to be with you, but I don't know how to help her, please just let me. I'm going to go to my mom's house and please just call me if she needs anything and I will be there for her,' blah, blah, blah.
After they left the airport, Fernanda said she told her father everything and Jonathan spent the night documenting his night of partying with his Chicago friends on social media.
"My Dad asked me to go to Houston with him," she said, explaining her aunt and grandparents that lived in Chicago didn't have the ability to help Fernanda at the time. "My Dad ended up telling me, 'You're coming to Houston with me.'"
Two days later, Fernanda claimed Jonathan reported her phone stolen and canceled her bank card. "He was doing that to control me," she said.
Fernanda said she then began seeing a therapist in Houston and told the therapist she still loved Jonathan and wanted to save her marriage, so the therapist suggested Jonathan call her to learn about Fernanda's condition and potentially participate in future sessions.
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Instead, Fernanda now claims Jonathan was already contacting other women online.
"He didn't care what was going on with me at all. How is he gonna care if at the time he was already talking to a lot of other girls?" she said.
"His attention was [on] other girls. I have conversations of him with other women. Those women spent me those conversations and they are actually sexual conversations that he was having with them at the time I was going through therapy.
After two weeks in Houston, Fernanda said she decided to fly to Chicago for a face-to-face conversation with Jonathan.
In addition to discussing where their relationship stood, Fernanda said she wanted to also ask Jonathan about the "lies" he had been saying on social media since they split in Chicago. (According to Fernanda, she had left social media at her therapist's recommendation when she began treatment).
Jonathan had announced the couple's split in an Instagram posting that showed him celebrating New Year's Eve with his month.
"[Fernanda is] in Houston. She wanted to pursue a modeling career in Chicago. Decided to leave and realized she couldn't do it on her own. She said MANY things you can't take back that I won't mention, you'll have to trust me when I tell you," he wrote at the time.
Jonathan had also claimed Fernanda "decided to leave" and "left me on the airplane in Chicago among many other things."
"I decided to spend the rest of the time with my family," he wrote. "When she realized her lifestyle was going to be different she wanted to apologize and asked me to forgive her. I haven't... She missed me after she decided to leave."
"She left and then quickly had a change of heart. I decided I didn't want someone who was so quick to give up on everything I worked so hard to provide. Plain and simple," he wrote.
In her YouTube video, Fernanda claimed Jonathan's answers to her questions had no sense.
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According to Fernanda, Jonathan then told her he didn't want to be married anymore.
"[He said,] 'This time that you were gone, I realized that I'm better by myself and I'm not ready to be married.' And my answer was, 'Well, too late, you're already married,'" she said, adding that he then tried to change the conversation to making arrangements for her to return to Mexico as soon as possible.
Fernanda closed her video by insisting she would not be talking about her relationship with Jonathan again.
"This is my truth. This is what happened. And this is the first and the last time that I will talk about it," she said.
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About The Author: Steven Rogers
