'Mate Poaching' Is Behind Our Obsession With The 'Vanderpump Rules' Drama
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In its 10 seasons, Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules” has documented many chaotic love triangles. Still, none of those affairs have been quite as tawdry or attention-grabbing as the the one that took the internet by storm this past weekend: The New York Times wrote an explainer on it! Chrissy Teigen had “20 different chats going [on]” about it!
For the unfamiliar, the man at the heart of the scandal is Tom Sandoval ― a bartender-turned-bar owner-turned-wannabe professional karaoke singer ― who’s been on the show from the beginning.
“Vanderpump Rules” is a glossy “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” spinoff that chronicles the daily goings-on (but mostly highly dramatic nightly goings-on) of a millennial group of work friends.
Most of the cast work as bartenders or waiters at SUR (that’s short for Sexy Unique Restaurant, we kid you not) and Pump, two glitzy West Hollywood restaurants owned by Lisa Vanderpump of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
Sandoval has been dating co-star Ariana Madix for nine years ― a virtual millennium by reality star standards ― and the pair seemed relatively stable and happy in that time.
But this weekend, TMZ and assorted Bravo fan accounts got wind that Sandoval and Madix had broken up because he has allegedly been having an affair with Raquel Leviss, another one of his co-stars and Madix’s good friend.
According to People, the alleged affair between Sandoval, 39, and Leviss, 28, has been going on for six months. Quite a Scandoval!
“They had been having problems for a while, but this was the final straw for Ariana,” a source close to the reality star told People. “[Madix] put up with a lot over the years, but she won’t sit back and be disrespected this way.”
On Tuesday night, Sandoval issued a public apology to Madix, 37. Leviss, the third party in this triangle, also issued a statement on Wednesday, apologizing to Madix and claiming she had patterns of “codependency” and love “addiction.”
This Bravo story taps into a very human nightmare — that your sanctuary isn’t safe.Tracy Schorn, author of “Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life — The Chump Lady’s Survival Guide"
The juiciest, most disarming element of this whole Bravo scandal is the fact that all parties involved were such close friends; Leviss leaned on Madix’s shoulder after breaking off her engagement with another co-star and co-worker.
In an interview with E! News in July 2022 — just around the time when People’s sources say Leviss and Sandoval started hooking up — Leviss said that Sandoval was fast becoming “one of [her] best friends lately.” Just last week, the former beauty pageant contestant gushed about their friendship on a podcast.
There’s a more of a psychological reason we’re glued to this mess, though: There was “mate poaching” involved here, and to make matters worse, it was mate poaching among friends.
What’s “mate poaching”?
According to evolutionary psychology, the social phenomenon of mate poaching occurs when someone tries to form a romantic or sexual relationship with a person who is already in a romantic relationship with someone else. It could be just a one-time hookup that the poacher’s after, or it may be a long-term relationship.
Other high-profile examples of mate poaching include Shania Twain’s former bestie Marie-Anne Thiebaud hooking up with (and then marrying) Twain’s then-husband, producer Mutt Lange, and the classic case of Elizabeth Taylorpoaching good friend Debbie Reynolds’ husband, Eddie Fisher.
Stories like this stir us up because they’re transgressive and socially frowned upon, but also because they tap into our worst fears about our close relationships, said Tracy Schorn, a writer who runs the popular advice site Chumplady.com and the author of “Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life — The Chump Lady’s Survival Guide.”
“This Bravo story taps into a very human nightmare — that your sanctuary isn’t safe. That those you’re most intimate with — a best friend, a partner — could betray you,” Schorn told HuffPost.
Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix at the Season 10 "Vanderpump Rules" premiere in February. Pictured to the right, co-star and alleged affair partner Raquel Leviss at the premiere.
In this scenario, the “poacher” may go after someone precisely because they’re partnered, for the challenge. But the responsibility also lies with the person who strayed in their committed relationship and allowed themselves to be poached.
“If they had basic boundaries and decency, they wouldn’t be susceptible,” Schorn said.
What’s really going on, she said, is that the poacher and the poached are in a “conspiracy of abuse.”
“They need the triangle, the unwitting chump, to give their affair the frisson of danger,” she said. “And that’s what people are reacting to — the horror of being conspired against.”
For what it’s worth, Schorn thinks that the phrase “mate poaching” is a bit of a misnomer.
“There are just people with lousy character who find each other,” she said. “It’s very easy to blame the wily predator — she seduced him! he’s a rake! — but people have agency. They cheat because they want to cheat. It works for them. That’s a matter of character.”
However you want to describe it, the reasons people choose to date someone who’s already involved with another are complicated and varied.
But for someone struggling with envy or competitive impulses and fragile self-esteem, wresting a partner away from someone might feel like a victory, said Stephanie Newman, a clinical psychologist and adjunct faculty at Columbia University.
“As a psychologist, I would encourage someone feeling down, less than or damaged to look inward and understand how to go forward in other ways,” Newman told HuffPost. “In my experience, the ‘high’ people get from poaching does not last. It is not a permanent solution to mood or esteem problems.”
As for this current Bravo drama, it’s worth noting that earlier in this current season, Lisa Vanderpump had an impromptu heart-to-heart with Leviss where she told the younger woman that she might be spiraling.
“You lost a little bit of direction since you broke off the engagement,” Vanderpump said.
A teary Leviss admitted, “I was in love with James, and I feel like he threw that away so easily. And he just found somebody to replace me and that hurts.” (Her ex, James Kennedy, is dating someone seriously.)
In May, Raquel Leviss and Ariana Madix were pictured attending a performance of Tom Sandoval's band at The Venice West in Venice, California. (The man in the middle isn't Sandoval; it's a friend of the cast, Jesse Montana.)
Doing the math on mate poaching: How likely is it to happen to you?
How often does mate poaching really happen outside of the Bravolebrity world? In one 2001 study involving an American sample of undergraduates and older adults, many of the participants reported having had personal experiences with mate poaching, either as the instigator or the one who was getting poached.
Mate poaching is usually a short-term mating strategy and more often used by men, the study found; approximately 64% of men and 49% percent of women reported trying to poach someone who was already in a romantic relationship. Eighty-five percent of respondents said they’d been on the receiving end of someone trying to poach them away from a romantic partner.
There’s also been studies on the differences among male and female poachers.
One study published in the Journal of Sex Research in July 2022 found that the most successful female poachers tended to have high levels of extraversion, openness and psychopathy.
Male poachers, on the other hand, tended to have low levels of conscientiousness and high levels of Machiavellianism, a personality trait marked by “a calculating attitude toward human relationships and a belief that ends justify means, however ruthless,” according to the American Psychological Association.
We’re not saying Sandoval is Machiavellian, per se, but have you seen the guy’s mustache?
Tom Sandoval (and his extremely cartoonish mustache) attend the Legends Ball during 2022 BravoCon at Manhattan Center on October 14, 2022, in New York City.
Ryan Anderson, a psychologist and teaching associate at Monash University in Australia, threw out another psychological term to describe our fixation on this current celebrity gossip: Leviss may have been “mate copying.”
Anderson said mate copying occurs when someone prefers to date partnered people over single, unpartnered prospects.
“Someone may experience a heightened desire for someone that is in relationship because, in a sense, that person has been implicitly endorsed by their current partner,” he told us.
Anderson offered this metaphor to explain it: In the same way you wouldn’t randomly walk onto a car lot and point to the third car on your left and purchase it, you wouldn’t just pick any ol’ past-their-prime Vanderpump bartender to start a relationship with. You’d be picky! (Sorry, Peter.)
“You would want information about this before you made such a substantial purchase,” Anderson said. “If someone is already in a relationship, they have demonstrated that they at least have desirable relationship qualities.”
Generally, mate copying is more common among women. (The ol’ “I’ll have what she’s having” scenario.)
Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval, Raquel Leviss — the three involved in the love triangle — and Tom Schwartz, the guy fans suspected Leviss was dating, at the Tom Sandoval & The Most Extras performance in Los Angeles, California.
Of course, we also get a voyeuristic pleasure in watching unpleasant, sensational events. That’s especially true if we’re watching glamorous, relatively wealthy people engage in a downward social spiral that makes us feel better about our own lives, Newman said.
“We think, ‘at least my partner isn’t sleeping with my best friend!’” Newman told HuffPost.
It’s also a little like craning your neck out as you drive by a car crash, or watching a deadly action scene in a movie, she said.
“I once asked a 9-year-old boy to explain the thrill of watching sci-fi scenes where spaceships burst into flames,” Newman said. “He told me, ‘My heart beats and my blood pumps fast and it’s exciting.’”
Salacious gossip taps into that same innate aggression and, for some, gets the juices flowing, she said: “Paying attention to this might feel better than normal baseline mood, in which one might feel sad or stressed.”
Or hey, maybe we’re all just bored and looking for an “apex cheating scandal” featuring a guy with a cartoony villain mustache to distract us from everything else that’s going on in the world.
