Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when it involves saying goodbye to a partner of almost six years with whom you technically still share an address.
“My breakup’s been a very difficult thing,” said Nikki Bella at the start of Sunday’s Total Bellas premiere. “I don’t want to compare it to death or divorce, but you’re pretty much saying goodbye to something forever.”
Last year, the WWE star initially called off what had been a very public engagement to her longtime beau John Cena before eventually ending their relationship altogether. Total Bellas’ fourth season picks up in the split’s relatively recent aftermath. And while Nikki is obviously still feeling emotional about the breakup several months later, she’s also set on starting anew.
“Single, 34, with no kids, trying to start over,” she told the confessional camera.
Fittingly, much of this week’s new episode saw Nikki doing just that. For the newly-single Bella twin, starting over started with moving out, which meant traveling back to her and John’s old place in Tampa to pack up everything she left behind.
“It’s going to be hard going to the house right now,” she admitted to her mom Kathy, whose own home is nearby, before driving over. Continuing, Nikki said she doesn’t “want to sit in the memories.”
And so she didn’t. An hour after pulling up to the house, Nikki was back in the car. “I’ll definitely miss it,” she said, adding that moving out was “the toughest” post-breakup hurdle she had to grapple with, mostly because it finally felt like closure.
“I think that’s the hardest part,” she explained during a particularly emotional confessional interview. “When you just…you move out and you shut that door and you give someone your keys. It shuts the door to your heart, to that love and to the memories.”
But letting go of her previous address for good felt like a necessary step toward moving on. “It’s been almost a year of just, like, not being in a good place,” Nikki said. “And I just want to be a happy person again.”
Plus—as the saying goes—when one door closes, another swings open. In Nikki’s case, the new door turned out to be a literal one, conveniently attached to her dream home some 3,000 miles away.
She broke the news to her twin sis Brie Bella between reps at the gym in San Diego. “I’m thinking I might move to L.A.,” she said casually. Brie, who’d recently moved her family out to SoCal to be closer to Nikki, was less than thrilled about her sister’s plans to relocate. (Brie’s husband Daniel Bryanwasn’t too happy about it either.)
“I feel like it’s ’cause you’re running away from your problems,” Brie told Nikki later, after a subsequent house-hunting excursion near Santa Monica quickly devolved into a full-blown sisterly feud.
“I’m not just moving here because of my ex,” Nikki insisted, after having already explained that she’s “more sad in San Diego” (where she and John also shared a home) than she is in L.A.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Brie countered. “You don’t realize it.”
Despite her sister’s concerns, Nikki went ahead and found a house.
When her real estate agent called to tell her the good news, she was totally over the moon. “I’m just on such a high of getting the house that I wanted,” Nikki gushed. “It starts something new for me. It’s like the foundation of this new journey that I want to be on. I don’t even have the words right now because I’m so excited.”
Brie’s approval came later. A joint comeback opportunity and a couple of drinks at their sister-in-law’s baby shower had the twins feeling all kinds of emotional, and Nikki admitted she felt bad for springing the move on her sister so abruptly. She also acknowledged that maybe she should’ve involved Brie a little bit more in her decision-making process.
“But I feel like that L.A. move was the first time that I put me first. I didn’t care what anyone thought,” Nikki went on to explain. “And I did it for me because I know I need it. I just need something so brand new, scary and fresh.”
Unsurprisingly, Brie understood. See how the big move, big drama and more unfolded in the full recap video above!
Watch the season 4 premiere of Total Bellas this Sunday at 9 p.m., only on E!