Just a little over a month ago, the show Selling the City made its debut on Netflix, and there is still one noteworthy detail that has been the talk of the town. In the first episode, Eleonora Srugo, who heads a team of four female real estate agents at Douglas Elliman in New York City, discloses that her colleague, Justin Tuinstra, was the one who took her virginity “for the second time.” Sounds puzzling? Let’s break it down.
Srugo elaborates in her personal reflection that she had not been physically intimate with anyone for “many, many years” prior to her encounter with Tuinstra, which explains her intense emotional reaction to their brief relationship.
She opens up, stating, “He helped me rediscover a part of myself that I had long kept closed off. I cried for days because I didn’t realize how deeply I craved intimacy. I yearned for that connection with another person.”
Srugo also says that sex with Tuinstra helped “motivate” her to lose weight.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. This is a reality show. Two people hooked up. They are no longer together. But they still work together. They must hate each other!
Well, that’s not the case here.
While this may be a cause for drama in most reality shows, Tuinstra told DECIDER over a Zoom interview that there was never any awkwardness in the workplace after he and Srugo had sex. In fact, Tuinstra didn’t think there was ever even “a need to discuss” their past relations in front of the cameras.
“We were never dating. We never went out to dinner. I mean, we would see each other occasionally, but it was never some sort of, ‘Oh, hey, I’m seeing her, I’m dating her,’” he said. “[It was a] casual fling, whatever you want to call it. But there was never any reason for either side to be uncomfortable. And when she approached me about doing the show, there was never any notion that it was something that we had to disclose or share with the world.”
Unfortunately for Tuinstra, the word got out and his history with Srugo has become a perplexing topic, largely due to the way she described it on the show.
In an interview with RealityTea, Srugo explained exactly what she meant by losing her virginity for “the second time.” The real estate agent said she was basically “asexual” as she built her real estate business — and after eight years of celibacy, Tuinstra did her a “favor” by helping her “break the ice.”
“We had sex and we stayed friends. It was never a ‘situationship’ for either of us,” she told the outlet. “In fact, I’m always on the lookout for a girl for him.”
Selling the City is currently streaming on Netflix.
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