"Oh, my God, I don't fit in. I've been to Upper East Side parties before. Some women look great, and some have gone over the top. It looks like the Star Wars bar."
- Bethenny Frankel before bailing on Ramona Singer's birthday party
On The Real Housewives of New York City Season 7 Episode 7, Ramona continued her birthday bash while Bethenny and LuAnn ended up in Miami.
It was there that we got down to the real "Family Matters" at hand.
Reflecting on Singer's party, Bethenny decided that she wanted to make another effort to reconnect with her estranged stepdad John Parisella.
"He raised me. It got a little hairy at the end, and we stopped speaking," she said, adding that it's been years. "But he's the only father I've ever known."
"I have forgiven, but I haven't forgotten," Frankel said of Parisella, a horse trainer who she has accused of getting "physical" with her and her mom.
"I just feel like I need to reopen that door."
Cue the trip to Miami to do just that.
If you watch The Real Housewives of New York City online, you know these women do not mince words, or shy away from taboo topics at all.
Still, it was hard to hear Bethenny tell a friend that back when she was a kid, "I saw my mother get the s--t beaten out of her with a telephone."
Her stepfather "said she was out having sex on him," Frankel confided in Miami. "How could you ever beat somebody in front of your kid?"
Confronting him about it later, she said, "We had abuse, we had alcohol, we had gambling. I can't imagine any of this stuff with my daughter."
"I don't excuse it," Parisella said.
What other response is there?
When he told her "[Your mother] never wanted a child," Bethenny responded incredulously, "She never wanted a child? Excellent. That was evident."
All the drama between Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy is starting to make a little more sense, given how she was apparently raised.
"I have so many special memories," said Parisella, trying to win her back over, but "I believe you still haven't let go of the past, and that's not healthy."
"It's hard for me to have sex with a man because [of what I saw]," said Frankel, who does make a valid point right there. "Be a little sensitive."
"I was mad," he countered. "Not hearing from you for 20 years. I'm sorry. I survived. And you became a tremendous success. I'm so proud of you."
Bethenny got a little choked up.
"You've never really said that before," she said, adding. "I think of you and tell everyone you are the only father I've ever known. I'm not angry."
Concluded a crying Bethenny, after "hugging it out" following this difficult talk, "I feel like all of that made me the different kind of person I am."
