Dr. Imani Walker Reveals She Told Her Husband She Wants a Divorce

All season long, the Married to Medicine Los Angeles ladies have had a lot of questions about Dr. Imani Walker's marriage. The psychiatrist had been living apart from her husband, Phil Johnson, for the past three months, as of the start of the season as he worked to launch a cannabis dispensary business in Oklahoma (clip above). However, some members of the Married to Medicine Los Angeles cast didn't think Dr. Imani was being completely honest about her relationship.

Dr. Imani opened up about what was really going on in her marriage during a heart-to-heart with Dr. Britten Cole in the June 14 episode of Married to Medicine Los Angeles. "Phil and I, I always consider him to be my best friend, like absolutely, which is what you typically consider when you're married to anybody," Dr. Imani told her friend. "But I've got issues with abandonment, and Phil, he doesn't want to spend time with me. I'm not going to beg anybody, including my husband, to spend time with me. Either you want to, because you're in love with me, or you don't."

Dr. Imani got emotional as she revealed that she had made a major decision about her relationship. "I can't keep putting up fronts and facades all the time," she shared. "So I'm the one who initiated all of this. I was like, 'I want to get a divorce.'"

Earlier in the episode, we got to see a glimpse of the challenges in Dr. Imani and Phil's marriage. Dr. Imani had a FaceTime chat with her husband while she was in New Orleans visiting her alma mater, Xavier University of Louisiana, along with Dr. Britten and Married to Medicine's Dr. Contessa Metcalfe.

Phil told Dr. Imani that it would "probably be a few weeks" before he was able to visit her in L.A. "What am I doing? Am I wasting my time?" Dr. Imani said in an interview during the episode. "Is this really what marriage is supposed to be about?"

Dr. Imani told Phil that she could possibly visit him in Oklahoma and asked if he was "dying for me to come out there?" "It's deeper than that," he said. "I mean, I've got work to do."

Dr. Imani later shared a little bit about what she had been going through with her husband while out with Dr. Britten and Dr. Contessa during their trip to New Orleans. "The other day, I'm like, 'When you were in L.A., you were here, but you really weren't here,' because he was devoting so much time to his business," she explained. "I would just like for him to be able to acknowledge that we have to do the work and not be like, 'Oh, we're going to do it,' and then there's a game or his friend is in town. I'm not begging nobody, not even my husband, for their time."

Dr. Imani got back to work when she returned from her trip to New Orleans. "I do miss Phil, but I've been keeping myself busy with work," she said in an interview during the episode. "In fact, I wrote a whole book by myself."

We got to see Dr. Imani's photo shoot for her forthcoming book in which she discusses mental health within the Black community, as well as her own journey with anxiety and depression. "I have the ability to fool people who don't know when I'm going through something," she said. "Imani on the outside is very poised, calm, collected. The inside me would be someone who always felt like, like I always just wanted to grip onto something because I had so much anxiety, just a tangle of nerves."

Dr. Imani said that going through the process of writing the book has helped her better connect with herself and realize what she wants out of life. "When you're depressed and anxious like I am, you trick yourself into getting busy, and you find things to distract yourself from the fact that what is in front of you is grossly dysfunctional," she shared. "I know myself a lot better now, and I think I also know what I want for myself."

Dr. Imani later told Jazmin Johnson that she is "effectively a single mom right now" while raising her son, Idris. "Some days are easier than others," Dr. Imani shared.

She also said of her marriage, "Part of the issue is that we didn't have a lot of time to spend together before he left. It was already strained."

Photo: Imani Walker/Instagram