Naomie Olindo Reflects on Her Split from Metul Shah

Southern Charm's Naomie Olindo is opening up about her 2021 split from Metul Shah, giving new insight into what ended their three-year relationship. The interview with the Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast comes about six months after the breakup was confirmed last July, shortly after they had moved to New York City together.

Naomie opened up about the events that led to the break-up in the podcast interview and noted even before things happened that led to the split, the relationship didn't always feel like a perfect fit. “I think I just wanted to feel loved. I don’t think that he ever truly loved and accepted me,” she said, via Us Weekly. “It was always what he thought I could offer him or what he thought he could gain. It was never about who I was.”

Naomie also noted that the fact that her late father, Joel, knew Metul also affected how she felt about her relationship even as they faced "issues." “It was the bond, like, he had met my dad and he was really, he was there for me when my dad was sick and that was really important,” Naomie said of Metul's support during her father's cancer battle and later when he passed away in December 2019. “He was there for my mom a lot. He was there and he spent a lot of time with me. But now in hindsight, I'm like, that's just kind of a basic human thing to be there for somebody. It shouldn't be something that, yeah, it shouldn't be glorified. I also hung on to him cause I'm, like, my dad thought I was going to be with this person.”

Once the relationship did end, Naomie found encouragement in a lot of messages of support from fans. "The amount of support that people had and the incredibly kind messages were overwhelming [on social media]. And it was really helpful in that time because, you know, I felt isolated. I just felt sad. I could just read through these messages of encouragement and, you know, people being like, ‘I've been there, this has happened to me. You're going to be fine. You don't know it right now.’ And I got similar messages when my dad died, so I knew that that was going to be true. It was going to get better. But I mean, [I was] completely brokenhearted for weeks. I didn't wash my hair for, I don't know, 11, 12 days. It was disgusting," she said. "Pain is still the same. So it's OK, like, at least for me, if people are going to write about it, I don't really think I care that much. I cared more about the fact that my life was quite literally flipped upside down…The first two weeks were awful. I had so many weak moments where I was like, ‘God, I just want my old life back.’"

Following the split, Naomie moved back to Charleston and leaned on an old friend for support. "Somebody that really, really helped me was my friend Benji. I call him sorta my guru, but he and I had dated when we were 20, 21, but very briefly, just like a fling, nothing really. He was in New York [and] I was coming home from France and had to layover. I was like, ‘Hey, OK, Metul and I are broken up. I know you, you're a safe person. I know your family, let's get a drink and that'll be sort of like my introduction into dating again,’” she said. They hung out in NYC and when she moved back to Charleston, he helped to give her the tools she needed to move on. “It changed the course of my life. It really did. He spent months and months working on himself. I think he’s a really enlightened person. [Benji] was like, ‘We're not like hooking up. You're not, well, I need to help you. You know?’"

As for how she feels about her ex today, she said, "I don't think there's anything [to say to him now] and I definitely don't hold any, like, hatred for him. I really wish him the best. I just don't think he's even really worth me having any negative feelings or any feelings at all at this point. I'm six months out so if you're listening to this and you know, you're struggling through your breakup, you don't know what to do, promise you it gets better," she said. "This is me telling you, you know, and listen to yourself because nobody knows better than you.”

Naomie has been keeping busy and recently shared a "Photo dump: life lately" set of snapshots to Instagram that took fans inside her life today and it includes pics of her hanging out with pals and going to events; she's also been busy flying small planes.

In her conversation with the Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast, she shared her outlook on life and love today. "I think after you're betrayed and your judgment betrays, you wonder, ‘Can I trust myself again to see somebody's real intentions?'... It's hard to learn to trust yourself," she said. “I realized just a little bit, you get like a little inch of gratitude, a little inch of positivity in what comes back to you is just so overwhelming. I've met some of the most incredible people and gotten to talk with like the most interesting minds and learn so much. And it's just brought out this curiosity in me about life that I had sort of dulled down before because Metul wasn't interested in that stuff. … I feel like I'm just running free, little bit buckwild I would say.”