It’s been just over a month since Selling the City hit Netflix and there is still one piece of gossip that we haven’t quite gotten over. In the premiere episode, Eleonora Srugo — who leads a team of four female real estate agents at Douglas Elliman in New York City — reveals that her co-worker Justin Tuinstra took her virginity “for the second time.” Confused? We’re here to break it down for you.
Srugo explains in her confessional that she hadn’t been with a sexual partner in “many, many years” when she and Tuinstra first hooked up, which is partly why she had such an emotional response to their short-lived tryst.
“He allowed me to reconnect with a part of myself that I was really, really shut off from,” she says. “I cried for like a week after that because I really did not realize that I loved intimacy. And I wanted that sort of connection with someone else.”
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.
