Ned Fulmer’s Wife Reacts to Affair Revelation and Forgiveness Prospects

The cheating scandal that shook YouTube’s Try Guys is back in the spotlight as Ned Fuller and his estranged wife Ariel finally spoke out about it publicly.

For the first time since Ned admitted to an affair with an employee at his production company — a 2022 revelation that ultimately cost him his job — the couple appeared together on the premiere of his new podcast Rock Bottom to tackle the lingering questions around the betrayal.

‘I found out about your affair from the fans,’ Ariel revealed during the episode, laying bare the shock that rocked her world.

‘I was so blindsided that somebody sent me a picture, and I couldn’t — it was like my brain couldn’t compute,’ she continued. 

‘For some reason, I couldn’t see what was actually there. I thought it was your sister. And I remember sending it to you and being like, ‘What’s your sister doing in New York?”‘

Looking back, Ariel admitted she still struggles to process the moment. ‘And I think back on that, and I’m like, how did I not see what was going on.’

She added, ‘What was so f—ed up in my brain that I couldn’t see what was happening in that picture?’

In the wake of the affair, Ariel said she struggled to trust anyone, from her husband to her closest friends and even the public.

‘I just stayed inside because there were cameras everywhere. It was so unsafe,’ she shared. ‘It took a long time to get back to myself.’ 

The episode also saw the pair confronting the speculation that’s lingered for years — are they still together? 

‘We are still friends, we have children together, we go on trips together,’ said Ned.

‘There is a spectrum of being together-not together. There’s ways in which we’re together, but the way that everyone wants to know, like, ‘Are you still, like, an item? Are you still a couple?’ No.’

Added Ned: ‘We really haven’t been at all these last three years.’

Ariel also made it unmistakably clear that she has ‘absolutely not’ forgiven him for his betrayal. 

‘People ask me, “Do you forgive Ned for what he did,”‘ Ariel said in the episode. ‘How can you forgive somebody for lying to you? For cheating on you. No. F— no.’

She continued: ‘We’ve been together for a long time, and you are the father of my two beautiful children, and we know each other really well. 

We’ve worked through a lot of stuff, and the fact that I can be around you and still have a good time and enjoy spending time with you and enjoy spending time with my kids — I think that’s a win.’ 

The podcast comes just days after Ned spoke out publicly for the first time about the affair. 

In an interview with People, he admitted, ‘For a long time, I wanted nothing to do with social media or the internet,’ referencing his near-total disappearance from online platforms following the scandal.

‘I didn’t think it was particularly beneficial to my mental health,’ he added.

Fulmer told the publication how he broke the news of his affair to Ariel — the person he said he ‘cared the most about’ — before turning inward to figure out ‘why I had done what I had done.’

He admitted it was ‘devastating’ to recognize the amount of ‘pain’ his infidelity had caused Ariel.

‘If I were looking at a past version of myself, how I’d really want to change [is] the way I’d been interacting with her,’ Fulmer said.

As part of trying to mend their relationship, the couple attended counseling together, though he acknowledged there were times he questioned whether their marriage could survive the betrayal.

The former Try Guys star said he realized that honesty had been a major obstacle, so he and Ariel focused on rebuilding trust and creating a solid ‘foundation’ between them.

‘It’s certainly stronger than it was before,’ he claimed. ‘We have a much clearer sense of boundaries — understanding and respecting each other’s boundaries — as well as integrity and being direct with each other, even when it might be unpleasant.’

Fulmer also claimed that ‘every cent’ that went toward couple’s therapy was money well spent due to the measurable ‘improvements’ in his family life.

But the ‘place of healing’ that he and Ariel had reached was shaken up after he admitted that he missed having a creative venue after the three other Try Guys kicked him out of their group.

‘I started to want to create and miss making things,’ Fulmer said. ‘I mean, I’m the type of person that’d be in a community theater show getting paid nothing. I just love it.’

Out of that desire was born his new podcast Rock Bottom, where he says he plans to speak with ‘anyone who’s overcome something challenging’ about the lowest points in their lives.

‘It’s made me a lot more interested in other people’s challenging times,’ Fulmer said of his own public shunning. ‘When someone does something that they’re really ashamed about or that is deeply traumatizing, life goes on. So what happens next?’

He’ll get a chance to speak about his own low point during the premiere on Wednesday, September 17, when he sits down for a conversation with his estranged wife.

‘The conversation was so brutal at times that we wanted to get up and walk out of the room,’ Fulmer said. ‘It’s one thing to talk about in a therapy setting. It’s a really hard thing to have that conversation in such a way where you know people are watching it. But once we watched the full episode, it was something we were really proud of.’

The YouTube star also noted that his new podcast will be a stark departure from the light-hearted comedy of the Try Guys after he underwent a profound change ‘as a person and as an artist’ as he tried to prove that he wasn’t just a ‘caricature or this one-dimensional type of person.’

Fulmer admitted that he had created a public persona of a ‘wife guy’ while performing with the Try Guys thanks to his public declarations of love for Ariel. 

‘It was something fans seemed to resonate with and I leaned into consciously. It certainly was a part of my life,’ he said, adding that it ‘must have been really painful and devastating to the viewers’ to see him in a new light.

Fulmer admitted that the way he acted toward his wife on camera was ‘obviously not how real relationships work.’

However, he said he hopes they have found solid footing after deciding to keep their relationship more private, while also no longer allowing their children to be in front of the camera.

In response to criticisms that he was allegedly just rehashing his personal failings for a money-making venture, Fulmer claimed that plenty of his fans wanted him to come clean about the affair.

‘As a creator, you have a responsibility to reestablish the context of who you are after something like that,’ he said. ‘I know that addressing the past is something that people care about and want to hear about from me, so it’s kind of this necessary step to move into a new chapter.’

Despite his claims of a stronger relationship with Ariel, sources told TMZ on Tuesday that Fulmer and his wife were no longer together. 

The publication also obtained a photo of him with an unidentified woman at the Zebulon music club in LA on September 7. 

A witness claimed they saw Fulmer speaking to the mystery woman for ‘a really long time,’ though they made it clear that there was no obvious PDA between the two. 

They added that he seemed to have accompanied the woman to the venue.

Later on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Fulmer confirmed that he and Ariel have separated in a statement to People.

They said that he ‘cares deeply’ for his estranged wife, with whom he is allegedly working on a new, unspecified project. 

The spokesperson added that the former couple vacationed in Greece over the summer with their two young children, though it’s unclear if they had separated at that point.